Diplomats to discuss China-US relations

China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi and United States National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan were due to meet in Zurich, Switzerland, on Wednesday (local time) amid increasing tensions in bilateral relations.

In a statement early on Wednesday, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying said that Yang, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, and Sullivan will "exchange views on China-US relations and relevant issues".

She described the meeting as "according to the consensus reached by Chinese and US heads-of-state on Sept 10 in their phone call and as agreed upon by China and the US".

In a statement on Tuesday, Emily Horne, spokesperson of the White House National Security Council, also announced the meeting, saying they will follow up on the two presidents' phone call "as we continue to seek to responsibly manage the competition" between the US and China.

In their Sept 10 phone call, President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Joe Biden had candid, in-depth and extensive strategic communication and exchanges on China-US relations and relevant issues of mutual interest, according to a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement issued after the conversation.

Xi pointed out that for some time, due to the US policy on China, bilateral relations have run into serious difficulty. He said this serves neither the fundamental interests of the people of the two countries, nor the common interests of countries around the world.

Xi told Biden that whether the two countries can handle their relationship well has a bearing on the future of the world.

"It is a question of the century to which the two countries must provide a good answer," Xi said.

"Getting the relationship right is not optional, but something we must do and must do well," Xi added.

It was the second phone call between Xi and Biden following their first one in February.

The meeting in Zurich comes shortly after US Trade Representative Katherine Tai unveiled the Biden administration's approach to the US-China trade relationship in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Relations in Washington on Monday.

Tai described the US-China trade and economic relationship as "one of profound consequence", and said that "our objective is not to inflame trade tensions with China".

"How we relate to each other does not just affect our two countries. It impacts the entire world and billions of workers," she said.

Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said that she was glad to hear Tai speak about reengaging with China and taking a practical approach.

"Disappointed that no new vision was offered," Lovely said on social media.

China and the US have tried to maintain high-level communication as bilateral relations deteriorated rapidly and tensions have grown on multiple fronts in recent years.

A month ago, US climate envoy John Kerry paid his second visit to China this year, where he held talks with Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua in Tianjin and also met via video link with Vice-Premier Han Zheng, Yang Jiechi and State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

In late July, Wang met US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman in Tianjin. In March, Yang and Wang met Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Anchorage, Alaska, when Yang rejected the US claim of assuming a "position of strength" in its dealing with China.

In a talk on Monday at the Brookings Institution entitled "Engaging China, reconsidering the strategy and practice", Cheng Li, director of Brookings' John Thornton China Center, said that in the recently published book Engaging China－Fifty Years of Sino-American Relations, none of the dozens of experts on China-US relations considered the engagement with China to be a complete failure.

Susan Thornton, a senior fellow of the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School and a former acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the US State Department, said that the notion that engagement was somewhat a favor for China or mainly aimed at changing China's political system was not in agreement with the facts or history.

She said US clearly saw constructive relations or engagement as working in the US government's favor and in the interests of the US for various reasons.

"The benefits were clear and observable," said Thornton, one of the authors of the book.