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The U.S. has coordinated a series of calculated insults to China ahead of the first face-to-face meeting between the two nations under the Biden administration.

Those hoping for a reset between Beijing and Washington after the erratic hot-and-cold relations of the Trump years may be disappointed.

Instead, the Biden administration has chosen the setting of Alaska to plunge the relationship between the two nations into a permanent deep freeze.

Rather than using Trump's highly personal, Fox News-friendly tactics to attack China, Biden's Secretary of State Antony Blinken is using the tools of professional diplomacy – including international power plays, whisper campaigns and calculated snubs.

For example, the U.S. invited China to have the meeting. China has signaled it hopes the meetings will be chance for the two sides to meet as equals on the basis of mutual respect.

But the U.S., after setting up the meeting, is now characterizing it as a chance for its officials to scold China about its internal affairs and lay down a list of issues Beijing must address before relations can improve.

The Biden administration has made much of its return to professional diplomacy after the feckless behavior of the Trump years.

But whether delivered via Fox News broadsides or through anonymously sourced senior administration briefings, lecturing and issuing ultimatums to Beijing like an imperious principle scolding a schoolchild won't work.

Biden's geopolitical cards are simply too weak. Trump has already overplayed America's hand in China, resulting in a legacy of tariffs that are causing more pain to U.S. businesses and consumers than to China.

Biden doesn't seem to have learned a lesson.

Ahead of Thursday's meeting in Anchorage, the Biden administration held a series of deliberately timed meetings with China's neighbors.

Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited Tokyo on Tuesday, where they criticized China over Xinjiang and Hong Kong. This was deliberate interference with China's internal affairs.

Underscoring this insult, Blinken announced sanctions against 24 Chinese officials, hitting a member of the Politburo, top police commanders, and members of the National People's Congress.

The gesture is meaningless, except to express America's lack of respect for China.

The sanctions violate international norms and laws and are a flagrant attempt to create instability in China and slow its rise.

China, as an equal to the U.S., is, of course, taking countermeasures. It may take more drastic retaliatory measures in the case of further provocations from Washington. 

The Biden administration's plan to hold a one-off meeting to dictate terms to China shows the habit of pushing other nations around lingers, even as the power to do it fades.

Some members of the U.S. military are sounding the alarm Washington no longer has the muscle to dictate its will in Asia.

But blinded by America's sense of entitlement to rule the world, the Biden administration seems to be stuck in a Cold War fantasy that the U.S. can support or remove governments around the world as easily as moving toy soldiers on a map.

This is despite a long record of failed and costly foreign adventures, some of which continue to spread misery and instability to this day.

Washington lacks the might to strangle China's economy or stop its technological innovation.

More importantly, the world has lost confidence in the American model. The U.S. was not even able to institute the most basic measures to protect its people from the COVID-19, let alone solve festering problems like poverty, gun violence, and a growing divide between the rich and everyone else.

On the other hand, China has risen from poverty to prosperity over recent decades and is actively helping other developing nations make the same journey.

The Biden administration arrogantly ignores this and imagines that Asian countries have more shared interests with the United States than China.

But even a staunch U.S. ally like Australia trades twice as much with China as with the United States.

The results of the meetings that start on Thursday have been preordained – U.S. officials already said there would be no joint statement and no major announcements after the talks.

The U.S. has had an abysmal record of failure in imposing its diplomatic will on other nations since the Second World War, so it is good that Biden officials recognize in advance their plan to hector China in Alaska won't work.

It is unfortunate that the Biden administration has chosen to deepen the chill between China and the U.S. in the frozen land of Alaska.

Ultimately, the U.S. won the last Cold War because of a larger economy – a lesson the Biden administration should consider deeply as it starts a new Cold War between the U.S. and China.

(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at opinions@cgtn.com.)