Reuters on Thursday reported that the Biden administration delayed issuing sanctions against China for sending its obnoxious alleged spy balloon across the continental United States because it feared angering Beijing and damaging the “U.S.-China relationship.”
Reuters based its report on a trove of emails between Biden administration officials, plus four sources, to report that a soft touch was taken with China over the balloon, which President Joe Biden belatedly ordered shot down after it completed its alleged surveillance mission.
These sources said the administration is still delaying the implementation of some punitive measures, including tougher export rules for Chinese telecom giant Huawei and sanctions against Chinese officials for abusing the Uyghur Muslims.
The sources, who feared reprisals if they went on the record, told Reuters that Secretary of State Antony Blinken has “largely delegated China policy duties to Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, the United States’ second ranked diplomat.”
Sherman announced on Friday that she was stepping down from her post and “re-retiring” at the end of June.
Today, exactly 30 years to the day I started my first job at the State Department in 1993, I am announcing that I will retire (or “re-retire”) from government service at the end of June. https://t.co/4jwofixeQV
— Wendy R. Sherman (@DeputySecState) May 12, 2023
“The delays to items on the department’s ‘competitive actions’ calendar, a classified rolling list of steps the Biden administration has planned related to China, have alarmed some U.S. officials and revealed a divide between those in the U.S. government pushing for tougher action against China and others advocating a more restrained approach,” Reuters reported.
As the sources put it, this approach “hews too closely to an earlier strategy of engagement that enabled China to extract concessions in exchange for high-level dialogues that often yielded few tangible results.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said the Reuters report made the Biden administration look like “an eighth-grader chasing after a crush.”
“It’s pathetic and embarrassing, and it does nothing but embolden Chinese Communists, when they think that Joe Biden and all of his administration is willing to trade away all of these concrete and needful actions for our national security just for a phone call or for a meeting,” Cotton said on Fox News Thursday night.
As Cotton pointed out, the administration bungled the spy balloon crisis every step of the way, beginning with trying to conceal the balloon from the American people until ranchers in Montana could not help but notice the enormous craft scudding overhead.
Biden then made false statements to both the public and Congress about the ability of the balloon to collect sensitive intelligence, took action against the surveillance craft only after a massive public outcry, and followed up by shooting at random balloon-like objects in a floundering effort to rehabilitate his image.
Sen. Cotton speculated the administration tried to ignore the spy balloon because it did not wish to jeopardize Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s much-touted trip to China. The trip was eventually postponed, and Reuters said it was very much on the minds of Sherman and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for China and Taiwan Rick Waters:
In late March, Waters told a staff meeting that the State Department would “move on” from the balloon incident with China, following guidance from Sherman who was eager to reschedule the Blinken trip, two of the sources said.
One Chinese official confirmed to Reuters that a renewed Blinken visit would be more likely if the U.S. accommodated Beijing’s wish to shelve the issue, adding that China had conveyed it did not want the FBI to release details of its investigation into the downed balloon.
The two sources said the FBI report had originally been anticipated for mid-April release.
According to Reuters’ sources, the Biden team’s flaccid approach to China has so frustrated demoralized State Department staffers that they are requesting reassignment to other divisions.
The Associated Press (AP) reported on Thursday that the Biden White House is trying to “move beyond the spy balloon incident” by sending National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to Vienna for meetings with Chinese diplomat Wang Yi. The meeting was kept out of the media until after it was over.
Once it was ready to admit the meeting between Sullivan and Wang took place, the White House touted their talks as “candid” and “constructive.” An administration official told the AP that both sides “recognized that the February incident was ‘unfortunate’ and were now looking to ‘reestablish standard, normal channels of communication.”
According to the administration source, Sullivan and Wang stopped short of rescheduling Blinken’s visit to China.
WATCH: GOP Rep. Steube: We Need to Investigate Biden ‘Lying’ about Spy Balloon:
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