SIMIC

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Yang Jiechi, a member of the Politburo and Foreign Minister Wang Yi will meet with Mr Sullivan this week in Anchorage, Alaska, on March 18-19.

"This is our effort to communicate clearly to the Chinese government how the United States intends to proceed at a strategic level, what we believe our fundamental interests and values are, and what our concerns with their activities are - whether it's on Hong Kong, or Xinjiang, or in the Taiwan Strait - or, frankly, the issues that we heard today from our Quad partners: their coercion of Australia, their harassment around the Senkaku Islands, their aggression on the border with India," he said.

The relations between China and the US are at an all-time low. The two countries are currently engaged in a bitter confrontation over various issues, including trade, the origins of the Covid bug, the communist giant's aggressive military moves in the disputed South China Sea and human rights.

As far as China is concerned, the United States, as Mr Biden has said repeatedly, believes that we are going to end up in a stiff competition with China, and we intend to prevail in that competition, Mr Sullivan told reporters.

Mr Sullivan along with the Secretary of State Antony Blinken are scheduled to meet their Chinese counterparts, the first in-person meeting since Biden became US president in January.

Responding to a question, Mr Sullivan said that this will stay more in that zone than get into the details of questions around tariffs or export controls.