Earlier on Friday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his Chinese counterpart Li Shangfu spoke briefly at the Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore, after many months in which the two sides’ militaries had not communicated directly at a senior level.
Their short conversation came after Beijing had declined the Pentagon’s invitation for a formal meeting in Singapore.
The United States has also infuriated Beijing by restricting US exports to China of advanced microchips, chip technologies and manufacturing equipment, pressing allies to side with Washington.
And Washington has faulted China for not doing enough to halt exports of chemicals that are turned into deadly fentanyl in Mexico and sold in the United States.
China, for its part, has put pressures and limitations on some US businesses operating in the country, underscoring the competition between the world’s two largest economies.
At the Group of Seven (G7) meeting in Japan last month, US President Joe Biden predicted that ties between Washington and Beijing would soon thaw, after the February balloon incident.
After that, “everything changed in terms of talking to one another. I think you’re going to see that begin to thaw very shortly”, Biden said in Hiroshima.
On Friday, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan made a separate overture to Beijing, saying that it should be part of nuclear arms pacts between the United States and Russia owing to the rapid build-up of its nuclear warhead supply.
In terms of trying to agree on limitations, the US is “ready to engage China without preconditions”, said Sullivan.
Source: CNA
