Prof. Wu Xinbo on Blinken's Visit to China

"I believe that ... US-China relations will continue to be full of twists and turns and that it won't be possible for this relationship to really stabilise or improve in any significant manner."

Wu Xinbo (吴心伯) is an authoritative and well-connected figure in China’s US-watching circles. His comments for the Shanghai-based news portal Guancha.cn contain important elements of how last week’s visit by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing and Shanghai has been both perceived and framed in China. To save time, I am indulging in a very lightly edited machine translation of this interview.

For a more hawkish assessment of Blinken’s trip, aimed at a lay and largely nationalistic audience, see the commentary by Wu’s very popular (but loathed by much of China’s scholarly elite) Fudan University colleague Shen Yi (沈逸): “The red lines drawn by China for the U.S. are increasing and Taiwan is just the first of these.”

And for those of you who follow Europe-China relations, Fudan University’s Centre for China-Europe Relations and the Shanghai Institute for European Studies have just published their yearly reports on Europe’s international relations entitled: “European Policies Tow…