National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan was emphatic at his June 17 on-the-record call with reporters that Biden would follow up on his summit with Vladimir Putin, with a discussion with China’s Xi Jinping. The White House transcript stated, “[T]he notion that President Biden will engage in the coming month with President Xi in some way to take stock of where we are in the relationship and to ensure that we have that kind of direct communication that we found valuable with President Putin yesterday, we’re very much committed to that. It’s now just a question of when and how.”
The bulk of his press conference was to report how successful Biden had been on his European trip, basically, that he’s taken leadership of the West with his B3W—Build Back Better World, “a new infrastructure initiative … that will be a high-standards, transparent, climate-friendly alternative to the Belt Road Initiative.” He has NATO sold on “tackling China … for the first time, truly taking the security challenge posed by China seriously … and standing up to, countering and pushing back on China’s non-market economic practices….” With no irony intended, he described how governments supervising a deal between Airbus and Boeing (with agreements on investments and tariffs) so as to curtail China’s large passenger aircraft industry, is an example of the ending of “non-market economic practices.”
Sullivan described how pulling together such a Western alliance means that one can deal with Russia as a “principled engagement"—presumably, making our values clear to the opponent while identifying areas to work together. The question was posed: After Russia, does that mean “you can go on to a bilateral discussion with President Xi and how’re you taking that on?”
