U.S. looks to move past balloon incident in slight warming with China
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told China’s top diplomat Wang Yi that the administration wants to move beyond the spy balloon spat, according to a senior White House official, in a tentative sign that relations could be thawing between Beijing and Washington, three months after the wayward airship derailed high-level talks and caused a diplomatic tailspin.
Sullivan and Wang met in Vienna this week for around eight hours of talks over two days, a meeting that Chinese and U.S. officials said was pulled together quickly.
The senior U.S. official described the talks as “constructive” and “candid.” Sullivan raised the cases of detained American citizens in China and counternarcotics operations as well as regional security issues including Taiwan. Sullivan also discussed Ukraine and shared concerns about Beijing supplying weapons to Moscow.
“This meeting comes as the United States and the PRC have sought to increase high-level engagement to maintain channels of communication and manage competition” said the U.S. official. Describing the balloon incident as “unfortunate,” they said the administration is now “seeking to look beyond that.”
China’s official news agency Xinhua said on Thursday the talks discussed “removing obstacles in China-U. S. relations and stabilizing the relationship from deterioration.” Beijing’s rhetoric appears positive compared to previous recent statements, which have been sharply critical of U.S. calls to install “guardrails” on the relationship, calling them hypocritical.
Relations between the world’s two largest economies eased momentarily late last year when President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in Bali in November, relieving some of the tension that followed an August visit by then House speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, which spurred a major Chinese military exercise in the Taiwan strait. The leader-level talks set the stage for a visit to Beijing by Secretary of State Antony Blinken for more in-depth discussions in late February.
Blinken postponed his departure on the eve of the trip when the Chinese spy balloon was discovered traversing the United States before being shot down by an American fighter jet off the coast of South Carolina.
The talks between Wang and Sullivan in Vienna represent the highest level of in-person engagement between the two countries since Wang met with Blinken in an informal meeting on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in February, shortly after the balloon incident became public. At the time, Wang sharply criticized the U.S. administration, warning there would be consequences for the downed balloon.
Analysts and lawmakers in the United States have since shared concerns over the lack of crisis communications between Washington and Beijing, worried that a minor military confrontation could snowball into a major conflict. Following this week’s talks in Vienna, both sides expressed a willingness to de-escalate tensions and said they intend to maintain a strategic communication channel.
It’s the latest in a series of signs that conditions could soon be right for Blinken to reschedule his visit to Beijing. Earlier this week, U.S. ambassador to China Nicholas Burns met with Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang, while other U.S. officials including Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and special climate envoy John F. Kerry have also made recent inroads with their Chinese counterparts.
Timing of a potential Blinken trip was not discussed during this week’s talks, according to the U.S. official. “We do anticipate there’ll be engagement on this visit in both directions over the coming months,” they said.
One Chinese official familiar with the talks and who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations said that Beijing is hoping to reschedule the talks, but that there are “barriers” to overcome before they can take place. China “has always been willing. … It’s now the responsibility of the U.S. side to ensure their actions match their words.” The official added there are areas where China and the United States could make “meaningful progress” including climate change, but said that Taiwan and trade policy continue to cloud discussions.
The person said that a timeline of late June or early July for talks to be held in Beijing is “reasonable,” but said that the “politicization of hot button topics” in the United States meant that scheduling would remain ambiguous for the time being. The U.S. administration has not publicly shared a proposed timeline.
While the latest talks suggest the White House has recaptured some of the diplomatic momentum eroded by the balloon incident, analysts say that translating that into meaningful agreements remains an uphill battle.
“What we are seeing today is the emergence of Xi’s bare minimum balancing act, in which he permits limited bilateral dialogue on niche areas of vital significance to Beijing – think economics and trade – while rejecting engagement on most anything else of import to Washington,” said Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.