Biden administration needs to prove its sincerity: China Daily editorial

Speaking ahead of the meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors in Bengaluru, India, on Thursday, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen rightly said that there are "many areas" where the United States and China need to work together to address global challenges and that good communication between the two countries is the key to the macroeconomic and financial situations domestically and within the global economy more widely.

She said that the US would resume economic talks with China "at an appropriate time" but that she didn't "have a specific time frame in mind".

Unlike the beginning of the month, when China gave a next-day response to her expressing the hope that she would be able to visit China, saying it held a welcome attitude, there has been no response to her remarks from China so far. That should drive home to the Joe Biden administration the damage it is doing to ties by saying one thing and doing another.

Although the Biden administration has repeatedly claimed that it does not seek a new Cold War; it does not aim to change China's system; the revitalization of the US' alliance system is not targeted at China; it does not support "Taiwan independence"; and it has no intention of seeking a conflict with China, it has never stopped reneging on these commitments.

The Biden administration has not only kept the exorbitant tariffs on Chinese goods imposed by its predecessor intact, it has also doubled down on its efforts to play the Taiwan card, hyped up a threat from China over an innocuous meteorological research balloon, sought to exclude Chinese companies from global supply chains and decouple the two economies in tech areas, painstakingly drive wedges between China and other countries and tirelessly smeared China over the Ukraine crisis.

That US Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled his planned trip to China earlier this month, citing the balloon incident, reinforced to the Chinese side that the US side lacks the sincerity to improve ties. As a result, the Biden administration has exhausted the credibility of its claims that it wants to improve relations.

Be it the "guardrails" it claims it wants to build for Sino-US ties or the "cooperation" it calls for in areas serving common interests, it has become clear that these are just stalling tactics for the Biden administration and they are aimed at buying time for the US to get rid of its reliance on China in various fields and form cliques against it.

As such, the willingness of the US to resume economic talks with China is welcome but probably of no practical value unless the US side is willing to conduct them in good faith.