Biden aide Jake Sullivan speaks with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi as tension spikes
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Neither side opted to publicise the call between Mr Jake Sullivan (left) and Mr Wang Yi.
PHOTOS: REUTERS
Follow topic:
WASHINGTON – White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan spoke with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi on Friday, people familiar with the matter said, as the two sides look to ease tensions that have continued to build in recent months.
Mr Sullivan’s previously unreported call took place days before Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen is scheduled to stop in the United States
In a sign of the fraught state of US-China ties, neither side opted to publicise the call between Mr Sullivan and Mr Wang.
Spokesmen for the White House and the Chinese Embassy did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The people who confirmed the call asked not to be identified discussing private conversations.
The official contact also comes as the Biden administration is looking to arrange a phone call between President Joe Biden and China’s President Xi Jinping.
US officials had hoped that would have taken place by now, but China has so far rebuffed efforts to arrange a conversation, and the Biden administration now expects it will not occur until Ms Tsai returns home early in April.
In recent years, relations between the two countries have deteriorated as the US and China have clashed over everything from trade to technology and the South China Sea.
Those strains have played out across the relationship, making meetings at almost every level either politically impossible or far more fraught.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken cancelled a trip to China after the US revealed that an alleged Chinese spy balloon was crossing US territory.
Days later, China rebuffed Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin’s effort to speak with his Chinese counterpart after the US shot down the balloon.
Even lower-level ties are fraying.
China’s defence attache in Washington recently declined a request for a lunch meeting with Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence Michael Chase after Mr Chase visited Taiwan, people familiar with the matter said.
The State Department has maintained limited working-level contacts.
The head of the State Department’s new “China House”, Mr Rick Waters, travelled to Beijing last week to assess the chances of further bilateral exchanges between the two countries, according to people familiar with the trip.
Ms Tsai’s stop in the US is the latest irritant.
She is expected to visit New York on March 29 and 30, and then stop a week later in Los Angeles where she is expected to meet House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Such stopovers are normally routine, but will draw new scrutiny given the strained state of US-China ties.
China also views the meeting with Mr McCarthy as inflammatory because such an encounter would be rare on US soil.
Ties plunged to a new low last August, when then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan.
That led China to cut off some contacts between the two countries’ militaries. BLOOMBERG
