China gave us a lesson on "shoe pounding" on a public stage. We tried to bash China at a meeting in Alaska. China used our own woke momentum to throw us to the floor.
Smart Diplomacy is back, baby!
It goes without saying that when conducting high-level diplomacy, you don’t insult the other party at a joint press conference before the negotiations begin. And if you choose to do something so foolish, you must be ready when the other party retaliates in its response.
It is incredible that secretary of state Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan did not understand this when they began talks with their Chinese counterparts in Alaska yesterday.
Blinken's public attack seemed more like a counter to domestic political charges that Biden is compromised on taking a hard line on China. But the Chinese didn't just sit and take it:
Chinese Communist party foreign affairs chief Yang Jiechi and foreign minister Wang Yi angrily responded with long diatribes against the United States which included accusing the US of human rights and freedom of the press violations.
The response of the Chinese officials attacking America's so-called awful domestic human rights relied on Biden's own domestic woke political position on race relations and freedom of speech in America.
Well played, China. Well played.
UPDATE: Don't be silly! Secretary Blinken displayed courage and resolve by sitting there and taking China's unjustified Big Lie verbal assaults on America! What strength! What confidence!
The Chinese verbal assaults mimicked the woke left's assault on America. So obviously the American secretary of state couldn't object. "America is back," Biden likes to say. Lying on its back, is more like it.
Although in the long run, the words won't matter as much as subsequent actions, I suppose. So I shouldn't get too worked up over the words any more than I over-reacted to Trump's Helsinki verbal disaster on the stage with Putin.
But on the other hand I didn't claim Trump's performance was a diplomatic triumph, did I?
