Top Biden aide holds rare talks with Chinese military general
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan met Thursday with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and held rare talks with a top Chinese military official in a sign that the two countries are communicating at senior levels despite tensions over the South China Sea and Taiwan.
Sullivan’s meeting with Gen. Zhang Youxia, vice chair of China’s Central Military Commission, was the first in years between a senior U.S. official and a vice chair of the commission, which oversees China’s armed forces and is chaired by Xi.
It was the latest effort by the two powers to keep communication channels open even as disputes grow over national security, trade and geopolitics. On the military front, the United States has argued that more open communication is necessary to prevent accidents between the two countries’ warplanes and navy ships as they regularly patrol contested areas like the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.
Sullivan’s meeting with Zhang, which was held at the headquarters of China’s People’s Liberation Army, came on the final day of his three-day visit to Beijing to bolster the Biden administration’s bid to manage competition with China.
“We believe that competition with China does not have to lead to conflict and confrontation — the key is responsible management through diplomacy,” Sullivan said at a news conference after meeting with Xi.
China has rejected Washington’s framing of the bilateral relationship as being defined by competition, a stance Xi highlighted at the top of an official summary of the meeting.
“First of all, we must answer the general question of whether China and the United States are rivals or partners,” Xi told Sullivan. China’s intentions were “above board,” he said, and his country was committed to “peaceful development.” He said he hoped that the United States would work with China to “find a correct way for the two major countries to get along.”
Sullivan told reporters that the Biden administration’s priorities in its final months included greater communication between their militaries and more cooperation to tackle the fentanyl crisis in the United States.
Earlier in the day, Zhang told Sullivan that the world expected the two countries to “maintain stability in the military and security fields,” according to a statement released by China’s Defense Ministry. He also reiterated China’s opposition to U.S. support for Taiwan, the island democracy that Beijing claims.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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