On August 29, 2024, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
Trevor Hunnicutt
BEIJING — Chinese President Xi Jinping told U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan at a meeting on Thursday that Beijing hopes Washington can find “the right way to get along.”
“Although the two countries and China-U.S. relations have undergone tremendous changes, China’s goal of committing to a stable, healthy and sustainable Sino-U.S. relationship has not changed,” Xi said, according to China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Tensions between the world’s two largest economies have escalated in recent years, spreading from trade to finance and technology.
China’s leader expressed hope on Thursday that the United States would view China’s development “positively” and “work with China to find the right path for the two major countries to get along,” Beijing said.
Sullivan, an adviser to the outgoing Biden administration, arrived in Beijing on Tuesday for a two-day meeting with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi.
On Thursday, Sullivan met with Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China.
Although Sullivan and Wang Yi have met many times in recent years, this is Sullivan’s first visit to China as national security adviser.
The last official visit to China by the US President’s National Security Advisor was in 2016, when Susan Rice visited Beijing during the Obama administration.
U.S. President Joe Biden and Xi Jinping have decided to speak by phone “in the coming weeks,” the White House said on Wednesday. Sullivan is scheduled to leave China later Thursday.
While the outcome of November’s U.S. presidential election remains unclear, taking a tough stance on Beijing is an issue on which the U.S. parties rarely agree.
Biden dropped out of the U.S. presidential race this summer and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee.
Phil Gordon, Harris’ current national security adviser, told a Council on Foreign Relations event in May that the “China challenge” is much greater than Taiwan and that it needs to ensure that Beijing “does not possess advanced technology, intelligence and military capabilities” that could challenge us .
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