US official Sullivan to visit China next week: White House

Jake Sullivan’s visit on August 27-29 comes as the US is in the middle of a presidential campaign in which both democratic and republican presidential candidates adopted tough-on-China positions. (File/AFP)

• Sullivan and Yi are expected to lay the groundwork for a potential meeting with US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping

BEIJING: Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, will visit China next week in a new bid to manage tensions months before US elections, the White House said Friday.
Sullivan will travel to Beijing from August 27 to 29 in the first visit by a US national security adviser to China since 2016, although other senior officials including Secretary of State Antony Blinken have visited over the past two years.
The visit comes months ahead of US elections in November in which Vice President Kamala Harris, running to succeed Biden, is expected to campaign on continuing to seek dialogue with China while also maintaining pressure.
Her rival Donald Trump at least rhetorically has vowed a harder line, with some of his aides seeing a far-reaching global showdown with China.
A senior administration official told reporters that the Biden administration’s engagement with China did not indicate any softening of approach and that it continued to believe that “this is an intensely competitive relationship.”
“We are committed to making the investments, strengthening our alliances, and taking the common step on tech and national security that we need to take,” she said, referring to sweeping restrictions on US technology transfers to China imposed under Biden.
“We are committed to managing this competition responsibly, however, and preventing it from veering into conflict,” she said.
The official did not indicate that the United States expected breakthroughs on the trip, in which Sullivan will meet with China’s foreign policy supremo Wang Yi.
The official said Sullivan will reiterate US concerns about China’s support for Russia in its major expansion of its defense industry since the Ukraine invasion. Beijing counters that, unlike the United States, it does not directly give weapons to either side.
Sullivan will also speak to Wang about North Korea and the Middle East, where China has criticized US support for Israel and the United States has sought to call Beijing’s bluff by urging it to use its relations to rein in Iran.