Changing China not US goal, official says

The administration of US President Joe Biden is not seeking to change or contain China, but wants the two major powers to coexist in the international system, the White House's top security adviser said amid expectations for talks between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

"The goal of America's China policy is to create a circumstance in which two major powers are going to have to operate in an international system for the foreseeable future," Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security adviser, said on Sunday.

"This will be a competition as we go forward. The Chinese government does have a different approach to many of these issues. And the goal here is not containment. It's not a new Cold War," he said in an interview with CNN that aired on Sunday.

According to Sullivan, one of the errors in previous US policy toward China was the notion of bringing about a "fundamental transformation" of the Chinese system.

"That is not the object of the Biden administration. The object of the Biden administration is to shape the international environment so that it is more favorable to the interests and values of the United States and its allies and partners, to like-minded democracies," he said. "It is not to bring about some fundamental transformation of China itself."

Sullivan's comments, offering clues to the thinking of the Biden administration, may have added relevance with Western media reports suggesting that Biden and Xi are likely to meet virtually this month or the next.

The national security adviser's remarks, made 10 months into the Biden administration, seem to align with the views he expressed months before he was chosen by Biden as one of his top foreign policy advisers.

He has advocated for a "clear-eyed coexistence" in US-China relations, noting that despite the many divides between the two countries, each will need to be prepared to live with the other as a major power.

"The starting point for the right US approach must be humility about the capacity of decisions made in Washington to determine the direction of long-term developments in Beijing," he wrote in "How America Can Both Challenge and Coexist With China", an article co-authored in late 2019 with Kurt M. Campbell, now Biden's top Asia adviser.

When asked if he wanted a continuation of the status quo in Taiwan, Sullivan told CNN: "We continue to adhere to the one-China policy, the Taiwan Relations Act, and we oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo."

China has said that the one-China Principle and the three Sino-US Joint Communiques are the political foundation of the China-US relationship, and that it remains firmly opposed to and has never accepted the US' "Taiwan Relations Act".

Sullivan's views, if they prevail, could suggest that the US administration has responded to the three bottom lines Beijing set with Washington three months ago during a visit by US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman to Tianjin.

The first of these is that the US must not challenge, slander or attempt to subvert the path and system of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Second, the US must not seek to obstruct or break China's development process. Finally, the US must not infringe upon China's sovereignty or damage its territorial integrity.

The greatest obstacle could be on Capitol Hill, where the only consensus the lawmakers seem to have is countering what they deem a "strategic competitor". More than 260 bills with negative content on China were put forward in Congress in the first half of this year.

Chinese Ambassador to the US Qin Gang, in a speech on Aug 31, said those bills were drafted "out of no knowledge, misunderstanding and disinformation of China, particularly the Innovation and Competition Act of 2021 and the EAGLES Act".

Qin said: "They underestimate the common interests between the two countries. If they become laws, they will hijack China-US relations and gravely damage America's own interests."

The Brookings Institution, in an analysis released at the weekend, said: "Both countries will need to find a new and enduring framework for managing the relationship."