Washington has launched an Office of China Coordination to ensure “nimbler and more consistent policy” and called for stronger military-industrial supply chains to meet the “pacing challenge” that Beijing represents, top U.S. officials said. The new State Department office will help ensure the Administration’s China strategy is effectively implemented. The U.S. wants to keep competition within bounds and, where possible, cooperate on climate and other global issues following Presidents Biden and Xi’s November meeting in Indonesia, said U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.
“It doesn’t erase the difficulties, the tensions, the potential for crises that needs to be managed very carefully through effective communications channels,” added Sullivan, speaking at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “But it does mean that there is a responsible way to steward the relationship between the U.S. and the PRC and to effectuate a strategy towards the PRC.”
The mandate of the Coordination Office is to “successfully execute” U.S. China policy, but also “responsibly manage” competition involving “the most complex and consequential geopolitical challenge we face”. Jake Sullivan said an under-appreciated yet significant priority in 2023 would involve strengthening the U.S. military-industrial supply chain. In September, the Pentagon said it would temporarily halt F-35 fighter aircraft deliveries after learning that a magnet in its engine came from China. This strengthening is meant to ensure that “we are not able to be coerced by adversaries at a moment of geopolitical peril by any country being able to turn off some essential goods coming to the U.S.”, Sullivan said.
The Yale University graduate has emerged as one of the Administration’s most hardline officials towards China, helping frame cutting-edge semiconductor exports as a fundamental military – and related economic – threat to U.S. national security. In the latest blow to China’s tech ambitions, the Administration added Chinese memory chip maker Yangtze Memory Technologies Co and 21 “major” Chinese players in the artificial intelligence chip sector to a trade blacklist, broadening its crackdown on China’s semiconductor industry. The Office of China Coordination replaces the China Desk, which was already the State Department’s largest individual country section. It will continue to be overseen by Rick Waters, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for China, Taiwan and Mongolia, the South China Morning Post reports.
