President Joe Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, will travel to China next week for talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, according to several people familiar with the matter.
The talks are expected to include the possibility of holding a meeting this year between President Biden and the Chinese President Xi Jinping.
This will be Mr. Sullivan's first trip to China as national security adviser. The meetings are planned as part of a series of high-level diplomatic exchanges aimed at stabilizing the US-China relationship.
The talks, described as wide-ranging and strategic in nature, will take place after China suspended discussions with the United States on nuclear and security issues. China announced in July that it had suspended talks it had begun with Washington on arms control.
“The United States would like to deepen discussions on strategic stability, but the Chinese are reluctant. They would prefer to discuss reaching an agreement on the use of nuclear weapons only in response to a nuclear attack. But the United States is not ready for such a doctrine,” former CIA analyst Dennis Wilder, now a professor at Georgetown University, told VOA.
“As a result, there has been a kind of stalemate, with little progress made in the few working group meetings that have been held,” he said.
