Following a meeting between U.S. and Chinese officials in Washington on Monday, the U.S. invited Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to visit Washington. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller observed that “We certainly expect that [the visit] is something that they would accept and is a trip that we expect to happen, but we have not yet scheduled a date.”

Miller’s comment was ill-advised. Beijing is deeply paranoid about avoiding the perception that it is being pressured by Washington to march to a U.S. agenda. And that’s how Beijing sees Miller’s words.