Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, met top Chinese officials and Politburo member Yang Jiechi this Monday. It was arranged for a called in “candid substantive,in-dept and productive” talks held in Luxembourg, to continue their high-level engagement which has duly intensified ever since the invasion of Russia in Ukraine.
Lasting for four and a half hours, the conversation where White house secretary, Karin Jean-Pierre was present commented, a “candid, substantive and predictive” conversation. The same seemed to have covered “several regional and global security issues, as well as key issues in US-China relations.”
The press secretary replied to the questions rather diplomatically. When asked if the conversation would eventually lead to a meeting between the US president Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
She answered, “Interactions are planned at a range of officials across the US government, but nothing to announce at a POTUS-Xi meeting at this time. They last spoke on the phone on the 18th of March. We shall continue to maintain open lines of communication with China.”
Director of the office of the foreign affairs commission in China, Yang Jiechi and Sullivan who also happens to be Biden’s close aides, have emerged as the two integral figures.
In the continued engagement between the two countries, they met in Rome back in March for a seven-hour-long meeting. This was followed by Biden and Xi holding a phone call.
On May 18, Sullivan and Yang spoke on the phone again later on.
“Mr.Sullivan underscored the importance of maintaining open lines of communication to manage competition between our two countries”, readout by the white house regarding the Monday meeting.
The said intensified US-China engagement comes in the backdrop of a bunch of external as well as domestic events in America.
Globally the US has sent out a clear and public message to China regarding refraining from actively supporting Russia and also warned them against the circumstances that would follow with sanctions.
US officials have reported that in the past few weeks they have kept continued watch on Beijing.
And so far have not received any particular indication that China is actively seeking to subvert sanctions. Experts seem to believe that since Beijing is far more closely integrated with the global economy than Russia, it will be at the war of facing any secondary sanctions.
During the same time, within the US, which has been facing record inflation, a power policy constituency has been advocating lifting a series of tariffs that were imposed on China during former president Donald Trump’s administration.
Janet Yellen, Treasury secretary, informed the US Congress last week that the administration looks forward to “reconfiguring” tariffs and making them more aligned to make them seem “more strategic”. She said,” tariff reductions could help to bring down the prices of things that people buy that are burdensome”.
