White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan has said that trade will not be a central theme at next week’s high-level U.S.-China meeting in Alaska.
At a White House press briefing last Friday, March 12, Sullivan was asked about trade sanctions against the Chinese Communist Party. He told reporters that he does not expect the first phase of the U.S.-China trade deal to be the main topic of next week’s meeting.
“This is our effort to be communicating clearly to the Chinese government how the United States intends to move forward at the strategic level, what we believe our fundamental interests and values are, and what our concerns are about its activities.” Sullivan said.
He revealed that the U.S. will express concerns about the Communist Party’s actions on a range of issues, including Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Taiwan, as well as issues raised by U.S. allies in Asia that day Friday – Beijing‘s “coercion of Australia, their harassment around the Senkaku Islands, their aggression on the Indian border “
Sullivan went on to note that, as a result, the meeting “will stay more in that context and not get bogged down in details about tariffs or export control issues.
He also added that U.S. officials will convey the message “at a broad level” that the U.S. government will act to protect U.S. technology from being used to undermine U.S. values and security.
“But in terms of the details of these issues, we have more work to do with our allies and partners to come up with a common approach, a joint approach, before we can sit down (with the Chinese government) on each of these issues.” Sullivan further said.
Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet Thursday in Alaska with Yang Jiechi, director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. This is the first face-to-face meeting between the U.S. and Chinese top brass since Biden‘s inauguration. There is no indication that the U.S. side will make significant concessions to the Chinese Communist Party in this meeting, although the Chinese side hopes to use it to ease sanctions imposed on China since the beginning of the Trump administration.
Sullivan’s remarks came on the same day that Biden held his first multilateral summit since taking office with the leaders of Japan, India and Australia to discuss the situation in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly cooperation in response to the Epidemic, in order to build a partnership to counter the influence exerted by the Chinese Communist Party in the region.
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