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Dim Future for US-China Engagement as US Ambassador Plans Exit

Fang Bing

   NEW YORK/WASHINGTON - The U.S. ambassador to China, Terry Branstad,
   announced on Monday that he would step down in early October, ending
   his three-and-a-half-year tenure in Beijing.

   In a tweet that day, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said
   "Ambassador Branstad has contributed to rebalancing U.S.-China
   relations so that it is results-oriented, reciprocal, and fair."

     Ambassador Branstad has contributed to rebalancing U.S.-China
     relations so that it is results-oriented, reciprocal, and fair. This
     will have lasting, positive effects on U.S. foreign policy in the
     Asia-Pacific for decades to come.
     -- Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) [1]September 14, 2020

   Analysts say the departure of the U.S. ambassador, a former Republican
   governor of Iowa, marks another sign that the U.S. engagement policy
   with China has reached an end.

   "Terry Branstad came into the embassy with the hope that they could
   work something out with China, yet none of that worked out," Orville
   Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia
   Society in New York, told VOA.

   The U.S. ambassador enjoys special access to China's president from an
   old friendship.

   Branstad first met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in 1985, when Xi
   was then a county official in Iowa's sister state, Northern China's
   Hubei province.

   When Branstad was appointed by President Donald Trump as the U.S.
   ambassador to China in 2017, many had hoped he would help smooth
   friction after Trump harshly criticized U.S. trade deals with Beijing
   during his 2016 campaign.

   Yet U.S.-China relations have entered a downward spiral since the
   COVID-19 outbreak, leaving the folksy midwestern American ambassador
   little room to use his personal relationship to benefit bilateral
   relations.

   "He must feel he was not performing a constructive function there,"
   Schell added.

References

   1. https://twitter.com/SecPompeo/status/1305367642690199554?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

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