June 15, 2022: -On Monday, National security adviser Jake Sullivan met with the top diplomat of China, Yang Jiechi, to examine a field of security challenges confronting the countries’ bilateral relationship, which include the war in Ukraine and North Korea’s series of ballistic missile tests by Russia.

A senior administration official told me the talks maintained in Luxembourg as “honest, in-depth, substantive and productive.”

The anonymously speaking officer said the meeting stayed almost five hours and observed a May phone call between Sullivan and Yang.

The meeting comes as the U.S. presses the second-biggest economy not to allow Moscow with harsh global sanctions over the Kremlin’s aggression in Ukraine. In the weeks since Russia overran its ex-Soviet neighbor, Washington, and its partners have set rounds of coordinated sanctions vaulting Russia past Iran and North Korea as the world’s most-sanctioned country.

Sullivan increased concerns about China’s recent veto of a U.S. resolution at the United Nations Security Council that would have imposed new sanctions on North Korea following a slew of recent ballistic missile tests.

“Jake made very clear that this is an area where we believe the United States and China should be able to work together,” the official said.

The meeting arrived days after Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met with Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. During the meeting, Austin warned Beijing over its aggressive actions toward Taiwan.

In the previous month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told China is the “most serious long-term challenge to the international order,” even as the world grapples with the war in Ukraine.

“China is the only country with the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do it,” Blinken said in a May 26 speech at George Washington University.

The official said that in the meeting that Washington and Beijing decided to talk in the future but refused to provide any specific details.