Biden aide urges more talks as US pursues de-risking from China

President Joe Biden’s top national security aide promoted further communications with China — including with President Xi Jinping — while insisting the US would continue to pursue so-called de-risking measures.

“We will take further steps as we go forward,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said at a Council on Foreign Relations event Tuesday evening in Washington.

He said de-risking steps intended to make the US less reliant on China would be tailor-made to ensure they are “aimed at our national security concerns and not in a broader effort to decouple our technological ecosystems or economies.” He declined, though, to provide any details on the “nature or timetable” of those steps.

Sullivan, spoke days after holding talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Bangkok, declined to provide any details on the “nature and timetable” of further measures.

He discussed different facets of the US approach, including bolstering ties with Indo-Pacific allies. “We’ve also worked hard to ensure that advanced and sensitive technologies our companies are developing do not become a source of vulnerability,” he said. 

“A sustainable China policy,” he added, “is about holding in one’s head multiple truths at the same time, and working iteratively to reconcile them.”

Sullivan’s remarks were the latest effort to exhibit a balance in the American strategy toward the world’s second-largest economy. He praised the rounds of “intensive diplomacy” that materialized last year in the form of rounds of cabinet officials visiting Beijing, while highlighting lingering differences over Taiwan and human rights, as well as urging China to use its leverage in helping to defuse tensions in the Red Sea and elsewhere. 

He said a central takeaway of his discussions with Wang over two days in Thailand last week was that both sides agreed on setting up a telephone call between President Joe Biden and Xi sometime this spring. The wo leaders met in California in November that led to breakthroughs on combating fentanyl trafficking and restoring military-to-military communications. 

Sullivan said that he had urged Wang to help curb attacks  by Houthi militants on commercial ships sailing in the Red Sea, pointing to China’s responsibilities as a United Nations Security Council member. Their discussions came before an attack in Jordan by another group of Iranian-backed militants that killed three US service members and wounded dozens of others.

“One of the areas of substantial focus in the discussion was about the continuing attacks in the Red Sea and the disruption of a vital artery of maritime commerce, undermining of supply chain security in the global economy and frankly, disruption to China-Europe trade,” Sullivan said. 

China “has an obligation to use the influence that it has with Tehran, to get those in Tehran to use the influence it has with the Middle East, to push back against this kind of behavior.”

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman last week called on “all parties to stop fueling the tensions” in the Red Sea while urging a halt to attacks on shipping.

China has tried to position itself as a neutral party as animosities in the Middle East threaten to widen as the Israel-Hamas war continues, echoing its stance on Ukraine. Chinese officials have offered to help broker a peace deal without publicly condemning Russia’s invasion. 

Biden on Tuesday said Iran was responsible for providing the weaponry used in the strike in Jordan and that he had made a decision on how to respond, though he did not detail his plans. The president is facing pressure from US lawmakers to retaliate, including from some who have urged him to strike Iranian territory.

Sullivan said he’s been humbled by the varying opinions and predictions regarding China’s economy, pointing out that the US has performed differently from consensus analysis a year or so ago. He added that the US expects that “China will be a major player on the world stage for the foreseeable future.” 

In a hint of the Biden White House’s view of how their China approach would stand apart from that of Donald Trump, the likely Republican challenger to Biden’s re-election, Sullivan noted that the previous administration had “updated the diagnosis of the scope and nature of the China challenge but did not adequately develop the strategy and tools to address that.”