WASHINGTON — When veteran Chinese diplomat Liu Jianchao visited Washington in mid-January, just days before the Taiwan elections, analysts were not sure whether he had come to warn of the consequences of an outcome that Beijing did not favor, or to calm the waters and avoid miscalculations.
On Tuesday evening, U.S. President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan shared some of the behind-the-scenes developments leading up to the Jan. 13 vote, as he gave a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.
“Just a few weeks ago, Taiwan held historic elections without any major cross-strait incident, in part because all sides — Washington, Beijing and Taipei — worked to reduce miscommunication and misperception about their respective intentions,” he said.
“That is an outcome that few may have foreseen in August of 2022, when most expected the cross-street situation to grow more tense, not less,” he added, referring to the recent flare-up after then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan.
“It’s no guarantee of future trends, and the risk remains real. So we have to keep working at this by intensifying both diplomacy and deterrence,” Sullivan said.
Lai Ching-te, Taiwan’s president-elect, said a week before the election that China’s meddling had been the “most serious ever.” He accused Beijing of resorting to tactics such as “military threats, economic coercion, cognitive warfare [and] misinformation.”
When Liu himself addressed the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Jan. 9, he touched on Beijing’s standard talking points about Taiwan — it being “the very core of the core interests,” and a “red line that mustn’t be crossed.” But he refrained from criticizing the U.S. and seemed to want to move on from the topic when asked about the island.
Liu’s meeting with Jon Finer, the U.S. principal deputy national security adviser, in Washington the following day was described in a readout as part of “ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication and responsibly manage competition.”
Sullivan told the CFR audience that the U.S. side made clear that it was not taking a position on the Taiwan polls. “We remained studiously neutral throughout,” Sullivan said.
He said that U.S. policy on Taiwan remains constant — before, during and after the election — based on the “One China” policy. This acknowledges the Chinese position that there is but one China, although the U.S. does not ultimately take a stance on sovereignty.
Reflecting on the November 2023 summit between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Filoli Estate in California, Sullivan said that the conclusion the U.S. side drew was that there is no substitute for leader-to-leader conversations.
“It became so apparent over the course of that meeting … how central that ingredient has to be to an effective stewardship of U.S.-China policy,” he told the council.
Last week, Sullivan met in Bangkok with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, where the two sides agreed to arrange a phone call between Biden and Xi in the coming months.
“Both of us agreed that we would report back to our leaders, and we can get them on the phone sooner rather than later,” Sullivan said.
On the relationship going forward, Sullivan said the U.S. will not recreate mechanisms from an earlier period — likely referring to the twice-yearly Strategic and Economic Dialogue that was prominent during the days of presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. But he said the Biden administration does see value in “launching and shepherding a select number of working-level consultations” in “carefully chosen areas to advance our interests and achieve results.”
The U.S. and China launched a joint counter-narcotics working group in Beijing on Tuesday and Sullivan hinted at more to come.
“In the period ahead, we hope we can work with [China] to deepen the crisis communication mechanisms to reduce the risk of conflict,” he said. “We’re ready to coordinate on climate, health security, global macroeconomic stability, and new challenges like the risk posed by artificial intelligence.”
