Welcome to China Uncensored. I’m Chris Chappell. This episode is sponsored by Incogni.
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how many. Dozens, maybe hundreds—most of which you’ve never heard of. And you have no idea
what they’re doing with it. Incogni helps stop them. I’ll explain more at the end.
Well, it finally happened. Secretary of State Antony Blinken
got his meetings in Beijing this week Now, I would like to say that’s a good
thing. But this whole trip has been a pretty spectacular disaster from the beginning.
As the State Department predicted, there weren’t any breakthroughs from the trip.
“Neither side budged on military activities in the Taiwan Strait, U.S. sanctions
against Chinese officials, restrictions on technology sales or the ongoing trade war.”
According to Blinken, China made some vague
promises about maybe exploring helping the US combat Fentanyl.
Which sounds as promising as the last three times China said they would do something about fentanyl.
What was clear, though, was that the Biden administration has now
fully put the Chinese spy balloon saga behind them,
at least until China does it again. Reporter: So with Beijing the balloon
incident is over? It's water under the bridge? Blinken: we did what we needed to do to protect
our interests. We said what we needed to say and made clear what we needed to make
clear in terms of this not happening again. And so as long as it doesn't,
that chapter should be closed. Phew. I was worried the US might
actually make a stink about China violating US airspace like that. I guess I shouldn’t have
worried, though. The Biden administration apparently isn’t good at holding grudges.
One of Blinken’s main objectives of the trip was to restore diplomatic channels of communication.
Blinken wasn’t able to restore military-to-military communications.
And as for meetings with other US officials, “China and the U.S. did commit to keep talking,
with further high-level visits expected in coming months, including possible trips to
China by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.”
Yes, the old “we’ll keep talking line.”
For China engagers, that’s the nicotine that keeps them coming back.
China reportedly wanted Raimondo and Yellen to come before Blinken, because you know,
who wants to be lectured on human rights when you could be making business deals.
However the Biden administration insisted Blinken come first.
US Commerce Secretary; Janet Yellen, US Treasury Secretary; Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State)
While there, Blinken met with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang,CCP Central Foreign Affairs
Commission director Wang Yi , and …drumroll please….Chinese presitator Xi Jinping himself
More about that optics nightmare in a minute.
But first, while Blinken may have trailblazed a diplomatic path by being
the first Secretary of State to visit in 5 years, it’s unclear where that path goes.
China’s foreign minister accepted an invitation to come to the US.But besides
that, it seems like this trip was mostly about talking for the sake of talking.
And while Xi Jinping made lip service to stabilizing the US-China relationship,
whatever progress was made on that front seems to have been scuttled
the next day when Biden called Xi a “dictator.”
During a fundraiser on Tuesday, Biden said: “China has real economic difficulties. And
the reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when I shot that balloon down with
two boxcars full of spy equipment in it, is he didn't know it was there. No, I'm
serious. That's what's a great embarrassment for dictators, when they didn't know what happened.”
Predictably, that angered China.
China’s foreign ministry called the title “extremely absurd" and "irresponsible.”
And I have to agree, it is irresponsible. Biden should be calling him a dictator to
*his face* instead of talking about him behind his back.
And after the break, the optics of this visit really couldn’t have been worse.
Welcome back.
Blinken may say that he achieved his goal of opening communication with China,
but it came at a huge cost. And by cost, I mean in terms of Biden’s credibility.
This meeting was supposed to be a follow-up to Xi and Biden’s meeting
last November in Bali. It was scheduled for February. But then that silly spy balloon…
…traveled across the entire continental US.
Blinken called off his trip at the 11th hour. Literally. While the spy balloon was still in US
airspace, Blinken decided to postpone his trip. And when I say postponed, I mean that literally,
too. It was never meant to be canceled. The State Department made it pretty clear that
as soon as it didn’t look like treason, Blinken was going to reschedule his trip.
Of course, China dragged its feet on making it happen. And I’m sure the Chinese government
enjoyed every second of the Biden administration groveling to get the meeting back on.
Then, when his trip was finally announced, it was just a few days before the departure
date. And it still wasn’t clear who Blinken was going to meet with while he was there.
Things didn’t improve for Blinken once he got there.
“It has been customary in the past for the Chinese leader to meet with visiting U.S.
secretaries of state, but Monday’s meeting wasn’t confirmed until 45 minutes before
the two men shook hands — a sign of how carefully orchestrated this trip has been.”
Yes, carefully orchestrated to maximally make Blinken look unimportant.
I mean, just look at this seating arrangement. I don’t think they could have made it look more like
an emperor holding court if they tried. All that’s missing is people lining up to kiss Xi’s ring.
Meanwhile, Bill Gates not only got a meeting with Xi Jinping just days before Blinken, but,
somehow, he knew well in advance that he would be getting one.
And as I’m sure you’ve noticed, he wasn’t seated a mile away from Xi either.
Now, I’m not the only one who thinks the optics of this trip were terrible.
For Blinken, I mean. Xi looked like the regal dictator he is.
According to the New York Times, “to nationalist-leaning audiences in China, especially
on social media…Blinken arrived only after months of pleading for an invitation. And during his
visit, he was schooled on respecting China’s interests and played supplicant to Mr. Xi.”
Yes. While Blinken thought this trip was about responsibly managing the relationship,
China just saw it as more evidence of US weakness.
When Biden came into office,
he talked about “relentless diplomacy” as a core tenet of his foreign policy strategy.
And look, I get that the State Department’s job is to talk. But
there’s no point in talking if it doesn't actually further any of your goals.
Sometimes, walking away from the table is the most effective.
That’s what China did to the US, and the Biden administration made all kinds of concessions.
And especially with the Chinese Communist Party,
you have to have both carrots and sticks ready, because they’re not going to do
anything unless you make it in their interest. Chinese officials are happy to talk until you’re
blue in the face, because the more they can string you along with false promises
and empty talk, the better their chances are of not actually getting their feet held to the fire
So a word of advice to the Biden administration—get
yourself a good book on dealmaking. Might I suggest: the Art of the Deal.
Unfortunately, how bad this trip was didn’t end there. The Biden administration did a lot of
back bending to make this trip happen. It’s not only made the US look weak,
but it’s hurt the Biden administration’s credibility in the eyes of many Americans.
We reported before about how the Biden administration withheld sanctions,
export controls, and other things to manage the fallout over the Chinese spy balloon.
And it appears it’s also withholding the
results of the FBI investigation into the spy balloon as well.
“One Chinese official confirmed to Reuters that a renewed Blinken visit would be more
likely if the U.S. accommodated Beijing's wish to shelve the [spy balloon] issue,
adding that China had conveyed it did not want the FBI to release details
of its investigation into the downed balloon.”
Well, the balloon was shot down in early February and it’s already June.
NBC quoted one current and one former senior US official who
had been briefed on the investigation as saying that it’s been completed.
At the end of May, the White House claimed they didn’t know the status of the investigation,
but said they expected the results to be released as soon as it was over.
I’m guessing that when they say “ as soon as it’s over,” they really
meant all the China meetings they wanted to see happen first were over.
Biden’s gamble seems to be that delaying sanctions
and playing down Chinese espionage will improve relations with Beijing.
Yes, just give in to everything they want,
don’t make any demands besides that China keep talking, and everything will be fine!
China definitely won’t see that as a weakness it can keep exploiting.
A group of Republican lawmakers have asked Biden for answers on
the FBI investigation as recently as last week.
Not only about the investigation results being withheld, but that the Biden administration hasn’t
been doing enough to hold China accountable. Another thing that could have scuttled Blinkens
trip was the reports that China was building a spy base in Cuba, just 90 miles from US soil.
The White House was quick to label those reports inaccurate.
But it later said that China’s been spying from Cuba since at least 2019.
So definitely nothing to cancel a trip over now.
The Wall Street Journal Reporter who broke that story told NPR the White House was
“not happy to say the least, because it came as Secretary Blinken was prepared to go to China.”
Well that same reporter bylined another story this
week saying that Beijing has plans for a new military training facility in Cuba.
According to the Journal, US intelligence reports say those
discussions are at an advanced stage but that they’re not finalized yet.
Blinken said he “made very clear” that the US “would have deep concerns” about
any Chinese military activities in Cuba during his meetings.
A real warning shot there. I’m sure after China
heard about US “deep concerns” it’s now rethinking its plans.
But if the Wall Street Journal’s reporting is accurate, it certainly
looks like a case of the White House denying blame and shifting the story.
Maybe they didn’t want this intelligence out there for other reasons. But instead
of clarifying what in the reporting was inaccurate,
they just made it sound like this was an old problem—as in, nothing to cancel a trip over.
The Biden administration also missed its deadline to declassify documents on the origins of Covid.
In March, Biden signed the COVID Origins Act of 2023. That gave the
government 90 days to declassify the intelligence.
Unfortunately for Biden, that deadline fell on one of the days Blinken was in Beijing.
An administration official quoted by NBC news made it sound like it was
taking so long because they were just doing their due diligence.
The official said “the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is currently carrying
out a ‘careful declassification process’ and that ‘getting to
the bottom of the origins of Covid-19 remains a priority for the President’”.
However he or she didn’t say when the documents would be released.
Republican Senator Mike Braun accused the Biden administration
of missing the deadline so as not to anger China.
He said “The White House is now overdue to declassify their COVID lab leak intel,
and there is no ‘Secretary of State is meeting
with Xi Jinping’ exception in the law President Biden signed”
And after the break, isn’t Taiwan part of China? Welcome back.
China says Taiwan is part of China so often, it must be true, right?
Well, that was the confusion surrounding soccer star Lionel Messi’s recent trip to China.
Messi arrived at a Beijing airport on Sunday. Hehas both Spanish and Argentinian passports,
but he only brought his Spanish one this time. In China, Spanish citizens need to
get a visa before they can enter, which is not the case in Taiwan.
After Messi was stopped for not having a visa, he reportedly asked, is Taiwan not China?
Quoting Chinese media reports, The Epoch Times reported “The question resulted in
an awkward silence, as the customs staff in Beijing couldn’t respond.”
Well, that certainly is awkward. Who would have ever thought a soccer player would
be the one to so perfectly point out China’s hypocrisy? Score for Messi.
That wasn’t the only news that came out of his visit, though.
A Chinese fan of his rushed onto the field during a match with Australia.
Here, you can see him running onto the field and
quickly hugging Messi before running away from security.
He gives them a pretty good run around before tripping and falling over, which allows them to
catch up. The fan has reportedly been banned from entering stadiums for 12 months as punishment.
Hong Kong’s protest anthem disappeared from Apple Music and Spotify last week.
The anthem was associated with the 2019 democracy protests in Hong Kong. I would play you a clip,
but YouTube would probably ping us for copyright infringement. And then take all our ad revenue.
The Hong Kong government has been seeking an injunction against the song. It wants
to ban the sale, distribution or playing of the song, even online.
So, you better hope you’re not the DJ at a rugby match and accidentally choose the wrong song.
You may just get charged for sedition.
And could a rat be a duck? Those don’t seem like two
animals that would easily be mixed up. Which is why it caused a big stir on Chinese social
media when a student was told a rat head he found in his food was really a duck neck.
A student at China’s Jiangxi Industry Polytechnic College found this in his
food at the school’s cafeteria The school and, later,
local authorities tried to convince the student it wasn’t what he thought it was.
Because I guess in China, ducks have teeth sticking out of their neck?
In a totally not coerced “clarification” video he later posted online, he said,
“’I found out it was not a rat head but a duck neck, so I would like to clarify.’”
However, Netizens were not convinced,
and so the provincial government launched its own investigation.
According to CNN, “the provincial investigation team concluded that the foreign object was not a
piece of duck neck, and [that] the local market supervision bureau and the school
had reached a ‘wrong conclusion’ because they did not investigate ‘diligently.’”
Uh, I’m pretty sure you just needed to see the teeth and eyes to know that was
not duck neck. But good thing they got to the bottom of it.
The rat head incident has spawned a whole genre of “duckrat” memes on Chinese social media.
So I’m confident that whatever the fate of the duckrat, its memory will live on…on the internet.
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Once again, I’m Chris Chappell. Thanks for watching China Uncensored.