China suggests dialogue with US as Joe Biden likely to take tough stance against Beijing

As US President-elect Joe Biden is likely to take a tough stance against China, Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday said that Beijing and the US “should initiate dialogue at all levels”.

Sputnik quoted Wang as saying at the meeting with the US-China Business Council’s Board of Directors, “China and the US should initiate dialogue at all levels, any issue can be discussed at the negotiating table. Thus, it is possible to keep in touch on strategic and long-term issues.”

“The Chinese side is always ready to negotiate, the sides can draft a list [of topics] to promote dialogue, cooperation and to settle differences,” he added.

This comes amid reports that Biden is expected to come through with his pledge to mobilise America’s allies in a long-overdue determination to stand up to China, forcefully, multilaterally, and effectively.

In February, Biden had described Chinese President Xi Jinping as a ‘thug’, while US President Donald Trump had called Xi a ‘great leader’, and has also admitted backing away from holding Beijing accountable for the Chinese president’s rampages in Hong Kong and Xinjiang in order to gain advantages at the trade-talks table, writes Terry Glavin for the Canadian journal Ottawa Citizen.

Glavin writes that Biden has gone out of his way to declare Beijing’s mass imprisonment of the Uyghurs and the obliteration of Uyghur culture a genocide.

Meanwhile, two years ago, Trump had said: “President Xi and I will always be friends....He’s for China, I’m for the US, but other than that, we love each other.” He had also gone out of his way to cut Xi slack on Xinjiang.

Until now, the United States and the world’s liberal democracies have been all over the map in coming to terms with the belligerence and barbarism of Xi Jinping.

The issues have been about Hong Kong and Xinjiang, where Beijing has been carrying out a reign of terror aimed at enslaving and liquidating the Turkic Muslim Uyghur minority, China’s takeover of key UN agencies, its abusive manipulations of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and its ‘hostage diplomacy’ in one country after another.

China’s mass theft of intellectual property throughout the G20 economies, the annexation of the South China Sea, and the vast and largely unchallenged subversion and influence operations Beijing’s United Front Work Department is carrying out throughout the world’s advanced economies, including Canada, are also the issues concerning the world’s liberal democracies.

Over 300 separate bills targeting China have been drawn up by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, and the important bills addressing the catastrophes in Hong Kong and Xinjiang enjoyed full bipartisan support.

On December 6, amid concerns over the Chinese Communist Party’s threat to American national security, the US States Department listed over 80 Chinese companies mentioned in the US stock exchange in which US retail investors have been investing unknowingly in Chinese companies involved in both civilian and military production.