Are China and the US listening to each other?

Recent high-level visits from the US to China show that the rival superpowers are talking again. And this is particularly visible in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and increasingly, in the Indo-Pacific, where, in the words of European Union foreign policy chief Joseph Borell, “the future of our planet and of history will be decided”, and from where by 2030, the overwhelming majority – 90 percent – of the 2.4 billion new members of the middle class are expected to reside. At the same time, AUKUS aims to enable the US to project power across – and preserve its “sphere of influence” in – the Western and South Pacific, an area which is about 8,500km from the US coast. This alliance – like the Quad security dialogue with Australia, India and Japan – will further enable Washington to implement its “integrated deterrence” policy against China’s hardening posture over Hong Kong, Taiwan and other key strategic areas. In the eyes of many Chinese intellectuals and politicians, both Taiwan and Hong Kong represent today the ultimate litmus test to heal from the final spillover effects of a “century of humiliation”, the expression adopted in China to refer to the period of intervention and subjugation of the Qing dynasty and the Republic of China by Western powers and Japan from 1839, when the British authorities attacked China due to the emperor’s decision to make opium illegal, to the 1940s.