HONG KONG — National security adviser Jake Sullivan met with a senior Chinese defense official in Beijing on Thursday, a day after the White House said President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping would speak by phone “in the coming weeks.”
Sullivan, making his first trip to China as national security adviser, met with Gen. Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, in the highest-level public contact the Biden administration has ever had with the Chinese military.
Sullivan “stressed that both countries have a responsibility to prevent competition from escalating into conflict or confrontation,” the White House said in a statement about their meeting.
The meeting comes amid rising military tensions between China and U.S. allies in the Asia-Pacific region. Washington has criticized China’s increasing pressure on Taiwan, an island democracy claimed by Beijing, and Chinese military actions in the South China Sea, a strategically important waterway that Beijing claims as almost its entirety.
According to the White House, Sullivan stressed the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and the U.S. commitment to freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. He also raised concerns about Chinese support for Russia’s defense industry as the country wages war on Ukraine.
Zhang said maintaining stability in military and security affairs between the US and China “is in the interests of both sides and also what the international community expects.” But he stressed that Taiwan’s status is “the core of China’s core interests,” and said the US “should stop its military cooperation with Taiwan, stop arming Taiwan, and stop spreading false stories about Taiwan.”
“Taiwan independence and peace in the Taiwan Strait are like fire and water — they cannot coexist,” Zhang said, according to a statement from China’s Defense Ministry.
It was the first time a US official met with a vice chairman of the committee since Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in 2018.
Sullivan arrived in Beijing on Tuesday for two days of talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi aimed at addressing tensions in what is widely considered the world’s most important bilateral relationship.
The White House said the two sides had “frank, substantive and constructive” discussions on a range of bilateral, regional and global issues.
“Both sides welcomed the continued efforts to keep the lines of communication open, including the planning for a leadership-level telephone call in the coming weeks,” the report said in a transcript of the meeting between Sullivan and Wang.
A statement from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the two sides “discussed a new round of interaction between the two heads of state in the near future.”
Both sides said there were also plans for talks between their respective military theater commanders. Xi agreed to resume military communications last year after cutting them off in 2022 in response to a visit to Taiwan by Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., then the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
The Biden administration has sought to “responsibly manage” competition with China while seeking areas of cooperation such as climate change and the international flow of illegal drugs. But relations reached their lowest point in decades early last year after a Chinese spy balloon appeared over North America and was shot down by the U.S. military.
In an effort to stabilize ties, Sullivan and Wang have held a series of backchannel meetings since last year. They met in Vienna in May 2023, in Malta in September and in Bangkok in January. Wang also visited Washington in October to meet with Biden.
But this was Sullivan’s first trip to China as national security adviser, and the first by a national security adviser since Susan Rice at the end of the Obama administration in 2016. Rice was also the last national security adviser to meet with a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission.
“We are working to ensure that competition does not escalate into conflict and that we find ways to work together in a way that aligns our interests,” Sullivan said after arriving in Beijing on Tuesday.
Biden and Xi have spoken by phone just once since November, when they held four-hour talks in California on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ Meeting. With direct contact so rare, the two leaders have few opportunities to talk one-on-one before Biden leaves the White House early next year.
They reached agreements on several areas during their November talks, including counter-narcotics, military communications, and security and risks from artificial intelligence. The White House said Sullivan and Wang discussed next steps for implementing those agreements.
China reported Wednesday that a second round of talks between the US and China on AI is being planned.
They also discussed cooperation in other areas, such as the repatriation of undocumented migrants and climate change. China and the US are the world’s two largest emitters of greenhouse gases.
Without giving a specific date, the White House statement noted an upcoming trip to China by John Podesta, who recently succeeded John Kerry as U.S. climate envoy.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
