BEIJING — In the latest sign that rival superpowers China and the United States are working to stabilize ties, national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing on Thursday and held rare talks with a top Chinese military official.
It comes a day after the White House said that President Joe Biden would speak by phone with Xi “in the coming weeks.”
Sullivan’s trip to China, his first in the role, comes at a time of rising tensions between China and U.S. allies in the Asia-Pacific, where Washington has criticized growing Chinese pressure on Taiwan, a self-governing island democracy claimed by Beijing, and Chinese military actions in the South China Sea, a strategically important waterway that Beijing claims virtually in its entirety.
The White House said Sullivan’s meeting with Xi were part of efforts to “responsibly manage” the U.S.-China relationship.
“Both sides welcomed ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication, including planning for a call between President Biden and President Xi in the coming weeks,” it said in a readout.
The meetings Sullivan had in Beijing, as well as the impending phone call between Biden and Xi, suggest the two countries could be building toward another summit between their leaders before the end of Biden’s term.
At a news conference Thursday, Sullivan said that while he had no announcements to make, both Biden and Xi were likely to be at summits later this year of Asia-Pacific leaders and the Group of 20 nations, and that “if they are, it would only be natural for them to have the chance to sit down with one another.”
The U.S. and China have also been seeking to improve communication between their militaries to minimize the risk of conflict in the region. Sullivan took a major step in that direction on Thursday when he met with Gen. Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, in the highest-level public engagement the Biden administration has had with the Chinese military.
It was the first time a U.S. official had met with a commission vice chair since Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in 2018.
In his meeting with Zhang, Sullivan “stressed that both countries have a responsibility to prevent competition from veering into conflict or confrontation,” the White House said in a readout.
The White House said Sullivan raised the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and the U.S. commitment to freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, as well as concerns about Chinese support for Russia’s defense industrial base as it wages war against Ukraine.
Zhang said that maintaining stability in U.S.-China military and security matters was “in both parties’ interest and is also what the international community expects.” But he emphasized that the status of Taiwan was “at the core of China’s core interests,” and said the U.S. should stop arming Taiwan.
“‘Taiwan independence’ and peace in the Taiwan Strait are like fire and water — they cannot coexist,” Zhang said, according to a readout from the Chinese Defense Ministry.
Both sides said there are also plans for a call between their respective military theater commanders. Xi agreed to resume military-to-military communications last year after he cut them off in 2022 in response to a visit to Taiwan by Rep. Nancy Pelosi,D-Calif., the U.S. House speaker at the time.
Sullivan arrived in Beijing on Tuesday for two days of talks with Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister and top diplomat. Starting last year, the two men held a series of backchannel talks in an attempt to stabilize relations that had reached their lowest point in decades after the appearance of a Chinese spy balloon over the continental United States in early 2023.
They met in Vienna in May 2023, Malta in September and Bangkok in January, and Wang also visited Washington in October to meet with Biden. But this was Sullivan’s first trip to China as national security adviser and the first by a national security adviser since Susan Rice near the end of the Obama administration in 2016.
The White House said Sullivan and Wang held “candid, substantive and constructive” talks in Beijing on a range of bilateral, regional and global issues. They also discussed next steps for implementing agreements that Biden and Xi reached at a summit they held in California last year, including on counternarcotics, military-to-military communications and artificial intelligence safety and risk.
But both sides held firm on some of the most sensitive issues between them, which for China include Taiwan, its territorial claims in the South China Sea and U.S. tech and trade restrictions it sees as designed to suppressed China’s development.
“From China’s point of view, this meeting cannot solve China’s concerns,” said Wu Xinbo, director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai.
On the U.S. side, he said, “it is impossible for them to force China to stop the development of bilateral economic and trade relations with Russia and change its basic position on the Russia-Ukraine conflicts.”
Biden and Xi have spoken only once by phone since their November meeting, in a call in April that lasted almost two hours. With direct contact so rare, the two leaders have few opportunities left to interact one-on-one before Biden leaves the White House early next year.
Part of the purpose of Sullivan’s visit is to keep U.S.-China relations stable in the final months of the Biden administration, said Li Cheng, founding director of the Centre on Contemporary China and the World at the University of Hong Kong.
“They’re not interested in changing direction, but want to find a floor to prevent U.S.-China relations from continuing to fall apart,” said Li, who previously spent 17 years at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.
The best possible outcome of the trip, Li said, would be if it paves the way for another Biden-Xi summit. The two main opportunities would be at this year’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders’ Meeting in Peru or summit of Group of 20 nations in Brazil, both of which will take place after the U.S. election on Nov. 5.
Both sides would have something to gain from a Biden-Xi summit, said Wen-Ti Sung, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council who is based in Taipei.
For Biden, it’s an opportunity to “leave a positive-looking legacy for the most important bilateral relationship in the world,” he said.
China might be able to invoke that summit if Biden’s successor tries to adopt a tougher line.
“Beijing then will have ammunition to say, ‘U.S. side is rocking the boat,’” Sung said.
Janis Mackey Frayer reported from Beijing, and Jennifer Jett and Larissa Gao reported from Hong Kong.
