South China Morning Post
Wed, October 18, 2023
A senior Chinese government envoy to the US on Tuesday dismissed Washington's suspicions of Beijing's intentions with a barnyard epithet, a sharp barb delivered even as the two sides work to arrange a summit between their top leaders next month.
During a discussion at a conference of the Institute for China-America Studies, Xu Xueyan, a deputy chief of mission and a minister at Beijing's embassy in Washington, challenged the concept that "win-win" in the bilateral relationship has meant more gains for China.
"When I came here for my second posting in the United States, I've heard many people inside of the beltway telling me that you have to stop talking about 'win-win'," Xu recounted.
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"'Win-win is bulls**t' are the exact words used by a very senior official in the US government," she said.
The envoy, who did not identify the official or provide any further details about the conversation, then doubled down.
"And people say that 'When you Chinese talk about win-win, for us it's China winning twice, win two times,' I think that is bulls**t," Xu added.
The rancorous remarks underscore the difficulty the two sides have had in managing high-level engagements while Washington rolls out laws and executive orders meant to reduce national security vulnerabilities.
The latest of these moves - new rules to reinforce the export controls on semiconductor technology that the administration unveiled a year ago - was announced just before Xu spoke at the conference.
Her remarks also came amid uncertainty over whether and how Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Joe Biden will meet at the Apec leaders summit, scheduled for next month in San Francisco.
The two have not spoken in person since November when they held talks on the sidelines of the Group of 20 meetings in Bali, Indonesia.
Biden has dispatched some of his top cabinet officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, to Beijing in recent months to lay the groundwork for a discussion at Apec.
In their meetings, Xu said, Xi has stressed the importance of "mutual respect" in negotiations.
"What President Xi told President Biden many times is the concept of mutual respect, the importance of China feeling respected by the United States. This is the basis, this is the foundation of our bilateral relationship," she said.
Xu also said the US elections next year - including Biden's bid for a second term - would challenge the bilateral relationship.
"Personally I'm not just not quite confident or quite optimistic on how much longer, how big a window of opportunity we are talking about, in stabilising this relationship," she said.
"It is very likely that next year will become very, very nasty in the United States," she added.
"Lots of Republicans or Democrats will want to use China as a scapegoat to score political points."
Xu was probably speaking out of concern that more announcements about sanctions or export restrictions against China would emerge after Apec summit arrangements are finalised, said Dennis Wilder, a senior fellow at the Initiative for US-China Dialogue on Global Issues at Georgetown University.
"It's been very personal for [Xu] if you think about her assignment here, where it's difficult for her embassy to get meetings with the White House and State Department," Wilder said.
"This is very much about efforts to get Xi to Apec, and it reflects concern about how such a meeting will look."
"They don't trust the Americans because of the many measures that we've seen, such as export restrictions and sanctions, and they don't know what's coming next from Washington," he added.
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