US, China militaries talk
Call ends 16-mo. silence between armed forces
WASHINGTON — The top military officials from the US and China held a long-awaited call Thursday, ending a 16-month standoff during which Beijing cut all armed forces contacts with Washington.
Chief of the Joint Staff Air Force Gen. CQ Brown and his counterpart, Gen. Liu Zhenli of China’s Joint Staff, spoke via videoconference to discuss “a number of global and regional security issues,” according to the Pentagon.
“General Brown discussed the importance of working together to responsibly manage competition, avoid miscalculations, and maintain open and direct lines of communication,” Joint Staff spokesperson Navy Capt. Jereal Dorsey said in a statement.
“Gen. Brown reiterated the importance of the People’s Liberation Army engaging in substantive dialogue to reduce the likelihood of misunderstandings,” he added.
It was the first time that any Pentagon official has spoken with a Chinese military leader since August 2022, when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a controversial trip to Taiwan. The move infuriated China — which has said its No. 1 goal is to absorb the island — and Beijing cut off dialogue with the US.
The call came about a month after President Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping while the two were in San Francisco for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
Resuming military-to-military communications was one of the major agreements to come out of the hours-long meeting.
During China’s silent treatment, defense officials repeatedly bemoaned the lack of contact, calling it dangerous in the event of a close call, troubling interaction or other misunderstanding.
“Beijing has consistently denied or ignored US requests for defense engagements at multiple levels,” the Defense Department said. “Those concerns have been amplified as US officials observe increasingly provocative and risky behavior on the part of China’s military.”
The point was made clear early this year when the US military detected a Chinese spy balloon entering American airspace.
Beijing ignored the Pentagon’s calls seeking an explanation, opting to deny sending the balloon and claiming it was a civilian airship that blew off course.
The balloon traveled for one week from Alaska to North Carolina,
where the Air Force finally shot it down, irking Beijing.
While Thursday’s call brought optimism, Pentagon spokesman Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder declined to say whether Liu had agreed to continue regular communication or reactivate the military-to-military emergency hotline.
“I’m not going to speak for China, but clearly . . . we’re going to continue to do everything we can do to keep those lines of communication open,” he said.
Still, Dorsey said Brown advocated during the call for regular conversations on “defense policy coordination” and communication between the US Indo-Pacific Command and China’s eastern and southern theater commands.
Brown also called for resuming the countries’ commitments to the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement, which was signed in 1998 and established regular talks between the two nations on maritime safety until the US-China relationship soured in 2020.