National security adviser Jake Sullivan met with top Chinese official Wang Yi in Vienna earlier this week for "candid" and "constructive" talks, the White House announced Thursday.
The previously undisclosed meeting is among the highest-level engagements between US and Chinese officials since the spy balloon incident earlier this year, which caused Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone a planned trip to Beijing, and it comes amid what has been an incredibly tumultuous year in relations between the two nations.
"This meeting was part of ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication and responsibly manage competition," a White House readout of the meeting said.
"The two sides had candid, substantive, and constructive discussions on key issues in the U.S.-China bilateral relationship, global and regional security issues, Russia's war against Ukraine, and cross-Strait issues, among other topics," the readout said.
"The two sides agreed to maintain this important strategic channel of communication to advance these objectives, building on the engagement between President Biden and President Xi in Bali, Indonesia, in November 2022," it said.
Following that meeting between the leaders in Bali, Blinken was due to travel to China in early February, but the trip was postponed in response to a Chinese surveillance balloon traversing the United States.
The top US diplomat said that balloon's presence over the US "created the conditions that undermine the purpose of the trip."
US officials have repeatedly said that Blinken would take the trip "when conditions are appropriate for his visit," but as recently as Tuesday Blinken would not go into details.
In February, weeks after the balloon incident, Blinken met with Wang on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.
In that meeting, Blinken "directly spoke to the unacceptable violation of US sovereignty and international law" and said incidents like the balloon, which hovered over US airspace for days before the US shot it down off the coast of South Carolina, "must never occur again," former State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement.
Blinken, who a senior State Department official characterized as "very direct and candid throughout," began the hour long meeting by stating "how unacceptable and irresponsible" it was that China had flown the balloon into US airspace. The secretary later expressed disappointment that Beijing had not engaged in military-to-military dialogue when the Chinese balloon incident occurred, the senior official told reporters.
"He stated, candidly stated, our disappointment that in this recent period that our Chinese military counterparts had refused to pick up the phone. We think that's unfortunate. And that is not the way that our two sides ought to be conducting business," the official said.
In an event in early May, US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns said the US was "ready to talk" to China, and expressed hope that Beijing would "meet us halfway on this."
He said the US was ready for "a more broad-based engagement at the cabinet level," adding, "we have never supported an icing of this relationship."