As news of a Chinese “great wall of sand” stirred commentary about the state of security in East Asia, a top American diplomat urged Beijing to exert its power with a more deft sleight of hand.
Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday that he has suggested to Chinese officials that they emulate an early Cold War United States in developing multilateral institutions that have “benefitted us tremendously in these 50, 60, 70 years since.”
“It’s something I suggested that our Chinese friends might find a useful historical analogy,” he said in prepared marks delivered at the Brookings Institution.
Earlier that morning, Bloomberg reported how a Chinese land reclamation project in the South China Sea “is increasing tensions” between China and US-aligned forces.
“China is building artificial land by pumping sand on to live coral reefs—some of them submerged—and paving over them with concrete,” US Pacific Fleet Commander Harry Harris said at a speech in Canberra, Australia’s capital.
By Wednesday, Fox News reported on the comments, highlighting Harris’ description of the project–“a great wall of sand.”
At Brookings, Blinken reiterated that the US does not see the rise of China as “zero-sum” and praised Chinese investment in “physical infrastructure.”
“But there’s also a nervousness in the region as well about some of China’s actions in the South China Seas and other areas, and that is actually causing countries to look to us as a potential foundation of stability,” he noted.
Blinken also stated that China is currently “a little bit like where the United States was after World War II” and that Beijing could learn something from the American experience.
“We were emerging as a great power, and our leaders had to decide how we would use that power. And what they decided was to write rules, develop norms, and build institutions that in many ways constrained our power but that gave other countries a voice and a vote and a sense that they too could decide the future,” Blinken said. “And that disincentivized those countries from getting together to check our power.”
The analogy might be of little comfort to China’s neighbors concerned with Beijing’s ascendance–some of whom suffered as a result of US Cold War meddling. In the decades following the end of the Second World War, the United States covertly supported a number of attempted violent overthrows, successful coup d’etats and brutal military regimes in Latin America, Africa, and East Asia.
