Beijing. The US and China have agreed to expand military-to-military contacts and pledged to hold a second round of talks on artificial intelligence (AI) cooperation. These agreements were reached at a two-day meeting between US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and China’s top diplomat Wang Yi in Beijing that concluded on August 28. According to reports, during the meeting, the two sides agreed to maintain high-level exchanges and pledged to cooperate in areas such as drug control, law enforcement, climate change and repatriation of illegal migrants.
Let us tell you that Sullivan’s visit was the fourth of such strategic talks held between the two leaders since May 2023. For the first time they met in Vienna to prepare the ground for the first of a series of top-level bilateral meetings, which helped restore a certain measure of stability in bilateral relations. However, growing tensions between the two countries over a number of matters have hindered meaningful results of such talks. This was his first visit to China as National Security Advisor aimed at stabilizing bilateral relations to avoid conflict. During this visit, he also met with Wang Yi, China’s Foreign Minister and the ruling Communist Party’s top foreign policy official. He had a meeting on Thursday with General Zhang Youxia, one of the two vice presidents of the ‘Central Military Commission’. This is an organization headed by Xi. It is not common for this type of meeting to take place with an American official. This meeting has taken place at a time when both sides want to maintain relations at the same level before the US President changes in January.
Zhang told Sullivan that your request to meet me shows how much importance you attach to military security and the relationship between our militaries. A statement issued by the White House after the talks between Sullivan and Zhang said that the two sides “recognized the progress in continuous and regular mutual military communication over the past 10 months and referred to the agreement announced on Wednesday for a telephone conversation between commanders in the near future.”