Washington — Beijing has adopted a conciliatory tone in its reporting on this week’s visit by White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, emphasizing cooperation and open communication channels while claiming that Washington remains “incorrect” on its China policies.
Sullivan’s tightly scheduled three-day trip to Beijing ended Thursday after he met with Chinese officials, including the country’s top leader, Xi Jinping.
In a readout of Sullivan’s meeting with Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, the Foreign Ministry of China on Wednesday called the conversation “candid, substantive and constructive,” a phrase that was echoed by a White House statement regarding the meeting.
Sullivan was the first White House national security adviser to visit China in eight years, a period that saw contacts between the countries grow increasingly contentious over issues that included military-to-military relations, cybersecurity, espionage and the war in Ukraine.
It was Sullivan’s fifth in-person meeting with Wang since May 2023. The two had previously held talks in Bangkok, Vienna, Washington and Malta. But Wednesday’s meeting marks the first time in this series of talks that Beijing included some of the U.S. side’s views in its readout.
“The U.S. and China will coexist peacefully on this planet for a long time,” Sullivan was quoted as saying in the Chinese readout. “The goal of U.S. policies is to find a way that allows for a sustainable development of the U.S.-China relations.”
According to Beijing’s readout, Sullivan defined the two countries’ ties as a mixture of cooperation and competition, a characterization that’s been the core principle of the Biden administration’s China strategy.
Some experts say the fact that China allowed space in its readout for U.S. talking points signals Beijing’s increased openness to working with Washington.
Dali Yang, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, told VOA Mandarin Service that China used to reject the Biden administration’s characterization of the U.S.-China relationship.
“But it looks like the China side is now relatively more accepting of the U.S. side’s view,” Yang said. “Or at least Beijing has accepted that this is the kind of U.S. position that China must deal with.”
After Wang, Sullivan met separately with Xi and senior military official Zhang Youxia. These meetings focused on topics that included Taiwan, the South China Sea, trade policies, U.S. sanctions on Chinese businesses and entities, conflicts in Gaza and the war in Ukraine.
The meetings appeared to be cordial. Photos and footage released by Chinese state media show Sullivan shaking hands with a smiling Xi and a smiling Zhang.
US ‘incorrect’ in Beijing’s narrative
Smiling faces and words of cooperation aside, however, Beijing continues to paint the U.S. as the one that needs to adjust its policies and move closer to Beijing’s positions on issues.
Xi told Sullivan the U.S. should “work with China in the same direction, view China and its development in a positive and rational light, see each other’s development as an opportunity rather than a challenge, and work with China to find a right way for two major countries to get along.”
Zhang urged the U.S. to “correct its strategic perceptions of China” and respect China’s “core interests” by halting arms sales to Taiwan and to “stop spreading false narratives on Taiwan.”
Prior to Sullivan’s arrival in Beijing, the Global Times, China’s state media outlet, published a commentary criticizing Washington’s “incorrect” understanding of China.
“The U.S. needs to fundamentally change its perception of China and its strategic positioning toward China,” according to the article.
The Global Times told Sullivan that “truly listening to and understanding Beijing’s words and making a proper contribution to establishing the correct understanding between China and the U.S. should be one of the standards to evaluate the success of his visit to China.”
China’s political commentators have gone even further, calling on Beijing to remain tough.
In a commentary, Shen Yi, an international relations professor at Fudan University in Shanghai who has a huge following on social media, wrote that the U.S. is in no position to make any demands toward China because of the domestic economic difficulties in which he contends Washington is trapped.
“China should be sufficiently confident that it’s the U.S. who needs help from China,” he wrote. “Under this new frame of understanding, we have reasons to believe that China does not need to compromise with the U.S.”
This kind of tough narrative, often pushed by Beijing and adopted by online commentators during the past decade, remains popular on social media. But Yang of the University of Chicago told VOA Mandarin Service that Beijing seems to be moving away from this kind of rhetoric.
“When China is facing a variety of challenges, and when the leaders of China have to maintain and manage China-U.S. relations, they have to think beyond just making tougher and tougher talks” and relying on this type of approach to be effective.
“The two sides actually have a lot of common interests,” he said.
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