U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, as seasoned a diplomat as one can find in Washington, was about as undiplomatic as he could be when asked about his planned first meeting with Chinese counterparts in Anchorage, Alaska, on Thursday. “This is not a strategic dialogue,” Blinken said bluntly, contradicting Beijing’s own description of the event. “There’s no intent at this point for a series of follow-on engagements.”
Instead, Blinken told Congress last week, Washington would be mostly laying down demands. Only evidence of “tangible progress” by China would lead to more talks, he said. Or as a senior administration official said in a briefing, “We don’t want them to be operating under illusions about our tough-minded approach to their very problematic behavior.”
