BEIJING (AP) — U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with a senior Chinese military official Thursday as the two countries step up communications to prevent disagreements over the South China Sea and Taiwan from escalating into conflict.
The meeting came a day after the White House said both countries would plan a phone call between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden in the coming weeks.
Sullivan just wrapped up a three-day trip to China, his first as national security adviser, aimed at stabilizing bilateral relations to avoid conflict. His key talks over the past day and a half were with Wang Yi, the foreign minister and the ruling Communist Party’s top foreign policy official.
A White House statement on Wednesday after the conclusion of talks with Wang said both sides would keep communication channels open and plan a “leadership-level phone call” in the coming weeks. China’s Foreign Ministry said Wang and Sullivan “discussed a new round of talks between the heads of state of both countries to be held in the near future.”
There was no indication whether the two leaders might meet in person before Biden leaves the Oval Office in January.
Sullivan met Thursday with Zhang Youxia, one of the two vice chairmen of the Central Military Commission, an organization Xi personally heads, in a rare meeting with a civilian U.S. official.
“Your request to meet with me shows the value you place on military security and the relationship between our armed forces,” Zhang told Sullivan in his opening remarks.
A White House statement following the talks said both sides “acknowledged the progress made in ongoing, regular military-to-military communications over the past 10 months” and pointed to the agreement announced Wednesday to hold a theater-level call between commanders in the near future.
Such a call would take place between Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii, and his Chinese counterpart, said Danny Russel, vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York.
“This command-level dialogue is critical for crisis prevention, but the Chinese military is resisting it,” Russel said.