US State Department’s top China official Rick Waters is stepping down
- The exit of the head of the department’s newly created ‘China House’ comes at a tumultuous time in relations between Washington and Beijing
- The news follows the announcement of other departures, including the National Security Council’s Laura Rosenberger and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman
The head of a new US State Department unit tasked to coordinate efforts aimed at countering Beijing plans to step down next month, the department’s second high-ranking official with a China portfolio to announce a departure in less than two weeks.
Rick Waters, head of the State Department’s recently created Office of China Coordination, and known informally as its “China House”, will leave the position just six months after it was established to manage what Secretary of State Antony Blinken called “the scale and the scope of the challenge” posed by the country.
The career State Department official will “rotate out” of the unit and the Office of Taiwan Coordination on June 23 “as part of the Department’s normal summer transition process,” according to a State Department spokesman.
“He will remain a member of the senior foreign service, but we have no details on his next assignment at this time,” the spokesman added.
Daniel Kritenbrink, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, weighed in on the move, asserting that “China House is already strengthening the [Biden] administration’s work to advance a free and open Indo-Pacific and out-compete China”.
“Rick is a strategic thinker who has skillfully advanced US policy on China, and I am profoundly grateful for his service to our country,” he said. “We are in the process of selecting Rick’s successor and hope to have an announcement as soon as possible.”
Biden adviser to take over as chair of de facto US embassy to Taiwan
Laura Rosenberger left her post as special assistant to Biden and the National Security Council’s senior director for China and Taiwan to become chair of The American Institute in Taiwan – Washington’s de facto embassy on the self-ruled island – just two months ago.
The departures come amid a revival of high-level talks between US and Chinese officials after a suspected spy balloon from China entered US airspace and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen met with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California earlier this year all but cut off such engagements.
Blinken postponed a planned trip to Beijing days before his departure in response to the balloon incident and China appeared to rebuff overtures from officials including US ambassador to Beijing Nicholas Burns and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to reestablish talks.
However, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and China’s top diplomat Wang Yi unexpectedly announced that they held “candid” talks while in Vienna on Taiwan and the Russian war in Ukraine, the highest-level US-China engagement since presidents Xi Jinping and Joe Biden met last year.
US Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in an interview on Wednesday that she expects to meet with China’s Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation ministerial meeting in Detroit later this week.
Xie, who oversaw the US portfolio in Beijing, had in recent months been flagged as the top candidate for the position, which had been vacant for almost five months.
