BEIJING - The United States and China agreed Wednesday to more military talks and a call between the two countries’ leaders, after two days of talks between U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan and top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi, aimed at preventing the difficult relationship from veering into conflict.
A call between President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will be planned in coming weeks, as part of an effort to keep lines of communication open, according to a readout from the White House.
Both sides agreed to hold video calls between military theater commanders at an “appropriate time,” Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said. Establishing that direct line of communication has been a priority for Washington as military tensions with China have spiked in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.
Sullivan raised concerns about China’s “unfair trade policies” and Beijing’s support for Russia’s defense industrial base.
“The United States will continue to take necessary actions to prevent advanced U.S. technologies from being used to undermine our national security, without unduly limiting trade or investment,” he said, according to a readout.
Wang called on the United States to respect Beijing’s sovereignty claims and its political system. “The United States should stop suppressing China in economics, trade and science and technology,” CCTV reported him saying.
Beijing, wary of U.S. election-year jockeying to be tough on China, has welcomed the visit - the first by a White House national security adviser in eight years - as a step to keep tensions in check during the final months of the Biden presidency.
Both sides called the talks “candid, substantive and constructive” and agreed that their “strategic channel” of communication was important.
“It demonstrates that China, as well as the United States, can keep relations stable and manage strategic competition during the election,” said Xin Qiang, an academic at Fudan University in Shanghai.
China has been careful to avoid openly favoring either U.S. presidential candidate, but Chinese foreign policy experts warn of renewed instability and a full-blown trade war if Donald Trump is elected.
Analysts said Sullivan’s visit improved odds that tentative cooperation with the United States under Biden would carry over into a new Democratic administration should Vice President Kamala Harris win the election on Nov. 5.
“The Chinese are in a holding pattern, knowing that there will be a new administration by next January,” said Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center, a think tank. “China has used the opportunity [of Sullivan’s visit] to reiterate its positions on bilateral relations, in the hope to set rules for the next administration.”
Sullivan’s two days of talks with Wang, held in a secluded lakeside resort on the northern outskirts of Beijing, mark their fifth meeting since May 2023.
Unlike previous rounds - which were held with little fanfare in Vienna, Malta, Bangkok and Washington - these talks began with both officials making statements underscoring the importance of a direct channel for dialogue.
Sullivan’s regular - and often lengthy - meetings with Wang have become a key plank in an intense diplomatic effort to find common ground in a relationship that, both sides acknowledge, has repeatedly come close to rock bottom in recent years.
It was these discussions that laid the groundwork for Biden to meet with Xi in November in San Francisco. There, the leaders agreed to restore high-level military-to-military communication and work together to curb the flow of illegal fentanyl precursors from China to the United States.
China prefers to deal directly with the White House over the State Department, a legacy that traces back to the clandestine trips of national security adviser Henry Kissinger, which paved the way for the restoration of diplomatic relations in the 1970s, said Wu
Xinbo, director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University.
Even so, Wu added, there is little hope of major breakthroughs before Biden leaves office. “It’s not really realistic for there to be a new strategic framework or consensus,” he said.
Ahead of the talks, the Chinese Foreign Ministry accused the United States of trying to “contain and suppress China” and noted in a statement that “the stabilization of China-U.S. relations remains at a critical juncture.”
Repeated attempts to stabilize ties have been undercut by equally frequent flare-ups, from China’s support of Russia’s defense industrial base to Beijing’s aggressive assertion of sovereignty claims over the island democracy of Taiwan and in the South China Sea.
Chinese and Philippine coast guard vessels clashed this month near a disputed islet off the coast of the Philippines. Philippine authorities said China’s aggressive tactics left a hole in the deck of a Philippine ship, while the United States also condemned the incident, in support of its security ally.
Beijing remains deeply suspicious of U.S. efforts to strengthen its alliances and partnerships across the Asia-Pacific region. It has accused the United States of attempting to build an “Asian NATO” in a region it sees as its sphere of influence.
Chinese officials also regularly lash out at U.S. export controls targeting advanced technologies with military applications such as artificial intelligence.
In another example of a standoff over American partnerships and trade policies, China responded angrily to Canada imposing a 100 percent tariff on Chinese-made electric cars on Tuesday - a position endorsed by Sullivan in a meeting with Canadian Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau before the top White House aide flew to Beijing.
While China has chafed at Sullivan’s focus on alliances and responsible competition - Wang prefers to talk about “win-win” cooperation - his emphasis on avoiding confrontation has won grudging praise in Beijing, where Sullivan is seen as someone who can dial down disagreements.
For China, Sullivan has been an important interlocutor because he believes “it is not inevitable for confrontation to be at the core of U.S.-China relations,” said Zhu Feng, director of the Institute of International Studies at Nanjing University.
“China-U.S. relations cannot go back to the past. The most important thing now is to sustain and institutionalize high-level communication,” Zhu said. Wu reported from Taipei, Taiwan. Vic Chiang in Taipei and Lyric Li in Seoul contributed to this report.
