WASHINGTON — The U.S. and China will hold the first high-level, in-person talks since Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine, as the Biden administration continues to try to enlist Beijing to exert influence on its neighbor to end the crisis.
The White House said national security adviser Jake Sullivan will meet in Rome on Monday with China’s top diplomat, Communist Party Politburo member Yang Jiechi.
President Joe Biden’s top advisers have been working to increase pressure on China to enforce sanctions on Russia’s economy imposed by the U.S. and its European and Asian allies. So far, U.S. officials have said they haven’t seen evidence that Beijing has tried to circumvent them, though Sullivan warned China against such a move on Sunday.
Topics of Monday’s conversation will include the impact on regional and global security from Russia’s war against Ukraine, National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne said, as Biden officials work to keep lines of communication open between the world’s two largest economies. A Chinese Foreign Ministry statement said the two sides would exchange views on global and regional issues of mutual concern, without directly mentioning Ukraine.
Sullivan will also meet on Monday with Italy’s Luigi Mattiolo, diplomatic adviser to Prime Minister Mario Draghi, about coordinating the international response to the war, Horne said in a statement.
The last time Sullivan and Yang met, in Switzerland in October, they discussed areas of mutual interest such as climate change, as well as areas of friction — including human rights concerns in Xinjiang and Hong Kong and disputes over Taiwan and the South China Sea.
While the Biden administration has been careful not to call out China directly for what officials believe was its tacit support of the invasion of Ukraine, the White House continues to stress that history will judge China’s actions relating to the war.
Just weeks before the invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping declared in a lengthy joint statement that the two nations’ friendship had “no limits.”
“We believe that China, in fact, was aware before the invasion took place that Vladimir Putin was planning something,” Sullivan said on CNN on Sunday. “They may not have understood the full extent of it because it’s very possible Putin lied to them the way he lied to Europeans and others.”
Sullivan said the U.S. is watching whether China provides material support or economic support to Russia. “It is a concern of ours,” he said. “I’m not going to sit here publicly and brandish threats, but what I will tell you is that we are communicating directly, privately to Beijing.”
U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo last week put Chinese chip industry companies on notice that there would be consequences if they continued to supply Russia with the inputs that have been made subject to export controls.
Monday’s tete-a-tete will also take place following intensifying tensions over Taiwan, the island that’s been separately administered since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, and which Xi has demanded to unify with the Communist-ruled mainland.
In October, the Pentagon confirmed that the U.S. has had troops in Taiwan training local forces to better defend themselves in case of an attack by China — which in 2021 sent warplanes on some 960 forays through the island’s air defense identification zone.
China earlier this month warned the U.S. against trying to build what it called a Pacific version of NATO, with Foreign Minister Wang Yi declaring that security disputes over Taiwan and Ukraine were “not comparable at all.”
