“Last year, as it anticipated a win for Joe Biden in the U.S. election and then during the transition, China signaled that it wanted to effectively reset the relationship regarding cooperation on climate change and the pandemic. The Biden team saw these overtures for what they were: a trap to get the U.S. to pull back from competing with China in exchange for cooperation that would never really materialize…

“By skipping this step in favor of a strategy of competitive engagement—meeting with China but seeing it through the lens of competition—the Biden team not only saved time, but it flushed Beijing’s true intentions out into the open for the world to see. In his remarks, contrasting ‘Chinese-style democracy,’ as he called it, with ‘U.S.-style democracy,’ Yang implicitly acknowledged that the U.S.-China relationship is, and will continue to be, defined by a competition between different government systems: authoritarianism and liberal democracy.”
Thomas Wright, The Atlantic

“Who would disagree, as George Floyd’s killer goes on trial in Minnesota and Asian women are gunned down in Georgia, that ‘the challenges facing the United States in human rights are deep-seated,’ as Yang put it. Yet, last fall, Americans were able to organize and rally and vote, and we turned out one leader and installed another. I can endorse Yang’s criticism of U.S. human rights without being sent to prison for ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble.’ So I would say to Director Yang, you are right about America. If you are just as right about China, let Wang Bingzhang and Zhang Zhan and Joshua Wong out of prison. Let them speak their minds. Let your people organize and rally and vote.”
Fred Hiatt, Washington Post

Critics of the Biden team’s performance note that “Soviet diplomats ran the same game plan in the 1950s, answering any American criticism of the Kremlin’s mass oppression and political prisons by citing lynchings in Alabama—and, though the two superpowers’ systems were far from morally equivalent, the reply stung and had an impact in many third-world countries with Black or brown majorities, where Washington and Moscow were competing for influence…

“Yet Blinken seemed startled and kept the reporters in the room while he issued a long rejoinder… In the weeks leading up to this trip, Blinken and other officials had publicly said that they would be meeting with the Chinese from ‘a position of strength’—always a mistake, as it seems designed to provoke and also conveys an impression of weakness, as those truly occupying a position of strength generally don’t feel compelled to say they do. It might have been better if Blinken had replied to Yang’s initial fusillade with a terse, witty sentence or two… and then moved on to the behind-doors session.”
Fred Kaplan, Slate

“Now that each government has had its say, the United States should take the high ground and find ways to reduce tensions, even if those can partly be blamed on China’s recent actions. One way forward would be to reverse some of the Trump administration’s burn-the-bridges measures, like its ending academic exchanges, expelling Chinese journalists and closing consulates… Modest moves might seem less decisive than acting tough, but they are what, in the end, makes realpolitik real.”
Ian Johnson, New York Times