US National Security Adviser Susan Rice is to fly into Beijing tomorrow for three days of talks with top Chinese officials on a range of security issues that is likely to include US arms sales to Taiwan.
While the White House will not comment in any detail, Washington sources say that future arms sales to Taiwan and the recent incident in which a Chinese aircraft entered Taiwanese airspace could be on the agenda.
Rice is expected to try to tamp down growing tensions between the US and China in advance of the APEC summit to be held in Beijing on Nov. 10 and Nov. 11.
US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) will meet privately after the summit for informal talks along the same lines as the ones held in Sunnylands, California, last year.
Following the Sunnylands meeting, China claimed that the US had agreed to establish a working group to discuss arms sales to Taiwan.
A Pentagon spokesman denied the claim, saying: “The US and China agreed to set up working groups to discuss issues of mutual concern. But I have not heard of any specific working group on arms sales to Taiwan being established.”
Nevertheless, Xi raised the issue of arms sales to Taiwan at Sunnylands and said that he would adjust the deployment of coastal People’s Liberation Army units if the US terminated the sales.
Nothing much has happened on the arms issue since the Sunnylands meeting and the US expects that Xi will raise it again in November.
The senior US State Department official responsible for APEC, Robert Wang, says the November talks between Obama and Xi will look at expanding areas of cooperation while seeking to manage differences.
Rice is charged with laying the groundwork for this meeting and her visit will include meetings with Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi (楊潔篪).
National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden said Rice would consult on a range of bilateral, regional and global issues.
Along with arms sales to Taiwan, these are likely to involve cyberhacking, territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas and what the US considers to be the over-aggressive way that Chinese fighter aircraft have been flying very close to US intelligence-gathering aircraft in the region.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) met with US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns in Washington earlier this week to discuss cross-strait relations, and it is thought likely that Zhang will meet with Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council Minister Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) during the APEC summit.
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