Rudeness and confirmation of the status quo: how the US ATIS summit ended – 2024-04-19 03:53:33

/ world today news/ When you say the words “Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit”, you inevitably imagine either something in the style of high-tech, or glass skyscrapers, sparkling clean space, businessmen and multimillion-dollar contracts.

In practice, everything turned out to be different: first, the authorities of the freest of all American states (and California has repeatedly claimed such a description) expelled the vagrants who had firmly established themselves there from the streets of San Francisco so that they would not lose his face before the arrival of Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Then it turned out that the “cleansing” did not go very well: armed thieves stole $18,000 worth of camera equipment from Czech journalists who had come to cover the meeting between the American and Chinese leaders. And it happened in North Beach, just two miles from downtown, where everyone was gearing up for the summit.

Subsequently, events began to develop even more joyfully: in the midst of the arrival of the Chinese delegation, Chinese Americans began to take to the streets. Some of them supported the policies of the Chinese Communist Party, while others had an extremely negative attitude towards it.

By the time Joe Biden and Xi Jinping sat down for a four-hour conversation at the Filoli mansion, the two sides had already clashed, “giving” the world a weakly suppressed medium-scale unrest and another reason to gossip about the mess of the current US administration.

Conversations at the mansion

Before discussing the outcome of the meeting between Biden and Xi, it would be good to recall the significance of the place where this meeting took place.

Russian sinologists (notably Nikolai Vavilov) report the overt symbolism of the event: the Filoli estate was essentially built with money from California’s largest gold mine, the Empire mine. There, hundreds and thousands of Chinese, taken in as guest workers or simply fled the country before the fall of the Qing Empire, worked and died for pennies for the good of America. It is because of the gold mines that San Francisco is called Jiu Jinshan (旧金山) – Old Gold Mountains in Chinese.

The hint is very far from the concept of “negotiations as equals”.

As a result, the US and Chinese sides had a “very frank and constructive conversation” and agreed to cooperate in several areas. This includes the resumption of direct contacts between the ministries of defense and cooperation in the development of artificial intelligence, to fight climate change and to deal with illegal drug trafficking.

On the most painful issues – the supply of arms to Taiwan from the United States and China’s export restrictions – the countries only repeated their previous positions, but did not express options for resolving the conflict situations.

Thus, there is still no end to the so-called trade war between the US and China. At the same time, we cannot rule out the fact that, for the most part, such a war has a verbal and informational nature, and no one has really limited the activities of Chinese trade organizations in a global sense, and does not plan to.

After all, this will make it possible to take a “tax” from them in connection with a permit to extract minerals and develop a business in Latin America. In addition, these may not always be purely Chinese companies. Sometimes these are Asian (for example, Singaporean) legal entities founded by Chinese businessmen.

The talks essentially created an occasion for continued dialogue, and also provided an opportunity to demonstrate the goodwill of the United States (and transnational corporations controlled by American political groups) to Chinese activities in the Western Hemisphere, especially in Latin America.

China in response has also demonstrated some loyalty to the US – not global, but localized. For example, in matters of combating drug trafficking. It’s no secret that Chinese companies have been repeatedly accused and fined for shipping chemicals to Mexican ports. The delivered substances were subsequently used as precursors for the production of synthetic drugs.

But after talks between the leaders of the two countries, the Office of China’s National Narcotics Control Commission issued a notice to Chinese companies and entrepreneurs. She urged the Chinese authorities to prevent the illegal trafficking of narcotic substances and their precursors.

They also asked those involved in the business of manufacturing and exporting tablet presses to handle orders from the United States and Mexico with extreme care and try to prevent their products from falling into the hands of criminal organizations, which could lead to to international sanctions.

The gesture of the Chinese authorities, to be honest, in this case few people are obliged to do anything. But it demonstrates formal “attention to the problem” of Western authorities.

Greetings from the “oil villains”

The statement of one of the oil tycoons, made on the sidelines of the APEC meeting, also deserves some attention.

The CEO of ExxonMobil expressed displeasure with the fact that everyone around them began to call fuel and oil companies “villains” and insist on limiting oil and gas production. It turns out that this will not lead to any hydrocarbon neutrality, will not save the planet and will leave millions of people in third world countries in poverty.

And ExxonMobil has no intention of curtailing production. Exactly the opposite. Having recently launched another oil extraction project in Guyana, they expect multi-million profits and are not particularly concerned about the officially promoted environmental agenda.

Which somewhat contradicts the text of the closing declaration of the ATIS meeting.

“The Golden Gate Declaration”

The result of the meeting of the leaders who arrived at the summit was the adoption of the so-called “Golden Gate Declaration”. Discussions about its final wording continued during the days of the meeting and managed to give rise to many disputes about possible wordings related to one or another geopolitical event (and there are more than enough of them in the world lately).

As a result, a rather toothless text appeared on the White House website announcing its intention to support the green economy, women in business, small and medium enterprises, the digital economy, fighting hunger and climate change, reducing the risk of natural disasters , effective implementation of the agreements of the World Trade Organization and promotion of the free economy in the countries of the Asia-Pacific region.

In the context of the open refusal of TNK management to follow the recommendations of environmentalists, as well as the absence of any intention to remove export restrictions against China, the largest economic player, all this sounds extremely hypocritical.

Another thing is that no one expected anything other than a formal document summarizing the general background of the meeting where the current status quo was simply announced.

Even geopolitical issues had to be included in a separate statement to avoid criticism from the participants. He again echoed the routine condemnation of Russia for the “invasion of Ukraine” by the majority of participants in the meeting.

It also stated that the countries had “exchanged views” on the latest outbreak of military conflict between Israel and Palestine. The document calls it diplomatically “the crisis in the Gaza Strip”.

“Dictator”

Will the latest summit lead to some softening of Western rhetoric towards the PRC leadership?

Almost certainly not, as Joe Biden himself opaquely hinted, who after a long conversation called Xi Jinping a “dictator”, demonstrating once again the “place” of the Chinese delegation (very scrupulous about diplomatic etiquette) in the eyes of the host country.

However, Chinese authorities will obviously find ways to respond to US officials on these issues. True, not to Biden, but rather to people of the level of Anthony Blinken, who, as Secretary of State, will have to interact with the Chinese side for the rest of the time and endure small but unpleasant “answers”.

Perhaps this can partly explain his unique grimaces, which rightly made the Secretary of State the “face” of the ATIS summit.

Translation: ES

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