Before going in for the meeting with Yang, interestingly, Kerry failed to list Asia-Pacific security as an agenda item and, to be sure, Yang didn’t let that pass unnoticed, either. 

Yang said: “I think the Asia-Pacific region is a very important region. We need to work together to build up even more cooperation between China and the United States in the area because this is the area which has experienced robust economic development, and I’m sure that the APEC meeting will go further to bring about more connectivity, innovative development, and to shape a greater future for the region.” (here). 

Continuing with the consultations in Washington on Monday with NSA Susan Rice, Yang  ”urged the two sides to conduct active interaction and cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region”, but the Xinhua report failed to convey Rice’s response or whether she had a response at all.  

On the other hand, the shoe is on the other foot when it came to the Middle East issues on which both sides acknowledge that Yang held “in-depth” discussions. The US side bent over backward to suggest, in particular, that China is getting on board its strategy to fight the Islamic State, which the Obama administration sees as a cancerous growth of e of international terrorism. 

The Chinese version, on the contrary, makes it clear that Beijing has a serious problem with the US’ strategies in the Middle East, which bypass the United Nations Security Council and violate UN Charter and international law. 

Significantly, even as Yang wound up his consultations in Washington on Monday, Xinhua came out with a Beijing-datelined commentary blasting the US policies in the Middle East in idiom and content that are exceptionally strong even for polemics. 

The Xinhua commentary sidesteps the IS as such but takes an overview of the US’ regional policies in the Middle East against the backdrop of the anarchy in Libya. 

The commentary says: the US’s “unilateral use of forces without UN mandate has severely demolished the world order after the Second World war”; the US, “without showing respect for the sovereignty of the Middle East countries, has intervened in the internal affairs of other countries or even overthrown their governments, breaking regional balance of power”; “Besides, ideologically arrogant US policymakers thought the West still was the center of the world and imposed American-style democracy on the Middle East countries”; :”the hegemonism and egocentrism of the Western powers are important factors leading to the Libya crisis.” (Xinhua)  

Not exactly the ‘curtain-raiser’ for Obama’s forthcoming visit? Beijing appears to have lost hope after a last-ditch effort by Yang to persuade the US to play a constructive role at the APEC summit where latent passions of the US-China rivalry are set to play out. 

President Xi Jinping is expected to unveil at the summit (November 10-11) the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (as the underpinning of the Maritime Silk Road strategy), which is a major Chinese regional initiative that meets with support in Asia (including Singapore) despite American diplomacy striving hard to strangle it in the cradle.