China’s new ambassador to the US, Xie Feng, is expected to arrive in Washington, DC, on Tuesday on the heels of President Biden presiding over the G7 summit in Japan.
Politico first reported Xie’s impending arrival this week, citing two people familiar with his schedule.
Xie, a career diplomat specializing in US-China relations, will succeed Qin Gang, who left Washington in January to become China’s new foreign minister.
Unlike Qin, Xie reportedly has no direct line to Chinese President Xi Jinping, whom Qin appears to have imposed in order to promote himself to higher leadership roles.
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Xie beat out Assistant Foreign Minister Hua Chunying for the ambassador post, Politico reported, citing a Washington, DC-based diplomat with expertise in Chinese foreign policy.
Hue is known for promoting more damaging language toward the United States online, indicating that China’s leadership prefers a different approach to diplomacy than Washington.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is seen with US Ambassador to China Gary Locke and Director General for North American and Oceanian Affairs Xie Feng in Beijing in September 2012. Xie is reportedly China’s new ambassador to the US (JIM WATSON/AFP/GettyImages)
However, Xie, while in his former role as commissioner of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hong Kong, used a more aggressive style of diplomacy himself in 2019 when he publicly announced “foreign forces” had agreed and “even colluding with ” crowds of pro-democracy protesters.
Large crowds who took to the streets of Hong Kong to protest a bill that would allow those accused of crimes to be extradited to mainland China were met by heavy police wielding batons and deploying tear gas. gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and water cannons. Even after the extradition bill was scrapped, Beijing’s elected officials in Hong Kong imposed new restrictions on expression and assembly and refused to investigate allegations of excessive use of force.
As China’s vice foreign minister in 2021, Xie chastised US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman during face-to-face talks, reportedly asking the Biden administration to change its “highly misguided mindset and dangerous policies ,” which he says contained and stifled China’s progress. After the talks in Tianjin, he reportedly sent Sherman home with a “List of US Misdeeds to Stop” and a “List of Key Individual Cases of China Concern.”
Trade-related tensions with Taiwan and the Chinese spy craft controversy in February further plunged US-China relations to what is considered a 50-year low.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy joins G7 leaders in a working session on the final day of the G7 Summit in Hiroshima, Japan, Sunday, May 21, 2023. (Stefan Rousseau/Pool via AP)
In a speech in March, Xi accused the United States and other Western countries of “all-out containment, encirclement and repression against us, bringing unprecedented severe challenges to our country’s development.” Since Biden met with Xi in Bali, Indonesia, in November, high-level diplomatic contact has ground to a halt.
At a press conference in Hiroshima Sunday, Biden predicted that US-China relations would improve.
“Well, number one, you’re right — we should have an open hotline. At the Bali conference, that’s what we agreed with President Xi that we will meet and meet. ‘ the cost of spying equipment is flying in the United States States, and it was shot down, and everything changed in terms of talking to each other,” Biden said in Japan. “I think you’ll see that start to melt in a little while.”
“But in the meantime, what has happened is: I think it’s fair to say, for those of you who have dealt with — dealt with the Japanese government and reported from it for a long time, the situation in terms of our relationship with Japan has never, ever, in American history been stronger,” he added.
President Biden speaks at a news conference following the G7 leaders’ summit in Hiroshima, Japan, on Sunday, May 21, 2023. (Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg pool via AP)
White House National Security adviser Jake Sullivan met with senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Wang Yi in Vienna, Austria, earlier this month, saying during the talks that the Biden administration is “looking to “exceeded” tensions that flared up after the US shot dead a Chinese spy. wolf that crossed the continental United States, a senior Biden administration official told the AP.
The meeting was not made public by Washington or Beijing ahead of the high-level talks, but the White House described the wide-ranging discussions, during which the two leaders spent more than eight hours together, as ” honest” and “constructive. “
Xie’s arrival in Washington comes just days after a G7 summit in Japan that reportedly drew condemnation from senior Chinese leadership. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Sun Weidong reportedly summoned Hideo Tarumi, Japan’s ambassador to China, on Sunday to convey Beijing’s “strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition” to the G7 communiqué.
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Biden and the leaders of the world’s leading democracies declared that there is no “legal basis for China’s extensive maritime claims in the South China Sea,” expressed human rights concerns about Tibet and Xinjiang, China demanded that respect Hong Kong’s autonomy, and called on “China to Press Russia to stop its military aggression, and immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw its troops from Ukraine.” In a joint communiqué summarizing their discussions, the G7 leaders also warned that China’s “acceleration of building up its nuclear arsenal without transparency (or) meaningful dialogue is causing concern to global and regional stability.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
