US national security adviser Jake Sullivan visits Beijin

On August 27, 2024, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan arrives at Beijing Capital International Airport and is greeted by Yang Tao, centre, from China’s foreign ministry, and US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns.
On August 27, 2024, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan arrives at Beijing Capital International Airport and is greeted by Yang Tao, centre, from China’s foreign ministry, and US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns.
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Beijing:

For discussions regarding a relationship that has been put to the test significantly throughout President Joe Biden’s presidency, a senior White House official has been to China.

In an attempt to handle the widening divide between Washington and Beijing, Biden’s go-to guy for frequently unexpected meetings with the senior foreign policy official of the Communist Party has been national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

Yang Tao, the head of the Chinese foreign ministry’s North America and Oceanian section, and Nicholas Burns, the American ambassador to China, met Sullivan upon his arrival.

Sullivan’s visit, which ends on Thursday, has a narrow objective: to try to keep lines of communication open in a relationship that fell apart over the course of almost a year in 2022-2023 and was only gradually repaired over several months.

Though Sullivan’s discussions may pave the way for a potential last summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping prior to Biden’s January resignation, no significant announcements are anticipated.

Wang Yi, the foreign minister and more senior member of the Communist Party’s Central Foreign Affairs Commission Office, will speak with Sullivan.

To hold two positions is hardly common. Wang had first resigned as foreign minister, but he took up the position again in July 2023, roughly seven months after his successor was ousted for undisclosed reasons.

The Biden administration has adopted a harsh stance against China, seeing it as a strategic rival. It has prevented its businesses from accessing cutting-edge technology and has confronted the growing nation as it attempts to assert control over Taiwan and the South China Sea.

After then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a prominent American Democrat, visited Taiwan in August 2022, already chilly ties plunged into a deep freeze. The next February, hopes of patching things up were scuppered when an American military shot down a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that had drifted across the country.

The two nations began a careful process of mending their relationship when Sullivan and Wang met in Vienna in May 2023. They have since met twice more, once in Malta and once in Thailand, a third nation. They will have their first discussions in Beijing this week.

This Monday, China’s Foreign Ministry stated that the United States and China’s relations are still at “a critical juncture.” While noting that the two sides are in communication about topics including the climate, it criticized the United States of still repressing and limiting China.

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