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BEIJING – China has canceled a major annual security meeting scheduled for mid-October with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in Beijing, saying that a senior Chinese army official would not be available for to meet him, said Sunday a US official.
The decision to withdraw from the high-level meeting, known as Diplomatic Dialogue and Security, was the last sign of bad mood between China and the United States and closed a week of titanic actions. in a newly cold relationship.
The cancellation of the dialogue, an event that China had until recently announced as a productive way for both sides to talk, showed how much the escalating tensions of the trade war had infected other parties of the relationship, including arms sales and the South China Sea.
A senior US foreign policy official summed up the administration's attitude toward China last week, saying at the Chinese National Day celebration at the Chinese embassy in Washington that the US had intend to compete with China. .
"For us, in the United States, competition is not a four-letter word," said top official Matt Pottinger, who deals with China at the National Security Council. said in his remarks.
Vice President Pence is expected to make an important speech this week outlining the government's negative views on China's international behavior in recent years, including what he sees as efforts to influence US domestic policy. The speech will almost certainly lessen the increasingly frozen ties between Washington and Beijing.
In this spirit, the Trump government imposed sanctions on a Chinese military company for buying weapons from Russia, and announced the sale of 330 million dollars of military equipment to Taiwan, the autonomous island democracy that Beijing claims .
China was also irritated by the Pentagon's announcement last Wednesday that B-52 bombers had flown over the East China Sea and the South China Sea as part of its ongoing presence in the region. and strongly protest the US military patrols there.
President Trump, who is hitting China against trade, turned to a new front last week, accusing Beijing of intervening in the upcoming midterm elections by buying a large ad space in a newspaper. from Iowa.
China on Friday announced to the Trump administration that a senior Chinese army official would not meet with Mattis, said a US official who requested anonymity according to the diplomatic norm. .
During the diplomatic and security dialogue last year, the leader of the People's Liberation Army, General Fang Fenghui, attended the sessions held in Washington. (General Fang was served shortly after, for independent reasons.)
The accumulation of episodes last week, or one episode in particular, caused the decision to sabotage the dialogue, is unclear, said the US official.
But the sanctions imposed on the Chinese army equipment development department, for The purchase of combat aircraft and ground-to-air missiles in Russia seemed particularly serious, said the official.
In some respects, Beijing's decision to abandon the dialogue, at least for the moment, was not surprising. The Foreign Ministry reported last week that arms sales in Taiwan threatened to cause "serious damage" to relations with the United States, including "bilateral cooperation in key areas".
Last Tuesday, China refused the request for a US warship to conduct a port visit to Hong Kong in October.
China started a week – long holiday Sunday. Government officials were not available to comment on the cancellation of the meeting.
Meanwhile, the US ambassador to Beijing published Sunday in his local newspaper, the Des Moines register, a strongly voiced opinion piece.
The opinion piece, a response to a four-page infomercial paid by the Chinese government last weekend, blamed China for intimidation and unfair trade practices. He also complained about the state-controlled Chinese press.
Ambassador Terry Branstad, one of Trump's early supporters, is a former governor of Iowa, a state whose farmers struggle with Trump's trade war. Iowa soybean producers face declining sales as China turns to Latin America to buy the huge amounts of soybeans it usually buys in Iowa.
Mr. Branstad wrote that Mr. Trump sought to level the playing field between US companies and their Chinese competitors by imposing tariffs.
"Unfortunately, China has reacted by taking further action to harm US workers, farmers and businesses through retaliation – and it is currently increasing its harassment by broadcasting propaganda in our own press," he said. declared.
He noted that the Chinese media were "under the control of the Chinese Communist Party" and had "no real reflection of the disparity of opinion that the Chinese people might have about China's worrisome economic trajectory".
The ambassador wrote in the notice that one of the major Chinese newspapers had refused – "dodged", he said, to publish his article.
American ambassadors rarely write articles in the US press when they represent the United States abroad. Sometimes they offer bits of innocuous content to improve the US reputation for newspapers in the countries where they serve.
Mr. Branstad seemed to want to take a stand against the supplement paid by China. The supplement looked at the economic costs of Trump's trade war for Iowa farmers, many of whom are particularly dependent on world trade.
An American lawyer in Beijing said the tone of Mr. Branstad's article was inappropriate.
"Taking commercials in an American newspaper can be propaganda, but is it intimidation?" Said James Zimmerman, former president of the American Chamber of Commerce in China. "Ambassador Branstad is now playing the card of demonization, which is jeopardizing the commercial and strategic interests of the United States."
Luz Ding contributed to the research.
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