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U.S. and Chinese military officials held formal talks for the first time in more than two years as the United States and China implement an agreement signed in November between President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping.
Senior defense officials held two days of talks this week in the first “Defense Policy Coordination Consultation” since the previous annual meeting was last held in 2021, according to the Pentagon.
Michael Chase, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for China Policy, led a meeting with Major General Song Yanchao, Deputy Director of the Office of International Military Cooperation of the Chinese Central Military Commission.
The Pentagon said Chase emphasized the importance of maintaining communication between the military “to prevent competition from escalating into conflict.” He also expressed concern about China’s harassment of Philippine vessels in the South China Sea, an increasingly contentious issue.
The talks on Monday and Tuesday took place just days before Taiwan’s presidential election. The United States is closely watching how the People’s Liberation Army reacts to the poll results in Taiwan, which China claims sovereignty over.
In 2022, when then-Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, China refused to resume talks in protest. During a November summit with Biden aimed at stabilizing relations, Xi agreed to restart the DPCT and another channel called the Military Maritime Consultation Agreement.
The United States had emphasized the need for dialogue, especially given growing concerns about how Chinese fighter jets are engaging U.S. and allied aircraft conducting surveillance missions in the South China Sea.
Ahead of the Biden-Xi summit in San Francisco, the Pentagon announced that Chinese warplanes had conducted hundreds of “dangerous and coercive” air intercepts against U.S. and allied aircraft over the past two years.
China has criticized the United States for flying surveillance missions off its coast, but the Pentagon has rejected the proposal, stressing that Chinese spy planes fly legally in international airspace. .
In one positive sign, Adm. John Aquilino, the commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said last month that China appeared to have curbed dangerous air maneuvers since the summit. Speaking in Tokyo, he said there would be an “incredibly positive outcome” if the situation continued.
A spokesman for the Indo-Pacific Command said China had not conducted any coercive or dangerous aerial actions in the weeks since Mr. Aquilino’s speech in Tokyo.
Ahead of the DPCT in Washington, a senior US defense official said the restart was “important” but that the Pentagon was “clear-eyed” about the challenges. The talks are aimed, in part, at determining the schedule for engagements between the militaries for the rest of the year.
Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the German Marshall Fund, said: “The US goal is to engage more sustainably with the People’s Liberation Army to reduce the risk of accidents, avoid misunderstandings, and enhance crisis communication. That’s true.”
China’s Defense Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday that it “expressed its intention to develop healthy and stable military relations” with the United States at the DPCT.
But the statement also called on the United States to “take China’s concerns seriously,” adding that “China will not make any concessions or compromises on the Taiwan issue,” urging the United States to stop providing arms to Taiwan and “to take China’s southern “Reduce military presence and provocations in the area.” Ocean”.
Last May, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin shook hands with then-Chinese Defense Secretary Li Shangfu at the Shangri-La Dialogue and Defense Forum in Singapore. However, China refused to set up actual talks as the US maintained sanctions against the general.
Mr. Xi fired Mr. Li in October in connection with a corruption investigation, but the post remained vacant until December, when Mr. Dongjun, a former head of China’s navy, was appointed. Dong’s appointment paves the way for a potential meeting with Austin this year.
In December, General Charles Brown, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, held his first telephone conversation with Chinese General Liu Zhenli, another sign of improved communication between the two militaries.
Additional reporting from Beijing by Wenjie Ding