According to Poldermans, Yellen is a better option for various reasons and the Chinese media see it that way too. ‘It is said in the Chinese media that Blinken is the bad cop was and Yellen de good cop.What is unquestionably in Yellen’s favor is her claim that decoupling the US and Chinese economies is not only impossible, but also meaningless.
What makes Yellen salonfähiger even for her Chinese guests is Blinken’s poor channel status in the eyes of the Chinese. Not only did the United States put Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu on the sanctions list for China’s trade in defense equipment with Russia, but during a summit in Anchorage last year, the US and Chinese delegations clashed.
“Blinken is the bad cop, Yellen is the good cop”
According to Poldermans, Yellen has a number of issues she will no doubt raise. These include the Taiwan issue, the war in Ukraine, US President Joe Biden’s awkward remark that his counterpart Xi Jinping is a dictator, and the steady flow of Chinese raw materials for the highly addictive fentanyl that is flooding the United States. Also on the agenda is the Chinese project to build a spy station in Cuba.
hotline
AND last but not least Yellen will want to talk about establishing a US-China hotline to prevent military escalation in the South China Sea. “This shouldn’t escalate any further,” says Poldermans, who points out that there have been a number of gruesome near misses between American and Chinese fighter jets in recent weeks.
Poldermans explicitly calls this a difficult problem because the Chinese will link the making of that face-to-face hotline to their defense minister, who is on America’s sanctions list. China will likely demand that its minister be removed from that blacklist. “It’s time for the US to make concessions,” Chinese media say.
Soil
According to Poldermans, everyone hopes that Yellen’s visit has reached ‘the bottom of the bad relations between the two countries’ and that normalization will take place. According to the sinologist, however, this will not work in one area, namely in the military field. And this, too, has everything to do with Defense Minister Li Shangfu, whose name is on America’s blacklist.
Listen to the full conversation with Boudewijn Poldermans in BNR De Wereld here
A second promising outcome of Yellen’s visit is that, provided she can iron out the wrinkles needed to make her visit a success, it will pave the way for a meeting between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping.