White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Wang Yi during talks in Vienna this week that the Biden administration is “looking to move beyond” tensions spurred by the US shooting down a Chinese spy balloon that traversed the continental United States, according to a senior Biden administration official.
The meeting was not publicised by Washington or Beijing ahead of the high-level talks on Wednesday and Thursday in the Austrian capital. The White House described the wide-ranging discussions, in which the two leaders spent more than eight hours together, as “candid” and “constructive.”
The administration official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity to discuss the private meeting, said that both sides recognise that the February incident was ”unfortunate” and are now looking to “reestablish standard, normal channels of communications.”
The talks are the latest in a series of small signs that tensions could be easing between the world’s two biggest economies.As the political and military rivalry between China and the US intensifies, American officials and analysts are worried that a lack of reliable crisis communications could cause a minor confrontation to spiral into greater hostilities. They cite the ability to communicate with the former Soviet Union as allowing the Cold War to end without a nuclear exchange.
The White House in a statement said the meeting was part of “ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication and responsibly manage competition,” and that Sullivan and Wang discussed key issues in the US-China relationship, Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, Taiwan, and more.
The meeting took place in a luxury hotel along Vienna’s historical Ringstrasse, according to an Austrian official familiar with the matter. The official, who was not authorised to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said planning for the meeting was closely guarded and Austrian authorities were only given a few days’ advance notice that Vienna was chosen for the talks.
Chinese officials saw the discussions as “substantive” and said both sides would “continue to make good use of this channel of strategic communication,” according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
