How US, China kept talking with 'secret meetings' around the world

The US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan is visiting China on Tuesday to take forward what may be called patch-up talks that he started in secret in Austria’s Vienna last year. In a Vienna hotel, Sullivan met veteran Chinese diplomat Wang Yi in May 2023 against the backdrop of a diplomatically highly inflammable spy balloon incident. The US forces shot the balloon down in February 2023 but the bilateral tensions had soared high.

Having secret talks with China was not a new strategy for the US. Senior Bush — President George HW Bush — had sent his National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft to Beijing in 1989 following the Tiananmen Square massacre on a secret mission. But the 2023 setting was different. It followed intensely angry exchanges of the recent past. Listing four incidents would make the context clear.

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• In March 2021, the first meeting between Chinese officials and the Biden administration in Alaska had descended into angry public rebukes.

• Then in August 2022, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan visit had enraged China, which launched military exercises near the island in retaliation. Pelosi was the first US House Speaker to visit Taiwan in 25 years

• Hopes revived in November 2022 at the Bali G20 summit in Indonesia as US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping agreed to set up a diplomatic backchannel to put a “floor” under relations.

• But then in February 2023, China sent a high-altitude spy balloon across the Pacific and it flew across North America before the US Air Force shot it down. But the incident ratcheted up tensions. China-US observers said their diplomatic relations hit the lowest since the two countries established formal ties in 1979.

Three months later Sullivan embarked on his stealth mission. After handshakes and a group photograph, the two teams began a series of talks at the Imperial Hotel that spanned more than eight hours over two days, the Financial Times has reported quoting officials from the US and China.

The report says that the Vienna meeting was the first of several secret rendezvous of the two sides around the world — including Malta and Thailand, now called the “strategic channel”.

Now, Sullivan is visiting China for the first time as the US national security adviser for another round of talks with Wang.

The “strategic channel” has played a vital role in managing relations between the rival superpowers during a period fraught with tensions. When the US and China are clearly engaged in a competition for global dominance, Beijing looks to be guided by paranoia and supreme confidence depending on circumstances and rivals it deals with, the so-called strategic channel can continue to play a shock absorber, helping cut the risk of a miscalculation by both nations in the larger Pacific region.

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Why secret talks became so significant

While the backchannel diplomacy has not resolved the fundamental issues between the US and China, it has definitely helped the two competing powers understand each others’ concerns better. FT has quoted Rorry Daniels, a China expert at the Asia Society Policy Institute, as saying, “It’s been very successful in short-term stabilisation, communicating red lines and previewing actions that might be seen as damaging to the other side.”

Given the backdrop, the stakes were extremely high at backchannel talks. China has also been angry about the US actions against its semiconductor export business, diversion of big investments with Washington’s continued pressure on Beijing, the freedom of navigation issue in the South China Sea, Xi’s support for Russia’s Vladimir Putin over his invasion of Ukraine, and of course Taiwan topping all other issues.

China has become increasingly assertive with its military activities over Taiwan as well as in the South China Sea. It has portrayed both regions as its sovereign jurisdiction with angry reactions to any outside move towards or contact with either. Meanwhile, America has continued its efforts to arm Taiwan and assert free navigation in the South China Sea, citing international laws governing water bodies.

What happened in other meetings

In all three secret meetings were held. Sullivan and Wang will now hold the fourth meeting of the series but not in secret. Biden and Xi have approved these meetings setting the tone with two encounters of their own — after Bali, another in San Francisco in November 2023 in a summit, where the two sides agreed to ease tensions.

FT has quoted an unnamed Chinese official saying that Wang used the encounters in Vienna, Malta, and Bangkok — the three secret meetings — to press three themes, the most important of which was that China viewed Taiwan as the most important issue, a “red line” that should never be crossed.

“He [Wang] indicated that Taiwan independence is the biggest risk to cross-Strait peace and the biggest challenge to China-US relations,” the Chinese official was quoted as saying.

At the Malta meeting in September 2023, Sullivan and Wang set up the framework for a meeting between Biden and Xi in November. Before the presidents met, Wang visited Washington to meet Biden, clearing the path for the November summit talks.

Sullivan and Wang were again back for a secret talk in Bangkok in January this year. Economics, technology and security were part of one block of a comprehensive exchange, and the Taiwan issue was discussed separately.

Clearly, each side went into the meetings with a tailored list of strategic issues that they wanted to discuss at length. Now that the two sides have come out of their secret chambers, hopes are high that the US and China may announce something that may ease tensions in the Pacific region.