Get more of an idea of what our govt is thinking than what the govt is feeding us:-
https://usa.embassy.gov.au/node/386
.....................Of course, we have all been pleased to note recent efforts at stabilising the US-China relationship, most recently brought about by the summit meeting between President Biden and Xi Jinping in San Francisco last November, and in the two leaders most recent extensive video summit which sought to “sustain the spirit of San Francisco”.
Stabilisation is welcome. Bringing the geo-political temperature down several notches is equally welcome. So is the reopening of channels for high-level communication.
From China’s perspective, stabilisation is also useful as it seeks to deal with a range of other domestic and foreign policy challenges on its plate.
These include the overwhelming challenge of rebuilding Chinese economic growth given the failure of growth to recover in the post-pandemic period.
Furthermore, there is plainly a realization across the Chinese leadership that in its foreign policy, half a decade of wolf-warrior diplomacy has won more enemies for China than it has won friends, let alone won those who have been subject to various forms of economic coercion.
Whatever Beijing’s motivations may be, a stabilisation of the US-China relationship, in order to create a more benign foreign policy and strategic policy environment, is of benefit to both sides given the underlying and continuing fraught nature of the military relationship.
As for the military itself, it has also been welcome to see the resuscitation of military-to-military links between various levels of the Chinese and US command structure.
Nonetheless, it remains to be seen whether this thawing in the mil-to-mil relationship translates into more effective, theatre-level command-to-command communication links capable of reducing the risk of collision between military assets, and in managing escalation/de-escalation scenarios that would most likely unfold in the event of such a collision.
We need, however, to be deeply sober about the fact that notwithstanding the period of stabilisation which we have now entered in the US-China relationship, that there is nothing in our analysis which suggests that China’s strategic intentions in relation to Taiwan, nor its military preparations for achieving that objective by force, have in any way changed.
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