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The United States and China have, after some delay, concluded their second annual dialogue on diplomacy and security at a time of exceptionally high bilateral tensions on all fronts.
Even beyond the ongoing trade war, the recent meeting between US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Chinese Politburo Member Yang Jiechi and General Counsel and Minister of General Defense Wei Fenghe follows several notable events.
In August, the United States decided to impose sanctions on the People's Liberation Army's equipment development department in connection with China's receipt of ground-to-air S-400 missile defense systems. Russian and Su-35 fighter. In September, at the United Nations, US President Donald Trump accused China of interfering in the mid-term US elections.
It did not stop there. At the end of September, a Chinese-born 052C destroyer almost collided with a US Navy destroyer who was legally conducting a freedom of navigation operation near Gaven Reef in the Spratly Islands, in the Sea of China. Southern China.
This incident occurred a day after the United States approved the likely sale of military aviation components to Taiwan and the same week, US Vice President Mike Pence would deliver a speech highlighting a long list of US grievances regarding China's conduct at the national and international levels.
Over the past three months, Beijing has ended planned military and economic military dialogues with the United States.
The diplomatic and security dialogue – one of the two successors of the now-defunct US-China strategic and economic dialogue – has also been postponed.
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The meeting convened again this week does not seem to have gotten out of the current quagmire of Washington and Beijing, but no one should have expected. Rather, it allowed both parties to exchange views at a very high level, even though these views could not necessarily be heard or understood better than before.
For the United States, the dialogue was an opportunity to highlight the serious concerns raised by China's attempts to seek influence within its borders. Pompeo and Mattis also expressed "concerns over China's failure to meet its international human rights and religious freedom obligations and commitments" in China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
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In a public statement, Mattis and Pompeo called on China to actively disarm the seven artificial islands built in the last five years in the Spratly group.
The Trump administration has still not developed a new strategy to replace what it had inherited – and amplified – from the Obama administration. Operations relating to freedom of navigation continue to claim navigation rights in accordance with international law, but the problem of cancellation of China's fait accompli in Spratlys persists.
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Earlier this year, at the Shangri-La dialogue, Mattis pointed to Chinese militarization activity in the South China Sea, but refrained from prescribing a course that Beijing could follow to "resolve" the problem.
The good news has allowed both parties to recognize mutually that the continuation of the dialogue between them could stabilize and prevent the outbreak of a conflict that is not desired by either side. Issues that could lead to cooperation, particularly in Afghanistan and the Korean peninsula, have been largely relegated to the background.
But even with the dialogue and the exchanges, the two parties did not seem closer to getting out of their mutual mistrust. The statements made by officials at the press conference following the dialogue illustrate this very clearly in the context of the South China Sea, where Washington and Beijing still have two distinct conceptions of freedom of navigation and militarization. .
Yang said China believes that "no country should use any excuse to engage in militarization in the region," while Mattis said the United States shared his "concern." on China's activities and militarization in the South China Sea ". In the same way, both parties remain as distant as ever on the meaning of freedom of navigation.
Roughly speaking, however, the final dialogue on security and diplomatic relations has had the general result that, even as US-China relations begin to change, they explicitly include the long-standing "competition" beneath the surface; always talk and share their views on their disagreements.
As Mattis said during his meeting with Wei in October, the competition did not necessarily lead to hostility. The problem, however, is that persistent mistrust and the inability to bridge the gaps can intensify the security dilemma between the two countries, tragically pushing them towards a dangerous path that none of them can actively pursue.
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