The News
The US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan arrived in Beijing on Tuesday for talks with top Chinese officials where he is expected to discuss growing tensions in Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Sullivan’s meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi will be their fifth since February and mark his first visit to China since he was appointed the US security chief. Washington will highlight China’s “destabilizing” military and economic actions against Taiwan, while Beijing will focus on “clarifying its stern position” on the island, which it views as a breakaway province.
The US and China need to ensure competition without conflict and “find ways to work together where our interests align,” Sullivan said before heading into the bilateral talks.
SIGNALS
US-China strategic channel has provided a ‘shock absorber’
Sullivan wants to expand military-to-military talks with the aim of preventing conflict in areas like the Taiwan Strait, NBC News reported. The “strategic channel” between the two officials — established through a spate of secret meetings across the world — has been a “shock absorber that… has helped cut the risk of a miscalculation” by both superpowers, the Financial Times wrote, especially at a time of heightened tensions. The same fundamental issues remain, but the backchannel has helped to shift the dynamic toward greater stability, Sullivan told the outlet.
Rising tensions in East and Southeast Asia
The meeting comes amid rising tensions in East and Southeast Asia as Tokyo protests a Chinese spy plane incursion into its airspace and Manila accuses Beijing of repeated aggression in the South China Sea. On Tuesday the Philippine defense chief told a conference of the US Indo-Pacific Command that China was the “biggest disrupter” of peace in Southeast Asia, CBS News reported. But any misstep that prompts the Philippines to trigger its mutual defense treaty with the US could spell a “nightmare” war between the US and China, according to The New York Times: That pact means the Philippines represents an exception to Beijing’s preference for sorting out disputes with its neighbors “directly and quietly,” the outlet added.
China sees Harris and Trump as ‘two bowls of poison’
It’s “hard to ignore the timing” of Sullivan’s visit, which comes just three months before the US presidential election. The trip will likely be used by Beijing as an opportunity to clarify its priorities to any party (and future administration) that might be listening, the BBC wrote. But even as Beijing looks ahead, the sense is that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump ultimately represent “two bowls of poison” for Xi Jinping’s interests, a politics expert at Fudan University told the Financial Times: Trump is the devil Beijing knows, whereas Harris — who only mentioned China once in her recent convention address, and has never visited the country — remains something of a mystery, though her policies are still more predictable, another added.