Following his meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday, Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping declared that "the two sides have also made progress and reached agreements on some specific issues. This is very good."
When I asked the State Department what these "agreements on some specific issues" might entail, a spokesperson referred me to a generic readout of the meeting that contained no reference to any specific agreements. Two possibilities thus follow. Perhaps Xi is exaggerating what he and other Chinese officials agreed with Blinken. Alternatively, the State Department is being deliberately evasive. While it is always risky to take Xi at his word, recent events suggest there might be some truth behind his words here. It's possible Blinken did offer some assurances.
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For a start, consider that the Biden administration openly misled the U.S. media on a China-related issue earlier this month. That happened when National Security Council spokesman John Kirby denied a largely accurate Wall Street Journal report on a Chinese spy base in Cuba. Kirby then later confirmed the substance of the report while pretending he had been as forthcoming as possible in his prior statement.
Next, there's the fact that a preeminent Chinese complaint has centered on Beijing's assertion that the United States pledges cooperation but then acts in a different manner. While this complaint is largely born of Beijing's delusion that it can somehow restore its Obama-era trade-centric, security-irrelevant relationship with the U.S., it seems unlikely Xi would have spoken so warmly of Blinken's meetings if he didn't put some stock in Blinken moving the ball in Beijing's favor. If indeed that is the case, we need to know what Blinken pledged.
Here are a few hypothetical options worth considering.
Again, perhaps Blinken made no explicit agreements with Xi. Perhaps Xi is lying or confused. But if any U.S. concessions do appear in the coming weeks, the State Department will deserve hard questions as to why it wasn't more forthcoming this week.
Not to mention the wisdom of what it wasn't forthright about.