The Shanghai Communiqué was signed on the evening of February 27, 1972 at the Jinjiang Hotel in Shanghai, home to a restaurant my wife and I frequented weekly during my posting to the U.S. Consulate in Shanghai from 1988 to 1990. The Communiqué, as distilled by Wikipedia, “pledged that it was in the interest of all nations for the United States and China to work towards the normalization of their relations, and affirmed a mutual interest in détente.”

Earlier this week, a China-hand friend of long-standing texted me to ask my thoughts about the South China Morning Post’s report on the ceremony conducted a few days ago by the Chinese Government to commemorate this event. Specifically, she asked my thoughts on the comment by PRC Foreign Minister Wang Yi to the effect that China was “willing to work with the US on the Build Back Better World, a G7-led global infrastructure plan, and would welcome Washington joining its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).” (This comment was contextually painted by Wang into a broader picture of how Nixon was far wiser than the current administration in engaging cooperatively with China and that the US should immediately cease and desist from its current posture seeking “hegemony” in Asia.)

Here’s my reply:

“Wishful thinking on Wang Yi’s part. 77 years of U.S. international development assistance have been based on principles of democracy promotion, free market strengthening, transparency and anti-corruption. BRI projects tend to work best where none of those values flourish and instead where those projects serve the personal interests of autocratic (and near-autocratic) leaders. The Rajapaksa family in Sri Lanka and Lukashenko in Belarus are prime examples (with Ukraine being the oddball exception which proves the general rule). Right-thinking US Govt officials have ZERO interest, I believe, in joining BRI projects or in allowing PRC entities to participate in Build Back Better World initiatives until PRC intl-econ-dev standards rise to the level of US/European/Japanese standards. Until that happens, the focus is on out-competing China in the less autocratic BRI countries and with working particularly closely with Japan and Australia in the Asian arena of development assistance competition.”

“So summing up: Wang Yi’s statement is a non-serious and unrealistic throw-away line but one that sounds warm and fuzzy to say on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of signing the Shanghai Communiqué. It has the added advantage of having no prospect of actually going anywhere.”