U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan will hold talks with China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi in Switzerland this week, the South China Morning Post reported, as the world’s two largest economies try to break a deadlock in diplomatic relations.
Sullivan and Yang will likely meet Wednesday the Hong Kong-based newspaper reported, citing people familiar with the matter. It comes less than a month after President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping spoke on the telephone, and a possible summit between the two heads of state will be one item on the agenda, the outlet reported.
China had repeatedly linked breaking the logjam in bilateral ties to the release of Huawei Technologies Co. Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou from house arrest in Canada, where she’d battled extradition to the U.S. on fraud charges for nearly three years.
Her return to China last month sparked optimism for improved relations that might be short-lived.
The Biden administration announced Monday that it will soon directly engage with Beijing to enforce commitments in their trade deal and start a process to exclude certain products from U.S. tariffs.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai is set to speak to Chinese Vice Premier Liu He in the coming days, and is expected to stress China’s shortfalls in the agreement struck under former President Donald Trump.
China’s official Xinhua News Agency warned the U.S. that pursuing “wrong” trade policies would only “worsen the global economy,” in a commentary Tuesday.
“China has shown great sincerity during previous rounds of negotiations and has made effective efforts in tackling trade relations between the two countries,” the agency said.
“The U.S. is ignoring bad results from unilaterally initiating the trade war towards China and does not intend to take constructive measures to correct that,” it added.
The Chinese foreign ministry in Beijing and the U.S. State Department in Washington didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday, which is a public holiday in China.