Change-or-ruin mindset main obstacle to economic talks making any real progress

Although the exchanges between the two sides at the Third China-US Economic Working Group Meeting that concluded on Tuesday in Beijing were described as "in-depth, candid, pragmatic and constructive", it is almost impossible that any breakthroughs will be forthcoming on any major issues it covered.

In fact, the only major reported outcome of the meeting is that the two sides have agreed to continue to maintain communication. It indicates that the development of bilateral ties is restrained by the Joe Biden administration's insistence on an approach which it claims is "competitive when it should be, collaborative when it can be, and adversarial when it must be", when in fact it seeks to squeeze the space for collaboration by prioritizing the other two facets of the prism through which it views bilateral relations.

Indeed, it seems that the only reason the US side is still cooperating with China at all is because it is not yet ready to try and decouple in certain areas as it has not yet found an alternative to China.