China, US hold talks amid NoKor tensions
As US President Donald Trump greeted the North’s launching of another intercontinental ballistic missile with familiar demands for China to get tougher with its ally, the low profile and unpublicized meeting at the National Defense University in Washington was taking place amid signs China is more willing to discuss how the two world powers would manage an even worse emergency on the divided Korean peninsula.
The Pentagon stressed the talks were scheduled long before North Korea’s surprise missile launch in the early hours of Wednesday in Asia. Officials insisted the dialogue was not centered on North Korea or anything else in particular.
Trump has vowed to prevent North Korea from having the capability to strike the US mainland with a nuclear-tipped missile — using military force if necessary. He is running out of time. Some experts said the missile fired on a high trajectory that splashed down in the Sea of Japan showed North Korea’s ability to strike Washington and the entire US eastern Seaboard.
The threat of a military confrontation is making China rethink its resistance to discussing contingencies involving North Korea, according to experts. Such discussions have long been off-limits for Beijing, which fought on North Korea’s side against the United States in the 195053 Korean war and remains its treaty ally.
In a phone conversation with Trump on Wednesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated his desire for a diplomatic resolution to the stand-off with North Korea.
Objectives for Wednesday’s military consultations appeared modest.
“The engagement will serve as an opportunity to discuss how to manage crises, prevent miscalculations, and reduce the risk of misunderstanding,” the office of Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Associated Press in a statement.
The US and China agreed on the talks when Dunford met with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing in August. While in China, Dunford observed a Chinese military drill at Shenyang, about 190 kilometers from the North Korean border — an unusual stop for an official visit.
Wednesday’s talks were led by Lt. Gen. Richard Clarke, the Joint Chiefs’ planning director, and Maj. Gen. Shao Yuanming, a senior Chinese military official. They are especially noteworthy given the deep strategic mistrust between the US and China, and Beijing’s increasing challenge to America’s post-second world war dominance in the Asia-Pacific.
China has been more explicit in saying what the talks are about.
Yao Yunzhu, a retired general who specializes in US-Chinese defense relations at China’s Academy of Military Science, said this summer they should include Northeast Asia. She also mentioned the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.
Yun Sun, an expert on Chinese foreign policy at the Stimson Center think tank, said Dunford raised North Korean contingencies at the August meeting and the two sides discussed the potential danger of a conflict or a nuclear disaster. US officials would not confirm that account. Sun said she anticipated those talks would continue this week.
While such discussions have occurred in recent years among non-government experts, they had not yet happened at official levels.