The White Home adviser’s go to comes amid China’s heightened tensions with Japan and the Philippines over the South China Sea.
US nationwide safety adviser Jake Sullivan has met with China’s prime diplomat Wang Yi as Beijing finds itself embroiled in safety disputes with key US allies.
Japan has scrambled fighter jets after a Chinese language navy plane intruded into its airspace on Monday with a navy spy airplane.
At a information convention on Tuesday, Chief Cupboard Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi mentioned the airspace violation, the primary by a navy plane, “shouldn’t be solely a critical violation of Japan’s sovereignty, but additionally threatens our safety.”
In the meantime, the Philippines’ protection chief on Tuesday accused China of being the “greatest disturber” of peace in Southeast Asia following every week of clashes between the 2 nations’ ships close to a disputed sandbar within the South China Sea.
Sullivan’s airplane landed at Beijing airport shortly earlier than 2:00 p.m. (06:00 GMT). He was greeted on the tarmac by U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns and Chinese language Overseas Ministry official Yang Tao.
Sullivan met Wang at a resort on the northern outskirts of the Chinese language capital, the place they shook arms in entrance of Chinese language and American flags.
In his remarks to reporters, Wang described China-US relations as “vital” and having taken “twists and turns.”
“I hope, as at all times, that the communication is not going to solely be strategic but additionally substantial and, on the similar time, very constructive,” he mentioned.
Earlier than continuing to a closed-door assembly, Sullivan mentioned they’d talk about areas of settlement and disagreement that “must be managed successfully and substantively.”
Busy agenda
Forward of his journey — the primary by an American NSA agent to China since 2016 — a U.S. official mentioned Sullivan would talk about the South China Sea with officers in Beijing, together with Wang.
“We’re dedicated to creating the investments, strengthening our alliances and taking the frequent steps on expertise and nationwide safety that we have to take,” the official mentioned, referring to the sweeping restrictions on U.S. expertise transfers to China imposed throughout President Joe Biden’s presidency.
“We’re dedicated to managing this competitors responsibly… and avoiding any escalation into battle,” he added, talking on situation of anonymity.
Washington can also be anticipated to place stress on Beijing over its rising “navy, diplomatic and financial stress” on Taiwan, the autonomous democracy that China considers a part of its territory and has not dominated out reuniting by drive.
China has maintained its sabre-rattling because the inauguration this yr of President William Lai Ching-te, whose celebration emphasizes Taiwan’s separate identification.
Stress administration
Sullivan will reiterate US considerations about China’s assist for Russia’s protection business enlargement since its invasion of Ukraine.
Beijing responds that, not like america, it doesn’t immediately provide arms to both facet.
The fashionable US-China relationship started when Henry Kissinger, then Richard Nixon’s nationwide safety adviser, secretly visited Beijing in 1971 to put the groundwork for normalizing relations with the communist state.
Sullivan and Wang have met 5 occasions over the previous yr and a half — in Washington, D.C., Vienna, Malta and Bangkok, in addition to alongside Biden and Chinese language President Xi Jinping at a November summit in California.
Conferences between Wang and Sullivan have been generally introduced solely after that they had concluded, and the 2 had spent lengthy hours collectively behind closed doorways.
Sullivan’s go to comes months earlier than the US election in November.
