U.S. and Chinese officials plan to meet at a high level for the first Time in nine months on Thursday (March 18, 2021) in an attempt to ease bilateral tensions. However, the White House is not expecting significant gains from the meeting.
Both the United States and China announced that White House National Security Adviser Sullivan and Secretary of State Blinken met with Yang Jiechi, a member of the Communist Party’s Central Political Bureau in charge of foreign affairs, and Foreign Minister Wang Yi later this week in Anchorage, Alaska, the largest city in the United States.
White House spokeswoman Sachs was asked Tuesday during an interaction with the media aboard the Air Force One presidential jet what the Biden administration expects from the meeting. She first mentioned that it was important to the U.S. side that the meeting be held on U.S. soil. She then said it would be an opportunity for the two sides to discuss what should be a competitive, not conflictual, relationship between the two countries.
Sachs said, “We expect that parts of the talks will be difficult. The president has not shied away from his concerns about a number of issues, whether it’s human rights, or economic and technological issues. We certainly expect that many of these topics will be addressed in this meeting. But there are also opportunities for cooperation in certain areas, including climate change or nuclear nonproliferation.”
The White House spokesman added, “I don’t think this is part of a series of talks between the two sides. This meeting was attended by the national security adviser and the secretary of state, but at this point I would not extend this meeting to more such talks in the future.”
China’s Foreign Ministry referred to the meeting between top U.S. and Chinese officials as a high-level U.S.-China strategic dialogue. However, Secretary of State Blinken has said publicly that the meeting was not a strategic dialogue. A senior Biden Administration official said Tuesday at a background briefing at the White House that the meeting was just the beginning so the two sides could get to know each other first, saying the talks would provide important information in developing a U.S. national security strategy and that the two sides would not issue a joint statement after the meeting.
The U.S. and China have had high-level dialogue models such as the Strategic and Economic Dialogue and the Comprehensive Economic Dialogue, but such high-level dialogue mechanisms are increasingly seen as having little effect in addressing Washington’s concerns.
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