US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was due in Beijing Tuesday to meet top diplomat Wang Yi for tense talks as China was embroiled in security rows with key American allies Japan and the Philippines.
On Monday, US treaty ally Japan scrambled fighters after a Chinese military aircraft “violated” its airspace, with Tokyo later accusing Beijing of a “serious violation” of its sovereignty.
The Philippine defence chief on Tuesday accused Beijing of being the “biggest disruptor” of peace in Southeast Asia following a week of confrontations between the two countries’ ships near a flashpoint, disputed shoal in the South China Sea.
Ahead of Sullivan’s trip — the first by a US national security advisor to China since 2016 — an American official said he would discuss the South China Sea with counterparts in Beijing, including foreign minister Wang.
She did not indicate that the United States expected breakthroughs on the trip.
“We are committed to making the investments, strengthening our alliances, and taking the common steps on tech and national security that we need to take,” the official said, referring to sweeping restrictions on US technology transfers to China imposed under President Joe Biden.
“We are committed to managing this competition responsibly… and preventing it from veering into conflict,” she added, speaking on condition of anonymity.
She said the US would press China on its mounting “military, diplomatic and economic pressure” on Taiwan, the self-ruling democracy that Beijing considers its territory and has not ruled out reunifying through force.
China has kept up its sabre-rattling since the inauguration this year of President Lai Ching-te, whose party emphasises Taiwan’s separate identity.
“These activities are destabilising, risk escalation, and we’re going to continue to urge Beijing to engage in meaningful dialogue with Taipei,” she said.
And he will reiterate US concerns about China’s support for Russia in its major expansion of its defence industry since the Ukraine invasion.
Beijing counters that, unlike the United States, it does not directly give weapons to either side.
China has historically been eager to work with US national security advisors, seeing them as decision-makers close to the president who can negotiate away from the media spotlight that comes with the secretary of state or top leadership.
The modern US-China relationship was launched when Henry Kissinger, then national security advisor to Richard Nixon, secretly visited Beijing in 1971 to lay the groundwork for the normalisation of relations with the communist state.
Sullivan and Wang have met four times over the last year and a half — once in Washington and the other times in Vienna, Malta and Bangkok — as well as alongside Biden and President Xi Jinping at their November summit in California.
The meetings between Wang and Sullivan were sometimes announced only after they concluded and the two had spent long hours together behind closed doors.
Sullivan’s visit comes months ahead of US elections in November.
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