Three months after a Chinese spy balloon flew over the US, sending relations with Beijing to their lowest point since diplomatic ties were established in 1979, Jake Sullivan embarked on his own stealth mission.
The US national security adviser flew to Vienna on May 10 2023 for a highly consequential meeting — one that would be held in the kind of clandestine fashion in keeping with the Austrian capital’s historic reputation.
Sullivan was in Vienna to meet Wang Yi, a veteran Chinese diplomat who had become his country’s top foreign policy official in January. 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.
It was the first of several secret rendezvous around the world, including Malta and Thailand, now called the “strategic channel”. Sullivan will arrive in Beijing on Tuesday for another round of talks with Wang in what will be his first visit to China as US national security adviser.
The channel has played a vital role managing relations between the rival superpowers during a period fraught with tensions. At a time when the US is consumed by the idea of competition with China and Beijing can shift abruptly between supreme confidence and paranoia about its standing in the world, the channel has been a shock absorber that officials say has helped cut the risk of a miscalculation by both nations.
While the backchannel has not resolved the fundamental issues between the rival superpowers, says Rorry Daniels, a China expert at the Asia Society Policy Institute, it has aided each’s understanding of the other.
“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,” she says.
Based on interviews with US and Chinese officials, the FT is able to recount how this diplomatic channel came about — and the details of how it operated.
The stakes were extremely high in Vienna. The balloon episode was just one of many events that had sent relations into a tailspin. China was angry about US export controls on semiconductors, while Washington was furious that China appeared to be providing support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.
All the issues were stacked against the backdrop of the most sensitive topic in US-China relations — Taiwan. In recent years, China has increased its military activity around the island it considers sovereign territory, sparking concern in the US. Meanwhile, American efforts to arm the country and train its military have angered Beijing.
Tensions flared in August 2022 when Nancy Pelosi became the first US House Speaker to visit Taiwan in 25 years. China responded with massive military drills and fired ballistic missiles over the island for the first time.
Sullivan was mindful of recent events as he prepared for the meeting, which would include dinner at Hotel Sacher, whose guests have included President John F Kennedy, Queen Elizabeth II and Graham Greene, author of spy story The Third Man.
“What was going through Jake’s mind was essentially that we’ve got to take everything that’s come before and say, ‘All right, how do we actually set out a path that gets us on a stable trajectory’, while at the same time not giving an inch on the things that we insist on doing because they’re in our interest,” one US official tells the Financial Times.
Vienna was chosen because it was equidistant from Washington and Beijing and a city where the officials could meet without attracting much attention. “It seemed a bit cloak and dagger,” says a second US official.
It was also an interesting choice given its reputation for being a haven for spies over the years. “I’m sure there were plenty of other folks in that hotel,” the official adds with a grin.
The two sides kept the meeting under wraps by staying mostly inside the hotel. “It’s pretty bare bones. You fly in, you drive to the hotel, you go into the room, you sit there for hours and hours,” says the first US official. “There’s no hanging out in Vienna or Malta or Bangkok . . . It’s the least glamorous way to see the world.”
But they were not in Vienna for sightseeing. They had been tasked with trying to stabilise the most important bilateral relationship in the world. Six months earlier, President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping had agreed to create a strategic channel when they met at the G20 in Bali, Indonesia. They wanted to put a “floor” under the relationship to stop it from sinking further. But within months, the plan had been derailed by the balloon saga.
Vienna was an opportunity to attempt a second reboot. But it was unclear if Wang would agree, partly because of an angry exchange about Ukraine with US secretary of state Antony Blinken in Munich months earlier.
“We weren’t sure the Chinese would say yes,” says the second official.
The channel was designed to facilitate the kind of in-depth discussions that are harder during high-profile visits. Washington has used national security advisers before for sensitive China-related missions, including when President George H W Bush sent Brent Scowcroft to Beijing in 1989 following the Tiananmen Square massacre.
The choreography in Vienna included the dinner, which was limited to four officials on each side to create an environment that would enable the central pair to have a genuine discussion rather than an exchange of talking points.
There were some light moments. “We would talk about travel, sports, that kind of thing,” says the first official, before emphasising that they were “not for an extended period” to stress the serious nature of the talks.
The plan to create a less scripted conversation appeared to work. “It’s pretty rare to see both sides set aside talking points and just have a pretty in-depth philosophical strategic conversation,” says the second US official.
Each side went into the meetings with a tailored list of strategic issues that they wanted to discuss at length. One Chinese official says Wang used the encounters in Vienna, Malta and Bangkok to press three themes.
His prime message was that China viewed Taiwan as the most important issue, a “red line” that should never be crossed.
“He indicated that Taiwan independence is the biggest risk to cross-Strait peace and the biggest challenge to China-US relations,” says the Chinese official.
China views US engagement with Taiwan as interference in its domestic affairs. But in a delicate balancing act — not mentioned in public — it understands that Washington has far more ability than Beijing to influence Taipei. The Chinese official said the strategic channel allowed Wang and Sullivan to discuss Taiwan in a “very candid” way.
In Vienna, for example, Sullivan stressed that Washington was not trying to spark a war, according to the first US official.
“We’re not trying to drag China into a conflict over Taiwan. Nothing could be further from the truth,” adds the second official, who added that Beijing had become “pretty conspiratorial” about US intentions.
Underscoring the paranoia, Xi had told European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen a few weeks before the summit that the US was trying to goad China into attacking Taiwan.
The slow thaw of US-China relations
March 2021
The first meeting between Chinese officials and the Biden administration in Alaska descends into angry public rebukes
August 2022
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visits Taiwan, enraging China, which launches military exercises near the island in response
November 2022
At the Bali G20 summit, Biden and Xi agree to set up a diplomatic backchannel to put a “floor” under relations
February 2023
The US Air Force shoots down a high-altitude spy balloon that flew across North America, ratcheting up tensions
May 2023
The first backchannel meeting between Sullivan and Wang takes place in Vienna
September 2023
The second backchannel meeting between Sullivan and Wang takes place in Malta
October 2023
Wang visits Washington to meet Biden, paving the way for the US and Chinese leaders to meet
November 2023
Biden and Xi meet in San Francisco for a summit both sides agree marks a step towards the easing of tensions
January 2024
The third backchannel meeting takes place in Bangkok
August 2024
Sullivan travels to Beijing for the first time as national security adviser for a fourth round of talks
“The kind of basic notion of, ‘You guys are playing with fire on Taiwan’ remains a central feature of their thinking,” the first US official says.
Beyond Taiwan, Wang focused on the other two messages, according to the Chinese official. He rejected the US framing of the relationship as a “competition”. And he stressed that China opposed US export controls.
Sullivan strived to get Wang to understand the new reality — that the nations were in a competition but one that should not preclude co-operation. “That was a really hard jump for the Chinese,” says the second US official. “They wanted to define the relationship neatly [as] we’re either partners or we’re competitors.”
The Chinese official said China did not accept the argument. “Wang Yi explained very clearly that you cannot have co-operation, dialogue and communication . . . and at the same time undercut China’s interests.”
While Wang was not persuaded, Vienna enabled a reboot. It paved the way for Blinken to visit China that June and other reciprocal high-level visits.
In September 2023, four months after Vienna, Sullivan and Wang arrived in Malta for another meeting.
It was another low-profile location with historical pedigree, having hosted a meeting between President George H W Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989 after the fall of the Berlin wall.
Adding intrigue in Malta, Wang had been reappointed to his former job of foreign minister — in addition to keeping his existing more senior role — after the incumbent, Qin Gang, was mysteriously ousted. But he and Sullivan were focused on negotiating a possible meeting between Biden and Xi if the Chinese leader decided to attend the Apec forum in San Francisco that November.
“Malta was really about nailing down what the San Francisco summit . . . would try to accomplish,” says the first official.
They discussed possible deals for a summit, including a compromise that would involve the US lifting sanctions on a Chinese government forensic science institute in return for China cracking down on the export of chemicals used to make fentanyl. They also talked about resurrecting the military-to-military communication channels China had shut after Pelosi visited Taiwan. And they discussed creating an artificial intelligence dialogue.
While there were tough exchanges on issues such as US concerns about China helping Russia rebuild its defence industrial base and other issues, both sides appeared ready to move forward.
“Vienna and Malta helped China-US relations go back to the Bali consensus,” says the Chinese official, referring to the November 2022 agreement between Biden and Xi to try to stabilise the turbulent relationship.
They agreed that Wang would visit Washington in October where he met Biden and sat down with Sullivan at Blair House, the state guest house across from the White House, to finalise the final details for San Francisco.
The choreography surrounding the resulting summit was intense. At one point, the Chinese became agitated because the US was taking longer than expected to provide a bulletproof glass panel to protect Xi inside his hotel room.
In the end, the event went off without a hitch as Biden and Xi held four hours of talks at the Filoli estate in Woodside. Both sides appeared to come away satisfied as the main ideas from Malta had come to fruition.
“We walked away from Woodside with three pretty solid outcomes . . . despite what had been a pretty challenging spring,” says the second US official.
But not everyone was happy with how they had got there. In Washington, Biden came under fire from Republicans. Mike Gallagher, the then influential head of the House China committee, said in June 2023 he was falling into the trap of “zombie engagement”.
“We took some shit,” says the first US official, who argued the channel paved “a road to San Francisco” and thereby gave Biden a critical chance to raise concerns directly with Xi.
Other participants add that it was important to have more diplomacy when doing things like taking competitive actions against China.
Rush Doshi, a former NSC official who attended the meetings with Wang, says it was important to explain to China what the US was doing — and not doing. “Diplomacy is how you clear up misperception and avoid escalation and manage competition. It’s actually not at odds with competition but part of any sustainable competitive strategy.”
Two months after San Francisco, Wang and Sullivan met again in Bangkok where, according to the first US official, Wang was focused on two issues: the intersection of economics, technology and security, and secondly Taiwan.
Sullivan told Wang that while China was angry about US technology export controls, it should consider its own policies, using an analogy of “stock versus flow”. But Wang was adamant that the US was trying to contain China’s economic rise with its “small yard, high fence” export control strategy, the Chinese official says.
“Tech is a massive priority for them,” the first US official says. “They do not accept the underlying premise of what they see as essentially the securitisation of the technology relationship when they view it as fundamentally about core economics and innovation and not about national security.”
In Bangkok, Sullivan again raised the issue of Chinese support for Russia. The first US official says China had taken a few small measures to address the concerns but, “the overall direction of travel is not great.”
There is only so much this diplomatic channel can do to resolve the big disagreements that still lie between the US and China, says Daniels of the Asia Society Policy Institute. “It is not succeeding yet in building support in either country to pursue a fundamentally less confrontational relationship.”
Yet despite many differences, both sides say that the channel is valuable. The Chinese official said it was a “very important” mechanism that played a constructive role and enabled important discussions about Taiwan.
It has helped lower the temperature on Taiwan after a period where some experts worried that the US and China were on a trajectory towards possible conflict. While China refuses to rule out using force over Taiwan and conflict with the US cannot be ruled out, the engagement has for now sparked a sigh of relief from US allies in Europe and Asia.
US and Chinese officials say one reason the channel worked was the personalities involved. The first meeting between top Biden officials and their Chinese counterparts — in Alaska in 2021 — had erupted into a fiery public exchange between Wang’s predecessor Yang Jiechi and Blinken. Partly because of this, Chinese officials say they prefer dealing with Sullivan, even though they view him as tough.
The US likewise prefers Wang to his predecessor, nicknamed “Tiger” Yang. Wang was not polemical. The first US official says he would make his points forcefully but was intent on ensuring that Sullivan understood China’s perspective rather than scoring points. “Yang was a different breed of cat,” he quips.
That suited Sullivan who was focused on ensuring both sides understood each other to avoid misunderstandings that could create more difficult-to-manage turbulence in the relationship and lead to possible conflict.
Sullivan tells the FT that he was under no illusions that the channel would convince China to change its policies, but he stressed that it had played an instrumental role in helping to shift the dynamic in US-China relations.
“All you can do is take their policy, our policy, and then try to manage it so that we can take the actions we need to take and maintain stability in the relationship,” Sullivan says. “We have been able to accomplish both of those things.”
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