Joe Biden, Xi Jinping to speak by phone in effort to improve U.S.

BEIJING — In the latest sign that rival superpowers China and the United States are working to stabilize ties, national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing on Thursday and held rare talks with a top Chinese military official.

It comes a day after the White House said that President Joe Biden would speak by phone with Xi “in the coming weeks.”

Sullivan’s trip to China, his first in the role, comes at a time of rising tensions between China and U.S. allies in the Asia-Pacific, where Washington has criticized growing Chinese pressure on Taiwan, a self-governing island democracy claimed by Beijing, and Chinese military actions in the South China Sea, a strategically important waterway that Beijing claims virtually in its entirety.

The White House said Sullivan’s meeting with Xi were part of efforts to “responsibly manage” the U.S.-China relationship.

“Both sides welcomed ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication, including planning for a call between President Biden and President Xi in the coming weeks,” it said in a readout.

The meetings Sullivan had in Beijing, as well as the impending phone call between Biden and Xi, suggest the two countries could be building toward another summit between their leaders before the end of Biden’s term.

At a news conference Thursday, Sullivan said that while he had no announcements to make, both Biden and Xi were likely to be at summits later this year of Asia-Pacific leaders and the Group of 20 nations, and that “if they are, it would only be natural for them to have the chance to sit down with one another.”

The U.S. and China have also been seeking to improve communication between their militaries to minimize the risk of conflict in the region. Sullivan took a major step in that direction on Thursday when he met with Gen.?Zhang Youxia,?vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, in the highest-level public engagement the Biden administration has had with the Chinese military.

It was the first time a U.S. official had met with a commission vice chair since Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in 2018.

In his meeting with Zhang, Sullivan “stressed that both countries have a responsibility to prevent competition from veering into conflict or confrontation,” the White House said in a readout.

The White House said Sullivan raised the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and the U.S. commitment to freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, as well as concerns about Chinese support for Russia’s defense industrial base as it wages war against Ukraine.

Zhang said that maintaining stability in U.S.-China military and security matters was “in both parties’ interest and is also what the international community expects.” But he emphasized that the status of Taiwan was “at the core of China’s core interests,” and said the U.S. should stop arming Taiwan.

“‘Taiwan independence’ and peace in the Taiwan Strait are like fire and water — they cannot coexist,” Zhang said, according to a readout from the Chinese Defense Ministry.

Both sides said there are also plans for a call between their respective military theater commanders. Xi agreed to resume military-to-military communications last year after he cut them off in 2022 in response to a visit to Taiwan by Rep. Nancy Pelosi,D-Calif., the U.S. House speaker at the time.