If you are a U.S. national security advisor like Jake Sullivan and feel that you must go to China to pretend to negotiate something or other and let the world know that lines of communication between the United States and China are still open, how about preparing for the trip?
Certain standard Chinese Communist Party talking points about various controversies may come up, things that CCP propagandists have repeated a zillion times.
Stop, stop, stop
Suppose that in addition to meeting with Dictator Xi Jinping, you meet with General Zhang Youxia, and Zhang says that “reunifying” the mainland with Taiwan is the Chinese military’s “mission and responsibility,” and that “China demands that the United States stop military collusion between the U.S. and Taiwan, stop arming Taiwan, and stop spreading false narratives about Taiwan” (Associated Press, August 29, 2024).
In response, Sullivan might have said “We’ll stop ‘colluding with’ and arming Taiwan when you stop threatening Taiwan.” And perhaps also “What ‘false narratives’ are you talking about? We agree to discontinue an actual false U.S. narrative about Taiwan, the one implied by our statement that ‘we do not support Taiwan independence,’ since the Republic of China is in fact independent, not a province of the People’s Republic of China.”
Publicly abandoning the nonsense about the ROC’s alleged nonindependence would have first had to be cleared with the Biden administration, since this would have meant rescinding an official dishonesty peddled by the American government going back to the Nixon-Kissinger betrayal of the ROC in the 1970s. But at least the sentence about “collusion” with Taiwan and arming of Taiwan could have been uttered.
Important
Instead, Sullivan said: “It is rare that we have the opportunity to have this kind of exchange. And given the state of the world and the need for us to responsibly manage the U.S.–China relationship, I think this is a very important meeting.”
And more of the same. If Sullivan said anything on point and forthright during the encounter, it hasn’t found its way into the press reports. We have reason to suspect that he did not do better behind closed doors.
About Taiwan, the official U.S. readout of the meeting between Sullivan and Zhang says only that Sullivan “raised the importance of cross-Strait peace and stability….” Certainly, any meeting during which this importance is mentioned is a very important meeting.
Also see:
StopTheChinazis.org: “China’s Wolf Warrior Diplomacy and Its Near Relations”
