The Biden administration is still confident a meeting will be secured between the U.S. president and Chinese leadership.
White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, in an interview with CNN, denied that both China and the U.S. was inevitably headed towards conflict.
“I sat in the room with President Biden when he met with President Xi in Bali last year, and that was not my experience,” Sullivan said, explaining that both leaders attempted to reach an understanding.
“The desire on both parts to put a floor under the relationship, to manage the competition responsibly, to ensure that competition does not become a conflict,” he added. “We have intense competition; we also have intense diplomacy.”
“At some point, we will see President Biden and President Xi come back together again. So as far as I’m concerned, there is nothing inconsistent with, on the one hand, competing vigorously in important domains on economics and technology, and also ensuring that that competition does not veer into conflict or confrontation,” the security advisor said.
“We believe there is nothing inevitable about some kind of conflict or cold war between the U.S. and China.”
The move comes after Beijing declined an invitation for a meeting between Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the Chinese Communist Party’s Defense Minister Li Shangfu at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.
“Overnight, the [People’s Republic of China (PRC)] informed the U.S. that they have declined our early May invitation for Secretary Austin to meet with PRC Minister of National Defense Li Shangfu in Singapore this week,” the Pentagon said in a statement to the Wall Street Journal.
There have been constant efforts from U.S. officials to secure a face-to-face meeting with Beijing, including a direct letter from Austin to Li.
Yet the U.S. and its democratic allies have continued this push for dialogue despite dealing with Beijing-backed foreign interference and re-establishing its military in the Indo-Pacific in preparation for a potential outbreak of conflict around Taiwan.
