Following the Quad summit, top members of the Biden foreign policy team embarked on their first overseas visit in mid-March. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met with their counterparts in Japan and South Korea but yielded different results in each country. The meeting in Japan led to a joint statement reaffirming the U.S.-Japan alliance while emphasizing China’s rising assertiveness in the region. In particular, the statement criticizes China’s recent actions regarding Taiwan, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, the East and South China Sea, while it also confirms U.S. commitment to defend Japan, including the disputed Senkaku Islands. In contrast, although the two sides in South Korea have discussed China’s rising influence and its role in pursing North Korean denuclearization, the joint statement reaffirms the U.S.-South Korea alliance without naming China.

After Japan and South Korea, Secretary Austin visited India to meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while Secretary Blinken joined National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in Anchorage, Alaska for the Biden administration’s first top-level diplomatic meeting with China, which turned out to be a heated discussion with unusually contentious remarks between the two sides. In addition to the issues raised in the joint statement with Japan, Blinken told the Chinese delegation that China’s actions “threaten the rules-based order that maintains global stability,” which is “why they’re not merely internal matters.” China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi, the director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, surprisingly provided a lengthy rebuttal aimed at challenging Washington’s demand for Beijing to change its behavior.

After the meeting, the U.S. accused the Chinese delegation of grandstanding and violating the protocol of the meeting, whereas the Chinese side blamed the U.S. for first exceeding the time limit and for not respecting diplomatic protocol by sanctioning 24 Chinese and Hong Kong officials one day before the meeting. Despite the heated exchanges, the Alaska meeting has resulted in a joint working group on climate change between the two countries.

In this Policy Alert, we examine how the Rising Powers are responding to the rising diplomatic tension between the U.S. and China.

Read the full Policy Alert here.