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President Joe Biden and his Chinese language counterpart Xi Jinping will communicate by phone in “the coming weeks”, the White Home mentioned on Wednesday, following conferences between prime US and Chinese language officers in Beijing.
The announcement got here after US nationwide safety adviser Jake Sullivan and Wang Yi, China’s prime overseas 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 similar to Taiwan.
Forward of Sullivan’s assembly in Beijing, one US official mentioned the 2 leaders might meet as soon as extra earlier than Biden leaves workplace — an possibility that has turn into possible since he withdrew from this 12 months’s presidential race. They might meet on the Apec discussion board in Peru or the G20 in Brazil, each in November after the US election.
Sullivan had held 4 conferences with Wang since Could 2023, in Vienna, Malta, Washington and Bangkok. The channel has been stored low-profile to permit either 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. In San Francisco, Xi agreed to reopen communication channels between the US and Chinese language militaries that 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 final November on the Biden-Xi summit in San Francisco — together with a Chinese language promise to crack down on the export of substances for the lethal opioid fentanyl — and likewise talked concerning the significance of taking “concrete steps to tackle the climate crisis”.
However Sullivan additionally confused that the US would proceed to take “actions to prevent advanced US technologies from being used to undermine our national security, without unduly limiting trade or investment”.
The White Home mentioned Sullivan confused the significance of “maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait”, raised issues about China’s help for Russia’s defence industrial base and its “destabilising actions against lawful Philippine maritime operations in the South China Sea”.
Some consultants suppose Sullivan could 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 new round of interaction between the two heads of state in the near future”.
Xinhua cited Wang as saying that Beijing wished world peace and referred to as on the US to not see China by means of a “template of a strong country that must dominate”. Sullivan has used their channel to inform China that the 2 nations might be in a contest but additionally co-operate on the identical time.
Wang warned that Taiwanese independence was “the biggest risk to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait”, in accordance with 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 the Second Thomas Shoal. A world tribunal has rejected Beijing’s claims of sovereignty.
