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President Joe Biden and his Chinese language counterpart Xi Jinping will converse by phone in “the approaching weeks”, the White Home mentioned on Wednesday, following conferences between high US and Chinese language officers in Beijing.
The announcement got here after US nationwide safety adviser Jake Sullivan and Wang Yi, China’s high international coverage official, held two days of talks in Beijing as a part of a “strategic channel” created to stabilise relations and to allow discussions about delicate points akin to Taiwan.
Forward of Sullivan’s assembly in Beijing, one US official mentioned the 2 leaders may meet as soon as extra earlier than Biden leaves workplace — an choice that has grow to be possible since he withdrew from this yr’s presidential race. They may meet on the Apec discussion board in Peru or the G20 in Brazil, each in November after the US election.
Sullivan has held 4 conferences with Wang since Could 2023, in Vienna, Malta, Washington and Bangkok. The channel has been saved low-profile to permit each side to have uninterrupted talks on strategic points.
The White Home mentioned they’d candid and constructive talks in Beijing on bilateral, regional and international points.
It mentioned the 2 sides have been planning a name between Admiral Samuel Paparo, head of US Indo-Pacific Command, and his counterpart. Xi had agreed throughout a gathering with Biden in November to reopen communication channels between the US and Chinese language militaries, which Beijing shut in 2022 after Nancy Pelosi turned the primary US Home Speaker to go to Taiwan in 25 years.
The White Home mentioned the officers mentioned progress on agreements reached on the Biden-Xi summit — together with a Chinese language promise to crack down on the export of elements for the lethal opioid fentanyl — and in addition talked concerning the significance of taking “concrete steps to deal with the local weather disaster”.
However Sullivan additionally burdened that the US would proceed to take “actions to stop superior US applied sciences from getting used to undermine our nationwide safety, with out unduly limiting commerce or funding”.
The White Home mentioned Sullivan burdened the significance of “sustaining peace and stability throughout the Taiwan Strait”, raised issues about China’s help for Russia’s defence industrial base and its “destabilising actions in opposition to lawful Philippine maritime operations within the South China Sea”.
Some consultants suppose Sullivan might meet Xi on Thursday since Wang met Biden when he visited Washington final October forward of the summit.
China’s state media mentioned Sullivan and Wang mentioned “a brand new spherical of interplay between the 2 heads of state within the close to future”.
Xinhua cited Wang as saying that Beijing needed world peace and referred to as on the US to not see China by means of a “template of a powerful nation that should dominate”. Sullivan has used their channel to inform China that the 2 international locations may be in a contest but in addition co-operate on the similar time.
Wang warned that Taiwanese independence was “the most important danger to peace and stability within the Taiwan Strait”, based on Xinhua.
He mentioned China would additionally defend its “sovereignty” over South China Sea islands and that the US shouldn’t help the Philippines’ “infringing actions” within the space, the place there have been clashes over Manila’s makes an attempt to resupply troops in a stranded ship on Second Thomas Shoal. A global tribunal has rejected Beijing’s claims of sovereignty.
On Thursday Sullivan met Common Zhang Youxia, vice-chairman of China’s Central Army Fee, the place the US mentioned each “recognised the progress in sustained, common military-military communications over the previous 10 months”.
