Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman spoke with China’s new ambassador to the U.S., Xie Feng, in what will be one of her final conversations before her imminent departure from the Biden administration.
A State Department summary of the call stated that Sherman and the ambassador “discussed key priorities in the bilateral relationship and a range of global and regional issues.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced last month, in a lengthy statement praising her government service, that Sherman’s tenure at Foggy Bottom will end on June 30.
Notably, the news of her plans to leave government immediately followed a bombshell report by Reuters that found Sherman had delayed several actions that would be seen by Beijing as antagonistic, so as not to blow up Blinken’s plans to travel to China. She had reportedly ordered the department’s in-house China-focused cell, called China House, not to implement sanctions targeting Chinese officials implicated in atrocities against Uyghurs and to delay further restrictions on U.S. exports to Huawei.
The report claimed that Sherman’s accommodating approach had left U.S. diplomats demoralized, and Representative Michael McCaul, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has initiated an investigation into the matter.
Blinken ended up taking the trip to Beijing earlier this month, where he met with General Secretary Xi Jinping, in addition to Wang Yi and Qin Gang, the Chinese Communist Party’s highest-ranked diplomats. Blinken and other officials said that while most of their major agenda items remain elusive, the trip had served the purpose of stabilizing the U.S.–China relationship and maintaining high-level contact between the countries.
Prior to the visit, China had shunned Washington’s diplomatic overtures after the U.S. shot down a Chinese military surveillance device that flew over the U.S.
Some analysts see a deliberate purpose to Sherman’s continued role in maintaining lines of contact with Chinese officials, and with Xie specifically, even as her time at the department comes to a close in mere days.
“Wendy Sherman laid the groundwork for the Biden administration’s thaw in 2021 during her meeting with Xie Feng in Tianjin,” said Michael Sobolik, a senior fellow in Indo-Pacific studies at the American Foreign Policy Council.
After their July 2021 meeting, Chinese propaganda outlets noted that Xie handed Sherman two lists of demands, including that the U.S. lift visa restrictions targeting members of the CCP and government officials and remove restrictions on Chinese party entities operating in the U.S., such as Confucius Institutes and propaganda outlets.
Sobolik noted that the Reuters report about measures Sherman blocked this year “comes after her covert lobbying against the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act,” referring to the law restricting imports from Xinjiang. Sherman led a campaign urging Democratic lawmakers to slow-walk the legislation, Senator Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.) told the Washington Post.
The State Department described yesterday’s exchange as a “substantive call” intended to follow up on Blinken’s conversations in Beijing. “There are a number of conversations that are happening at the — at the subcabinet level now about following up on some of the issues that the secretary discussed,” Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman, said at a press briefing yesterday.
Blinken’s trip delivered only modest results, such as a commitment by China to “explore” the creation of a working group to address the country’s export of fentanyl precursors, and Chinese leaders did not agree to reestablish high-level military-to-military talks that Beijing suspended after the spy-balloon episode.
Since then, Biden has labeled Xi a “dictator,” and the Justice Department has brought charges against Chinese nationals allegedly involved in the illicit fentanyl chemical trade. “The president speaks clearly. He speaks candidly. I’ve worked for him for more than 20 years, and he speaks for all of us,” Blinken said of Biden’s dictator comments during a CNN interview last week.