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President Joe Biden and his Chinese language counterpart Xi Jinping will converse by phone in “the approaching weeks”, the White Home stated 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 corresponding to Taiwan.
Forward of Sullivan’s meeting in Beijing, one US official stated the 2 leaders might meet as soon as extra earlier than Biden leaves workplace — an possibility that has grow to be possible since he withdrew from this yr’s presidential race. They may 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 Might 2023, in Vienna, Malta, Washington and Bangkok. The channel has been stored low-profile to permit both sides to have uninterrupted talks on strategic points.
The White Home stated they’d candid and constructive talks in Beijing on bilateral, regional and world points.
It stated 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 stated 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 in regards to the significance of taking “concrete steps to deal with the local weather disaster”.
However Sullivan additionally careworn that the US would proceed to take “actions to stop superior US applied sciences from getting used to undermine our nationwide safety, with out unduly limiting commerce or funding”.
The White Home stated Sullivan careworn the significance of “sustaining peace and stability throughout the Taiwan Strait”, raised considerations about China’s help for Russia’s defence industrial base and its “destabilising actions in opposition to lawful Philippine maritime operations within the South China Sea”.
Some consultants assume Sullivan could meet Xi on Thursday since Wang met Biden when he visited Washington final October forward of the summit.
China’s state media stated Sullivan and Wang mentioned “a brand new spherical of interplay between the 2 heads of state within the close to future”.
Xinhua cited Wang as saying that Beijing needed world peace and referred to as on the US to not see China by way of a “template of a powerful nation that should dominate”. Sullivan has used their channel to inform China that the 2 nations will be in a contest but additionally co-operate on the identical time.
Wang warned that Taiwanese independence was “the largest threat to peace and stability within the Taiwan Strait”, in response to Xinhua.
He stated China would additionally defend its “sovereignty” over South China Sea islands and that the US mustn’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.
