America wants to move beyond ‘spy balloons’: Jake Sullivan

Washington: White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Wang Yi during a talk in Vienna this week that the Biden administration was “ahead” of tensions over his country’s downing of a Chinese spy balloon that entered the US. considering growing up’. Both sides agreed that the February incident was “unfortunate” and are now looking to “restore a standard and normal channel” of dialogue. A senior official of the Biden administration gave this information.

The meeting was not made public by either Washington or Beijing before Wednesday and Thursday’s high-level talks in the Austrian capital. The two leaders spoke with each other for more than eight hours in what the White House termed as a wide-ranging conversation. A Joe Biden administration official told reporters on condition of anonymity that both sides agreed the February incident was “unfortunate” and are now considering “restoring standard and normal channels” of dialogue.

There have been many indications that tensions between the world’s two largest economies may be easing and the talks are the latest in a series. With the deepening of political and military competition between China and the US, many US officials and experts are concerned that the lack of credible ‘crisis communication’ could lead to a minor standoff between the two countries turning into major hostilities. He cited the potential for dialogue with the former Soviet Union that led to the end of the Cold War without nuclear weapons being fired at each other.

This was Wang’s first face-to-face talk with Sullivan since his elevation to the Communist Party’s Politburo last year. The Politburo is the apex policy-making body of the Communist Party, composed of the 24 most senior leaders. Wang has been China’s foreign minister for nearly 10 years and is the only diplomat to have been made a member of the Politburo.