How backchannel diplomacy helped US and China emerge from shadow of balloon incident

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan gives inside view of strategic communication efforts that help manage often fragile relationship

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Wang Yi (right) meets Jake Sullivan in Vienna on May 10, 2023 in an attempt to restore diplomatic relations after the US shot down a Chinese balloon. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 9:10pm, 16 Dec 2024Updated: 9:30pm, 16 Dec 2024

In February last year, in an incident that threatened already fragile US-China ties, the US shot down what Washington said was a Chinese spy balloon threatening its sovereignty while China countered that the craft was a stray civilian device.

Three months later, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan and China’s foreign policy chief Wang Yi met in secret in Vienna where for two days they had “frank, in-depth, substantive and constructive” discussions to stabilise the decline in relations, according to China’s readout.

Wang and Sullivan held two further secret meetings, in Malta in September last year and in Bangkok in January this year. They have also met in Washington and Beijing.

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Sullivan described how these kinds of backchannel meetings prevented US-China relations from further deteriorating in a video interview with an Australian think tank published on Monday.

“It allowed us to manage through difficult situations at points when the relationship could have taken a very serious downward turn,” Sullivan said in an interview at the White House with the Lowy Institute’s executive director, Michael Fullilove.

Sullivan, who will leave office when Donald Trump becomes president on January 20, said the lines of communication had to be maintained to responsibly manage competition between Beijing and Washington and prevent it from veering into conflict.

“It requires a strategic channel empowered by the two presidents, President Biden and President Xi, of senior officials, myself and Wang Yi, to talk through those strategic areas of profound difference and risk between the US and China,” Sullivan said.

In the interview, Sullivan said their discussions covered economics and national security, the South China Sea, the war in Ukraine and “careful, sober, detailed engagement on cross-strait relations to try to maintain peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait”.