The spirit of the San Francisco meeting in November 2023, during which Presidents Xi Jinping and Joe Biden agreed to relaunch human exchanges between the two great powers, is already a long way away. In an interview with Wall Street Journal, published Tuesday June 25, the United States ambassador in Beijing, Nicholas Burns, denounces the repeated obstacles to American public diplomacy in China. There have already been 61 American public events – documentary screenings, concerts, debates – since the fall to which the Ministry of State Security, China’s main intelligence agency, has dissuaded Chinese citizens from attending. Those who went there were summoned by the authorities, sometimes late at night. “They say they are in favor of our two populations coming together, but they are deploying impressive measures to make that impossible”affirms this seasoned diplomat.
On both sides of the Pacific, the supposed friendship between the two peoples is regularly highlighted, to convince that the Sino-American clash is not inevitable. In fact, the years of the Covid-19 pandemic and the mutual animosity between the governments have dealt a severe blow to the bond between the two countries.
According to Mr. Burns, half of the Chinese applicants selected for university exchange programs financed by the United States have withdrawn due to pressure. American personnel responsible for university cooperation are no longer able to be accepted at student fairs in China. And if the United States has issued 105,000 student visas to Chinese in 2023 – the highest level since Covid-19 – the embassy complains of the difficulty in processing the files due to lack of manpower. work: China has not allowed the American representation to hire Chinese employees for three years. The American embassy wants to organize a concert? The reserved room suddenly informs him that there will be no electricity the day comes, even though events were held there the day before and will also be held there the next day.
Anti-American sentiment
A spokesperson for Chinese diplomacy, Mao Ning, accused Mr. Burns of having, through this interview, “deviated from the important consensus” from San Francisco. She maintains in return that Chinese students are regularly questioned, even harassed, when they enter American soil, under the pretext of national security.
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Sino-American human exchanges remain at a very low level, much lower than with Europe in particular. Before Covid-19, 345 direct flights linked China to the United States each week, but they fell to 12 in 2023 and rose to only around a hundred today. In comparison, air connections have resumed at around 60% of their pre-pandemic level between China and France. China now allows travelers from most European countries, but also from Australia and New Zealand, fourteen-day visa-free visits, but no such opening is currently envisaged with the United States. United.
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