HONG KONG – National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan The White House met with a senior Chinese defense official in Beijing on Thursday, a day after the president said Joe Biden and the Chinese leader Xi Jinping will speak on the phone “in the coming weeks”.
Sullivan, making his first visit to China as national security adviser, met with Gen. Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, as part of the Biden administration’s highest-level public engagement with the Chinese military.
Sullivan “stressed that both countries have a responsibility to prevent competition from escalating into conflict or conflict,” the White House said said in the reading from their meeting.
The meeting comes at a time of growing military tensions between China and US allies in the Asia-Pacific region, criticized by Washington. China’s increasing pressure on TaiwanBeijing’s claimed self-governing island democracy and China’s military operations South China SeaA strategically important waterway that Beijing claims virtually in its entirety.
The White House said Sullivan raised the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and the US commitment to freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, as well as concerns about China’s support for Russia’s defense industrial base. He is waging war against Ukraine.
His meeting with Zhang was the first meeting of a US official with the vice chairman of the commission since Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in 2018.
Sullivan arrived in Beijing on Tuesday for two days of talks with China’s foreign minister Wang Yi As part of efforts to ease tensions in what is generally considered the most important bilateral relationship in the world.
The White House said that the parties held “sincere, substantive and constructive” talks on a number of bilateral, regional and global issues.
“Both sides welcomed ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication, including planning a leaders’ summit in the coming weeks,” he said. said in the reading Sullivan-Wang meeting.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry read out that the parties “discussed a new phase of interaction between the two heads of state in the near future.”
Both sides said there were plans for a call between their military theater commanders. Xi agreed last year to resume military-to-military ties after cutting ties in 2022. visit to Taiwan by Rep. Nancy PelosiD-Calif., then speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.