By Takuya Karube,
U.S. President Joe Biden's top security adviser and China's highest-ranking diplomat held hours of "candid" discussions on key issues in Vienna this week and agreed to keep lines of communication open, the White House said Thursday, amid months of heightened tensions between the two countries.
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Wang Yi, a Chinese Communist Party Politburo member who is in charge of foreign affairs, spent more than eight hours together over two days from Wednesday in the Austrian capital as part of efforts to "responsibly manage competition," it said.
The issues discussed included Russia's war against Ukraine and the situation surrounding Taiwan, according to the White House, which described their discussions as "candid, substantive and constructive."
"We do anticipate there'll be engagements and visits in both directions over the coming months," a senior U.S. administration official told reporters.
The face-to-face talks were the first between Sullivan and a Chinese official at Wang's level since June last year, according to the U.S. official, who briefed on the meeting on condition of anonymity.
China's state-run news agency Xinhua said the two held talks on "removing obstacles in China-U.S. relations and stabilizing the relationship from deterioration."
It added that Wang "fully expounded China's solemn position on the Taiwan question."
The unexpected meeting between the senior officials took place around a week before a summit of the Group of Seven major industrial nations in Hiroshima, at which Beijing's assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region and intensifying military intimidation of Taiwan are expected to top the agenda.
The G-7, comprising Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, as well as the European Union, is preparing to reiterate its strong opposition to any attempts to change the status quo by force, no matter where in the world, in a statement to be issued after the three-day summit ends on May 21, according to officials.
China, which is not a member of the group, claims Taiwan as part of its territory to be brought under its control, by force if necessary.
Taiwan has been a major source of friction between China and the United States, with bilateral ties deteriorating further after a visit to the self-ruled democratic island in August last year by then U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
In early February, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken abruptly postponed his planned visit to Beijing after Washington detected what it described as a Chinese spy balloon traveling over sensitive areas of the continental United States.
The trip was intended as a follow-up to an in-person meeting between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping in November. It would have been the first visit to China by a ministerial-level official from Washington since the current U.S. administration's inception in 2021.
During his discussions with Wang, Sullivan reiterated, in reference to Taiwan, that the United States remains committed to its "one-China policy" recognizing the People's Republic of China as the sole legal government of China, according to the official.
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