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US and China must manage ‘intense competition’, top Biden adviser says after talks in Europe
- US national security adviser Jake Sullivan says a meeting with China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi was productive and more talks were needed between the two
- Sullivan said the six-hour meeting avoided acrimony but included ‘tough and direct exchanges’ about the Taiwan Strait
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US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Thursday his talks with China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi in Switzerland on Wednesday avoided the acrimony of a meeting in March and that more were needed to avert conflict between the two countries.
The closed-door meeting at an airport hotel in Zurich, which Sullivan said lasted about six hours, was the first face-to-face meeting with Yang since their exchanges in Alaska, potentially marking a less confrontational phase between the superpowers.
“The talks were productive in the sense that it was a real opportunity, behind closed doors, to really lay out for one another our different perspectives and intentions,” Sullivan, who is US President Joe Biden’s top security aide, told reporters in Brussels after meetings at Nato and the European Union.
He said the meeting had been a way to “do our best to create a circumstance in which this competition [between the United States and China], which is an intense competition, can be managed responsibly and does not veer into conflict or confrontation”.
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Washington says China threatens a global order based on rules. Beijing says the US is interfering in its affairs.
But the agreement between US prosecutors and Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou – who was taken into custody in Canada in December 2018 – allowing her to return to China, may have improved the mood.
Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping have agreed in principle for the presidents to hold a virtual meeting before the year’s end.
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