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US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met Thursday with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who stressed that Beijing was committed to a stable US-China relationship.
“In this changing and turbulent world, countries need solidarity and coordination...not exclusion or regress,” Xi said after the meeting. Sullivan also emphasized Biden’s commitment to avoid a conflict.
In a sign of the two superpowers trying to avoid conflict despite rising tensions over the South China Sea and Taiwan, Sullivan also held rare talks with senior Chinese military official Gen. Zhang Youxia, as he wrapped up his three day trip to China.
The meeting was the first time since 2018 that a US official met with the vice chair of the Central Military Commission, an organization led by Xi that oversees China’s military.
The US and China agreed on Wednesday to hold calls between military commanders, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said, something the US has been proposing for some time to reduce military tensions in the South China Sea and avoid misunderstandings.
SIGNALS
US and China seek to put military ties on an even keel
China watchers saw the military talks as a rare chance for Beijing and Washington to discuss the increased tensions over the South China Sea and Taiwan. “A meeting with Zhang Youxia is very significant, and an indication that China is prepared to meaningfully re-engage with the Department of Defense,” Drew Thompson, who researches US-China military relations, told The New York Times. Still, crisis communications with China tend to be limited in their usefulness because “every single thing that is said by the PLA, at any level, has to be vetted, approved, and run up the chain in Beijing,” Lyle Morris, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, told Semafor previously.
Both sides prepare militaries for possible conflict
Even as both countries emphasized stability during the Beijing talks, they are remaking their militaries to prepare for potential conflict. In July, the US announced it will set up a new military command in Japan to strengthen America’s presence in the Indo-Pacific, while its armed forces are adapting strategies around a potential conflict in Asia. The Marines, for example, have restructured in anticipation of a possible China conflict, focusing on small island-hopping forces and doing away with its tanks. Meanwhile, China is readying itself for a “protracted” war in the Indo-Pacific, a military analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies told Nikkei.
US-China relationship is ‘stabilized but precarious’
The efforts to improve the US-China relationship have led to some concrete policy outcomes, including Beijing’s moves to reduce exports of chemicals used to produce fentanyl, which causes tens of thousands of deaths in the US every year, and has been a yearslong contentious issue between the two superpowers. Even so, their relationship remains “stabilized but precarious,” US-China expert Patricia Kim argued, saying that the focus on both sides remains primarily risk management. Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer made the case that the relationship “continues to be better managed and more stable than we’ve seen in a long time.”