What went wrong with Sherman's visit to China?

Byline: Aiman Iqbal

Deputy State Secretary of the USA, Wendy Sherman visited China from 25-26 July and met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi along with other senior officials. The State Department reported that the meeting between Sherman and the Chinese Foreign Minister was a "frank and open discussion" about various issues. Both sides shared their concerns over issues but even as it looks good that the line of communication between China and the USA opened up, there are a lot of things about the visit that can prove that it did not go well. The problems had started before the visit. The USA had wanted Sherman to meet Le Yucheng, a senior vice Foreign Minister but China had appointed Xie Feng for the meeting who is a lower-ranking official than Le.

The meeting was arranged after it was decided that Sherman would meet with the Foreign Minister, Wang Yi too along with Xie. So it appeared that the USA was more concerned about the officials meeting Sherman than the purpose of the meeting. Then ahead of the meeting, again the situation did not look so good when the US State Department's spokesperson described the visit as "candid exchanges with People's Republic of China officials to advance U.S. interests and values and to responsibly manage the relationship." Also added that Sherman would speak with the officials of China "from a position of strength". This statement was considered by the Chinese side as a display of arrogance from the USA. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian made it clear before the visit that "we didn't buy it in Anchorage, and we certainly wouldn't buy that in Tianjin", referring to the strategic dialogue held in Anchorage Alaska in March.

With the stances of both countries on the meeting made clear before the visit, the expectations from the visit weren't very high. Now speaking of the visit itself, even though the discussions were described as "frank and open", the meeting did not lead to anything productive. Both parties stuck with their stances on the matters. Nothing optimistic came out from it except for the hope for the opening of a line of diplomatic communication. China still maintains its firm stance that the USA has to treat other countries equally and not act as a hegemon as the times have changed and China's always reiterated that it sees multilateralism as the answer to current global challenges. It also expects the USA to stop applying the Western standards of human rights to the rest of...