Next administration should consider wisdom of taking the baton of Biden's foreign policy: China Daily editorial

As it approaches the end of its time in office, the Joe Biden administration is still trying to align its "Indo-Pacific" partnerships with its transatlantic alliance. Apparently, it wants to ensure that on handing over the reins of power to its successor it does not leave behind a vacuum to be filled by what its top diplomat called "a bad actor".

In a lunch-with-the-FT report published by the Financial Times on Friday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the British newspaper that his "greatest satisfaction" over the past four years was rebuilding alliances, pointing to the administration's efforts to "connect the Atlantic and the Pacific", and pointed out that there's a "greater premium than ever" on cooperating with other nations to create more leverage to respond to China.

That explains the last round of foreign visits by senior officials of the administration. Blinken is visiting the Republic of Korea, Japan and France from Saturday to Thursday; National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan visited India from Sunday to Monday; and Biden is scheduled to visit Italy from Thursday to Sunday.

France and Italy are two major European Union countries that have demonstrated strategic autonomy with regard to their China policy, and which Beijing is now trying to persuade to review their stance on the "anti-subsidy" duties the EU imposed on Chinese-made electric vehicles late last year under US pressure.

As Blinken hinted in the FT interview, portraying China as an enabler of the Russia-Ukraine conflict has proved an effective means to goad the bloc to jump onto the US' anti-China bandwagon, and it is also an excuse for the US to sanction Chinese entities that it actually identifies as indispensable for China to outcompete the US in high-tech.

In doing so, the Biden administration is also trying to distract the EU's attention from the fact that it is the US that has been the sole party benefiting tremendously from the Ukraine crisis.

Blinken's visits to the ROK and Japan, and Sullivan's "capstone visit" to India come at a critical juncture as the relations between China and these countries are showing the positive momentum of recovery from the low that the Biden administration has painstakingly engineered.

Sullivan's concerns-raising visit shows the Biden administration is trying to drive a fresh wedge between the two neighbors after they reached a series of consensuses on properly settling their border disputes.

Blinken's self-satisfaction at the Biden administration's scaremongering in relation to China is palpable in the interview, which makes no bones that spreading fears of China, and causing chaos and conflict around the world have been central to the Biden administration's foreign policy.

But the community of allies it has championed based on "common values" and "common interest" is just a castle built on the sand. The "commonality" in values and interests is only an illusion the US has tried to create for its own narrow end.

When asked about the Biden administration's recent blocking of Japanese Nippon Steel's purchase of US Steel citing "national security" concerns, and the sharp contrast between the US' nonchalance to Muslims' sufferings in Gaza and its "care" for what it claims is Beijing's "genocide" of Muslims in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, the eloquent Blinken's quick quasi-no-comment responses to both questions speak volumes of the hypocrisy of the US' foreign policy.

Blinken said one of the big questions as the next administration prepares to take office is what stance it will take on China and in what fashion it will enlist US allies and partners to help. The answer rests with whether the next administration is willing to inherit the Biden administration's brazenness in trying to convince itself that the policy aimed at derailing China's development has been a success.

The US has no legitimacy to deny China's right to development. The more the US tries to contain China's development and isolate it from the world, the more it will harm itself.

China has made it clear that it is willing to improve and develop its relations with the US in accordance with the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation, no matter what changes take place in the US. Thus the future direction of China-US relations depends on the choice of the US side.

It is to be hoped the next US administration will adopt a correct strategic perception on China's development and work with Beijing in the two countries' common interests.