Biden and Xi agree to move toward arms control talks, says US national security adviser Jake Sullivan
- Biden made the proposal out of concern over a build-up in China’s nuclear arsenal, says Sullivan
- The meeting between Xi and Biden struck a mostly conciliatory tone, although they flagged areas of disagreement, most pointedly about Taiwan
Biden “did raise with President Xi the need for a strategic stability set of conversations around the sorts of issues you just described … that needs to be guided by the leaders and led by senior empowered teams on both sides that cut across security, technology and diplomacy”, he said.
Sullivan’s was responding to a question from Brookings president John Allen about, among other advances, China’s “potential to add as many as hundreds of warheads to their nuclear arsenal” and “the recent test of the fractional orbital bombardment system”, as US national security officials have described the hypersonics that China has tested.
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Xi Jinping and Joe Biden call for mutual respect and peaceful China-US coexistence
“The two leaders agreed that we would look to begin to carry forward discussions on strategic stability,” Sullivan added. “It is now incumbent on us to think about the most productive way to carry it forward from here.”