President Biden will soon hold a telephone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping as part of the new Biden administration policy of seeking to stabilize relations, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday night.
Mr. Sullivan, in remarks at a conference in Washington, also defended the Biden administration’s policy of renewed engagement with Beijing in a bid to avoid a conflict as tensions in the Taiwan Strait remain a potential flashpoint.
“The most significant risk would be a crisis in the Taiwan Strait, especially given Beijing’s increased military activity in and around Taiwan,” Mr. Sullivan said.
But the NSC chief said recent talks in Thailand with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi included an extensive discussion over the self-ruled island nation that China claims as its territory.
Mr. Sullivan has held three sets of talks with Mr. Wang, a senior Chinese Communist Party official, part of a diplomatic initiative launched in May. Mr. Sullivan said he and Mr. Wang did not agree on everything and much work remains.
“We agreed that President Biden and President Xi should speak, and should speak by telephone relatively soon,” he said. “There really is no substitute for leader-to-leader conversation.”
The speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, an elite voice of American foreign policy, contained overtones of Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign.
China is expected to be a major focus of the presidential campaign as Republicans seek stronger measures aimed at countering Chinese technology theft and aggression in places like the South China Sea and East China Sea.
A year ago, when a Chinese surveillance balloon flew unimpeded over the United States, U.S.-China relations hit a low point, Mr. Sullivan said.
But since then, he said, the two nations have restarted military talks that were cut off by China in 2022 and is this week discussing Chinese shipments of precursor chemicals used to make the deadly drug fentanyl.
The administration also is continuing to block exports of high-technology goods like advanced semiconductors to China as part of a policy Mr. Sullivan called “de-risking,” a policy short of completely decoupling the two nations’ economies.
The two sides also plan to discuss lowering the risk of the emerging technology artificial intelligence, he said.
Mr. Sullivan said the administration is “clear eyed” about relations with China that could be strained in the future by an unexpected “surprise.”
“We’re not planning to recreate the now outdated structures and mechanisms from an earlier period in the bilateral relationship,” he said. “And we’re definitely not interested in dialogue just for dialogue’s sake. But we do see value in watching and shepherding a select number of working level consultations in discrete carefully chosen areas to advance our interests and achieve results.”
Rosy assessments of China evolving into a non-threatening power over the past several decades have given way to a recognition that Beijing is the only state with both the intent and capability to overtake the United States, Mr. Sullivan said.
The upgraded diplomatic steps are designed to reopen closed channels of communication to reduce tensions and create stability, he added.
“None of this will be easy, and there will be times of tension,” Mr. Sullivan said. “That’s inevitable in a competition like this that is simply not going to resolve in a neat and decisive end state … One thing is certain: there will be surprises along the way. We’ll keep working to manage the competition as we have over the last year.”
On Taiwan’s recent presidential election, Mr. Sullivan indicated that steps were taken to avoid upsetting Beijing by not taking sides in the election but congratulating the winner.
• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.
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