President Joe Biden’s close relationship with China is no secret. He has been accused several times of closing lucrative deals with the Communist country, receiving over a million dollars from a Chinese company through indirect payments.
So it’s no shocker that Biden wanted to smooth things over with Chinese President Xi Jinping after shooting down the surveillance balloon circling the U.S. earlier this year.
According to sources, top National Security officials were forced to talk Biden out of making a call to Xi in the days after shooting down the spy balloon that floated over the coast of South Carolina.
Biden reportedly thought his close relationship with the Chinese dictator would reset relations and tamp down tensions with Beijing.
The discovery of a Chinese spy balloon surveilling the U.S. drew massive public attention-- which China denied, claiming it was a civilian aircraft that had strayed out of unrestricted airspace.
Advisors allegedly told Biden that Xi was furious at the U.S.’s decision to shoot down the balloon, which took the 80-year-old days to do despite being well aware of its existence.
“The goal is not to get Biden and Xi on the phone,” a senior administration official said. “The goal is to get the U.S.-China “relationship back on track.”
Officials said a call between Biden and Xi would make it look like the president is pleading for talks.
Instead, White House advisors told Biden the best thing to do was to begin reaching out to Beijing’s lower and midlevel officials and work his way up to the top.
Calls to Beijing’s officials began after the U.S. abruptly announced it would cancel Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’strip to China. The Biden Administration reached a breakthrough when Blinken secured a meeting with China’s top foreign policy official weeks after the balloon was shot down.
Sources close to the Administration said White House officials “want to calm the waters with China, so they are trying to get visits by Cabinet officials in place.”
Republicans have accused the Biden Administration of being weak in standing up to international leaders. The president garnered criticism after stumbling through talks at the G7 Summit, where he was caught using scripted notes from aides.
In a letter addressed to Biden, Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla) blasted the president for suppressing the China spy balloon discovery, criticizing him for lack of transparency as Blinken prepares to depart on his Beijing trip.
"In your State of the Union address this year, you promised the American people that you would protect the United States from the PRC’s threats to our sovereignty. While four months have passed since a Chinese surveillance balloon was allowed to fly across the United States, your administration has yet to provide the American people a full accounting of how this spy platform was allowed to traverse across sovereign U.S. territory, what the balloon carried, and what it collected during its mission,” the senators wrote. “Your administration has also not taken appropriate steps to hold the PRC accountable for this flagrant violation of U.S. sovereignty. As such, we urge you to immediately direct all relevant administration officials to release information, as appropriate, to the American public regarding the Chinese spy balloon.”
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