If US officials have to cross the ocean to meet China’s leader, so be it

Recent weeks have seen US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen fly to Beijing, and climate envoy John Kerry is due to make the journey this weekend. CCTV news reports give the impression of a Beijing awash in foreign visitors coming to pay their respects. There’s an argument to be made that Chinese diplomacy values face above all else. China’s long dynastic history is replete with examples of treating foreign visitors, even from comparably powerful countries, as supplicants to the graciousness of the emperor of the heavenly kingdom. That was certainly the impression cultivated by the Chinese side in 1793 when Britain’s Lord Macartney visited Beijing, the imperial capital of the Qing dynasty, where the Qianlong emperor ruled. Backed by the British government and funded by the East India Company, Macartney’s mission was meant to address the trade imbalance, which then, as now, saw China selling more goods than it was buying from England and other major trading nations. Macartney’s lavish gift-giving, seen from the Western side as a way of showing munificence, or less grandly, as greasing the wheels, was interpreted by the Chinese to be tribute, plain and simple. More worrying still, Lord Macartney was expected to kowtow to the emperor as part of the deal, kneeling three times and touching his head to the ground. A compromise was reached whereby Macartney went down on one knee, which comported with British royal etiquette at the time. But no advantages in trade were gained, and the Qianlong emperor succinctly summed up the drift of the proceedings, saying, “We possess all things. I set no value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use for your country’s manufactures.” Fast forward to July this year. During her visit, Yellen, inadvertently or upon bad advice, bowed three times while shaking hands with Chinese Vice-Premier He Lifeng. The video clip has gone viral, and interpretations vary. Yellen’s visit was preceded by that of Blinken, the highest-level American official to visit China since Joe Biden took office as US president. His initial reception in Beijing was frosty, but after a long day of talks, and a meeting with foreign policy chief Wang Yi the next day, he was deemed sufficiently respectful to earn a short but relatively amicable meet and greet by Xi Jinping. Now Kerry too may find himself putting pride in the pocket to achieve the bigger goals of addressing climate change. As Biden’s special envoy, Kerry wants to resume urgent if not essential talks suspended for a year due to China’s annoyance at then House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last summer. As Kerry has pointed out, “China and the United States are the two largest economies in the world and we’re also the two largest emitters. It’s clear that we have a special responsibility to find common ground.” If that means letting Beijing set the timing and location for talks, so be it, the topic is too important to remain hostage to bilateral tit-for-tats. In the aftermath of the Yellen visit, critics have been quick to say the US should stop kowtowing to China. Some may have wanted Kerry to call off his visit, but that would be a mistake. The gesture of US officials crossing the ocean to meet envoys of a strongman leader is not without historical resonance, like the Macartney mission, but it should go ahead anyway. A focus must be kept on the greater good of stable or even slightly improved relations that may result out of a trip, even one with poor to middling optics. After all, it is petty to respond to pettiness with reciprocal petulance, and far more “diplomatic” to maintain a principled position of one’s own. One need only consider the moment of bilateral diplomacy at the Geneva Conference in 1954 when Chinese premier Zhou Enlai offered a hand to US secretary of state John Foster Dulles only to be rudely rebuffed. Time has demonstrated Zhou’s gesture to be courtly and decent and that of Dulles small-minded and wrong. The US should plough ahead in keeping with its ideals and standards of diplomacy, hoping for the best, but also ready to withstand some petty insults that may be in store. It’s the return to decency and common sense that counts in the long run, not the little bumps on the road along the way. Philip J. Cunningham has been a regular visitor to China since 1983, working as a tour guide, TV producer, freelance writer, independent scholar and teacher