BEIJING: Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, will visit China next week in a new bid to manage tensions months before US elections, the White House said Friday.
Sullivan will travel to Beijing from August 27 to 29 in the first visit by a US national security adviser to China since 2016, although other senior officials including Secretary of State Antony Blinken have visited over the past two years.
The visit comes months ahead of US elections in November in which Vice President Kamala Harris, running to succeed Biden, is expected to campaign on continuing to seek dialogue with China while also maintaining pressure.
Her rival Donald Trump at least rhetorically has vowed a harder line, with some of his aides seeing a far-reaching global showdown with China.
A senior administration official told reporters that the Biden administration’s engagement with China did not indicate any softening of approach and that it continued to believe that “this is an intensely competitive relationship.”
“We are committed to making the investments, strengthening our alliances, and taking the common step on tech and national security that we need to take,” she said, referring to sweeping restrictions on US technology transfers to China imposed under Biden.
“We are committed to managing this competition responsibly, however, and preventing it from veering into conflict,” she said.
The official did not indicate that the United States expected breakthroughs on the trip, in which Sullivan will meet with China’s foreign policy supremo Wang Yi.
The official said Sullivan will reiterate US concerns about China’s support for Russia in its major expansion of its defense industry since the Ukraine invasion. Beijing counters that, unlike the United States, it does not directly give weapons to either side.
Sullivan will also speak to Wang about North Korea and the Middle East, where China has criticized US support for Israel and the United States has sought to call Beijing’s bluff by urging it to use its relations to rein in Iran.
US official Sullivan to visit China next week: White House
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US official Sullivan to visit China next week: White House
- Sullivan and Yi are expected to lay the groundwork for a potential meeting with US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping
Venezuela says oil exports continue normally despite Trump blockade
- Trump warned “Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America”
- Oil prices surged in early trading Wednesday in London on news of the blockade, which comes a week after US troops seized a sanctioned oil tanker
CARACAS: Venezuela struck a defiant note Wednesday, insisting that its crude oil exports were not impacted by US President Donald Trump’s announcement of a potentially crippling blockade.
Trump’s declaration on Tuesday marked a new escalation in his months-long campaign of military and economic pressure on Venezuela’s leftist authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro.
Venezuela, which has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, shrugged off the threat of more pain, insisting that it was proceeding with business as usual.
“Export operations for crude and byproducts continue normally. Oil tankers linked to PDVSA operations continue to sail with full security,” state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) said.
Trump said Tuesday he was imposing “A TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS going into, and out of, Venezuela.”
Referring to the heavy US military presence in the Caribbean — including the world’s largest aircraft carrier — he warned “Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America.”
Oil prices surged in early trading Wednesday in London on news of the blockade, which comes a week after US troops seized a sanctioned oil tanker that had just left Venezuela with over 1 million barrels of crude.
Maduro held telephone talks with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to discuss what he called the “escalation of threats” from Washington and their “implications for regional peace.”
Guterres’s spokesman said the UN chief was working to avoid “further escalation.”
- ‘We are not intimidated’ -
Venezuela’s economy, which has been in freefall over the last decade of increasingly hard-line rule by Maduro, relies heavily on petroleum exports.
Trump’s campaign appears aimed at undermining domestic support for Maduro but the Venezuelan military said Wednesday it was “not intimidated” by the threats.
The foreign minister of China, the main market for Venezuelan oil, defended Caracas in a phone call with his Venezuelan counterpart Yvan Gi against the US “bullying.”
“China opposes all unilateral bullying and supports all countries in defending their sovereignty and national dignity,” he said.
Last week’s seizure of the M/T Skipper, in a dramatic raid involving US forces rappelling from a helicopter, marked a shift in Trump’s offensive against Maduro.
In August, the US leader ordered the biggest military deployment in the Caribbean Sea since the 1989 US invasion of Panama — purportedly to combat drug trafficking, but taking particular aim at Venezuela, a minnow in the global drug trade.
US strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific have left at least 95 people dead since.
Caracas believes that the anti-narcotics operations are a cover for a bid to topple Maduro and steal Venezuelan oil.
The escalating tensions have raised fears of a potential US intervention to dislodge Maduro.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum waded into the dispute on Wednesday, declaring that the United Nations was “nowhere to be seen” and asked that it step up to “prevent any bloodshed.”
- Oil lifeline -
The US blockade threatens major pain for Venezuela’s crumbling economy.
Venezuela has been under a US oil embargo since 2019, forcing it to sell its production on the black market at significantly lower prices, primarily to Asian countries.
The country produces one million barrels of oil per day, down from more than three million in the early 2000s.
Capital Economics analysts predicted that the blockade “would cut off a key lifeline for Venezuela’s economy” in the short term.
“The medium-term impact will hinge largely on how tensions with the US evolve — and what the US administration’s goals are in Venezuela.”
