US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan stressed the importance of stability in the Taiwan Strait, while a senior Chinese military official warned the US to stop “collusion” with Taiwan in a rare one-on-one meeting yesterday, both sides said.
Sullivan arrived in Beijing on Tuesday, the first US national security adviser to visit China since 2016, for three days of talks with Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) and other high-ranking officials.
Yesterday morning, Sullivan met with Zhang Youxia (張又俠), vice chairman of the Central Military Commission and China’s second-highest-ranking military official, at the Beijing headquarters of the commission.
Photo: Reuters
“It’s rare that we have the opportunity to have this kind of exchange,” Sullivan told Zhang in opening remarks.
The two officials agreed to hold a call between the two sides’ theater commanders “in the near future,” a readout from the White House added.
Sullivan also raised the importance of stability in the Taiwan Strait and freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, where Beijing and Manila have clashed over the past few months, Washington said.
Zhang said that the status of Taiwan was “the first red line that cannot be crossed in China-US relations.”
“China has always been committed to maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” he said, according to a readout by the Chinese Ministry of National Defense.
“But Taiwan independence and peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait are incompatible,” he said.
“China demands that the US halts military collusion with Taiwan, ceases arming Taiwan and stops spreading false narratives related to Taiwan,” Zhang added.
Yesterday’s talks also saw Sullivan express “concerns about [Chinese] support for Russia’s defense industrial base,” the White House readout added.
He also raised “the need to avoid miscalculation and escalation in cyberspace, and ongoing efforts to reach a ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza,” the White House said.
Later yesterday, Sullivan met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Their meeting touched on the issues of Taiwan, the two nations’ leaders future meetings, US citizens detained in China, and the clashes between the Chinese and Philippine coast guards in the South China Sea.
In Taipei, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday said it welcomes “staunch US support” for maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.
“In addition, MOFA notes that China again made spurious claims about Taiwan that do not accord with reality in the press release issued following the meeting,” it said in a statement, reiterating that Taiwan and China are not subordinate to each other.
China’s “naked ambition for military expansion” poses the greatest risk to the region, and its accommodation of Russia “shows that China’s ambitions extend beyond Taiwan to other regions, making it a major global threat,” the ministry said.
On Wednesday, Sullivan and Wang discussed plans for their leaders to talk in the coming weeks and clashed over China’s increasingly assertive approach in disputed maritime regions.
Sullivan “reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to defending its Indo-Pacific allies,” the White House said.
He also “expressed concern about [China’s] destabilizing actions against lawful Philippine maritime operations” in the South China Sea, it said.
Chinese state media reported that Wang issued his own warning to Washington.
“The United States must not use bilateral treaties as an excuse to undermine China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, nor should it support or condone the Philippines’ actions of infringement,” Wang told Sullivan, according to state broadcaster China Central Television.
Wang and Sullivan previously met five times over the past year and a half — in Washington, Vienna, Malta and Bangkok, as well as alongside US President Joe Biden and Xi in Woodside, California, in November last year.
During their previous encounters, they also discussed Taiwan.
Additional reporting by AP and Kayleigh Madjar
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