As White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan coordinated China policy for President Biden over four years. He traveled to Vienna, Malta, Bangkok and elsewhere to meet with Wang Yi, the top Chinese foreign policy official, and he talked with Xi Jinping, China’s leader, in Beijing last August.

       I sat down with him recently in a conference room in the West Wing to discuss the administration’s approach to China. Here are some of his comments, which have been lightly edited for clarity and concision.

       On the first Trump administration’s approach to China, and the Biden team’s policy:

       Mr. Sullivan said the Biden administration tried “to shift from a strategy of hub-and-spoke and just pure bilateral alliances” to “creating this latticework, or this network of relationships, across the region.”

       That included rejuvenating the nonmilitary Quad coalition with Australia, India and Japan, as well as creating three new U.S. security arrangements with Japan and South Korea; Japan and the Philippines; and Australia and Britain.

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       The Trump administration “had begun an effort with respect to semiconductor manufacturing equipment around E.U.V. [extreme ultraviolet lithography] technology … that was quite informal, that was essentially an informal understanding with the Dutch government and so on.”

       “We thought we actually needed an export control regime that gets put into place and then built upon. … They were pointing in the right direction, but there was no real systematic undertaking on that front.”

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