Joe Biden better get with the program pretty quick, Xi Jinping hinted on Friday, during their two hour Zoom meeting. Of course what’s happening in the Ukraine is a tragedy, the Pooh Bear empathized. Xi doesn’t care as much about Vladimir Putin’s invasion as he does about Blinky teasing Taiwan. Palace Minister of State Antony Blinken keeps dangling out hope of eventual freedom. The U.S. is “on the wrong side of history,” spokeswoman Hua Chunying tweeted afterward. Unofficially, the CCP is suggesting that the bus is coming and if Joe doesn’t throw someone under it quick, they’ll start tossing his family members, one-by-one, starting with Hunter.
Joe Biden is the problem
The meeting went on for an impressive two hours on Friday, March 18, as Chinese President Xi Jinping chatted with Joe Biden, purportedly about the “conflict” in Ukraine. Joe says invasion, where Xi sees it as a “peacekeeping” effort.
That doesn’t matter because it was NATO’s job to prevent and they botched it. Xi yanked Joe’s chain hard, telling him in no uncertain terms to get with the program. In diplomatic code, of course.
His Wisdom Joe Biden came out swinging, stressing that “consequences” will happen if Beijing helps Moscow. Sure, no big deal, Xi shrugged. “The Ukraine crisis is something we don’t want to see,” Xi Jinping replied.
“Events once again show that state-to-state relations cannot go to the stage of confrontation.” War is bad for business. “Conflict and confrontation is not in the interests of anyone.” That’s not why they were here, though, Xi reminded.
They should focus, Xi prodded, on getting China-US relations back “on the right track” while both “shoulder our due international responsibilities” and “make efforts for world peace.” Biden isn’t holding up his end of their back-room bargains. “Some people in the US did not implement the important consensus reached” in last November’s summit.
“In particular, some people in the United States send wrong signals to the ‘Taiwan independence‘ forces, which is very dangerous.” Some people being the U.S. State Department. “If the Taiwan issue is not handled properly, it will have a subversive impact on the relationship.”
The claim that #China is on the wrong side of history is overbearing. It is the #US that is on the wrong side of history.
— Hua Chunying 华春莹 (@SpokespersonCHN) March 18, 2022
Meeting was constructive
Analysts on the Chinese side think Joe Biden got the message they wanted to send, calling the exchange “constructive.” Xi gave Joe some time to save face by blaming someone who can be slaughtered as a sacrificial scapegoat.
Both sides agreed “to follow up in a timely manner, take practical actions, strive for the return of China-US relations to the track of stable development, and make their own efforts to properly resolve the Ukraine crisis.” The Chinese made sure to point out that NATO is MIA in all this. NATO, they insist, “should also conduct dialogue with Russia to solve the crux of the Ukraine crisis.”
Imperial Leader Biden was quick to lick Xi’s boots and promise that he remained “opposed to any unilateral changes to the status quo across the Taiwan Strait.” He also swears up and down that he still follows the one-China policy “while respecting the Taiwan Relations Act and ‘underscoring concerns about Beijing’s coercive and provocative actions‘ directed at the island.”
What Xi said to Joe on Friday was nearly identical to what Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Blinky “in a call nearly two weeks ago, and were reiterated on Friday by the ministry’s spokeswoman.”
That spokeswoman would be Hua Chunying. She’s the one who tweeted out that Joe is on the wrong side of history on this one. Analysts are getting nervous, noting “the stakes could not be higher in terms of Beijing’s next move.” They “don’t think it’s an overstatement to say a potential tipping point in the relationship.”
Bonnie Glaser, director of the Asia Program for the Washington-based German Marshall Fund, described Xi’s call “noteworthy,” adding “Xi appeared to be trying yet again to reset the US-China relationship and offer Biden a way to do that.” The obvious solution is by blaming “some people” in his administration “for not following through on the understanding reached between the two presidents last November.“
