US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) agreed at a virtual meeting to look into the possibility of arms control talks, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday.
Biden and Xi agreed to “look to begin to carry forward discussion on strategic stability,” Sullivan said in a reference to US concerns about China’s nuclear and missile buildup.
“You will see at multiple levels an intensification of the engagement to ensure that there are guardrails around this competition so that it doesn’t veer off into conflict,” Sullivan said in a Brookings Institution Webinar.
“That is not the same as what we have in the Russian context with the formal strategic stability dialogue,” Sullivan said, without elaborating on what form the discussions on strategic stability might take.
“That is far more mature, has a much deeper history to it. There’s less maturity to that in the US-China relationship, but the two leaders did discuss these issues and it is now incumbent on us to think about the most productive way to carry it forward,” he added.
Washington has repeatedly urged China to join it and Russia in a new arms control treaty.
Beijing has said that the arsenals of the other two countries dwarf its own.
It says it is ready to conduct bilateral dialogues on strategic security “on the basis of equality and mutual respect.”
It was the two leaders’ most in-depth exchange since Biden took office in January.
China’s state media cited unnamed Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs sources as saying that the two sides would ease restrictions on access for journalists from each other’s countries.
The China Daily newspaper said a consensus on journalist visas, among other points, was reached before the virtual meeting.
A spokesperson for the US Department of State gave similar details, saying that China had committed to permit US journalists in the country to depart freely and return, which they had previously been unable to do.
The US planned to facilitate similar treatment for Chinese journalists, it said.
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