Jake Sullivan’s visit to Beijing last week, the first by a White House national security adviser for eight years, ended without any breakthroughs on the biggest issues dividing the world’s two superpowers. But it was an important step in the process of stabilising the relationship between the United States and China and ensuring that their increasingly aggressive competition does not trigger a conflict.
This was Sullivan’s fifth meeting with China’s foreign minister Wang Yi, who is also a senior figure in the Communist Party leadership. His visit to Beijing also included a meeting with Xi Jinping and with Zhang Youxia, vice-chairman of China’s Central Military Commission and one of Xi’s most senior military advisers.
Sullivan and Wang appear to have developed a good relationship. The fact that both men are close to their respective presidents gives their negotiations greater authority than might be the case with other diplomatic channels.
Last week’s meetings included talks about several fraught issues, including Taiwan, the South China Sea, the war in Ukraine and US restrictions on trade with China. Sullivan and Wang also discussed the Middle East, where China’s friendly relations with Iran as well as the most powerful Arab states and its longstanding support for Palestinian statehood offers it a diplomatic reach different to that of the US and its allies.
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But the primary purpose of the talks and of the current, high-level dialogue between Washington and Beijing more generally, is to create a more robust framework for managing their relationship. The restoration of military-to-military contacts following Xi’s meeting with Joe Biden in San Francisco last November has already borne fruit in helping to prevent once-frequent near- misses between their forces off the Chinese coast.
Xi and Biden are both due to attend the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro and a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (Apec) in Lima in November. After last week’s talks in Beijing, both the Chinese and the Americans made clear that they expect the two leaders to have a bilateral meeting during those summits.
Biden is in the final months of his presidency but he still has the capacity to build a more stable foundation for the US-China relationship after he leaves the White House. Sullivan was able to reassure his interlocutors in Beijing that as someone involved in shaping the current administration’s foreign policy, Kamala Harris is likely to remain on any course set by Biden in the coming months.
Donald Trump’s last presidency saw a sharp deterioration in relations with Beijing and he has threatened to intensify tensions over trade with a dramatic increase in tariffs on Chinese goods. Biden cannot tie his successor’s hands on China but his diplomatic engagement can build structures that will help to limit the damage.