Top US military officer speaks to Chinese counterpart in bid to thaw relations

General CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke to his Chinese counterpart on Thursday, in the first of what officials said will be renewed talks between the two nations’ senior military leaders.

It came as the Biden administration works to thaw relations with Beijing.

The video call between Gen Brown and Gen Liu Zhenli is the first senior military communications between the US and China since August 2022, when Beijing suspended all such contacts after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.

It comes on the heels of similar conversations between top US and Chinese diplomats, all triggered by the meeting last month between US President Joe Biden and China’s President Xi Jinping.

Mr Biden’s meeting with Mr Xi, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in San Francisco, was aimed in part at restoring the military talks amid escalating concerns about frequent unsafe or unprofessional incidents between the two nations’ ships and aircraft in the Pacific region.

Generals Brown and Liu “discussed the importance of working together to responsibly manage competition, avoid miscalculations, and maintain open and direct lines of communication”, said Navy Captain Jereal Dorsey, Gen Brown’s spokesman, in a statement.

The US has consistently viewed military communications with China as critical to avoiding any missteps between their armed forces and to maintaining a peaceful Indo-Pacific region.

Gen Brown’s call is the first Cabinet-level communication with China since Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke on December 6 to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

While few other details about Gen Brown’s call were released, a senior US defence official and a senior military official said it was an important first step.

These are the kinds of discussions that the US needs to have with China, they said, in order to avoid misunderstandings or miscalculations as the two militaries interact. The two officials spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity to provide information before the call.

They said the US is talking to China at various levels to work out a series of calls and meetings in the coming weeks and months. They include plans to hold the bilateral defence policy co-ordination talks early next year and the possible resumption of the China-US Military Maritime Consultative Agreement talks in the spring.

During the call Brown reaffirmed the importance of holding the policy and maritime talks as well as opening the lines of communication with top Pacific commanders from the two countries, Mr Dorsey said in his statement.

In August 2022, Beijing suspended all military contacts with the US when Ms Pelosi became the highest-ranking American politician to visit Taiwan since 1997, when then-speaker Newt Gingrich travelled there.

Her visit sparked a surge in military manoeuvres by China. Beijing dispatched warships and aircraft across the median line in the Taiwan Strait, claiming the de facto boundary did not exist, fired missiles over Taiwan itself, and challenged established norms by firing missiles into Japan’s exclusive economic zone.

There also has been an increase in what the Pentagon calls risky Chinese aircraft and warship incidents. The US Defence Department in October released video footage of some of the more than 180 intercepts of US warplanes by Chinese aircraft that have occurred in the past two years — more than the total number over the previous decade.

In one of the more recent incidents, a Chinese pilot flew within 10 feet of a US Air Force B-52, which was conducting routine operations over the South China Sea in international airspace.

While officials touted the Brown-Liu call as an important initial move, the Pentagon has continued to express concerns about China’s aggressive military interactions in the Indo-Pacific and has worked to build alliances with other nations in the region.

Earlier this month, Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin met defence chiefs from Australia and the UK to forge a new agreement to increase technology co-operation and information sharing, as part of a broader effort to counter China’s rapidly growing influence in the Indo-Pacific.

The new technology agreement is the next step in widening military cooperation with Australia that includes plans to help equip Sydney with a fleet of eight nuclear-powered submarines. And the defence leaders pointed to efforts by China to restrict freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific as a reason to bolster their co-operation.

Also, earlier this week, Admiral John Aquilino, head of US Indo-Pacific Command, expressed concerns about the increased joint military actions by China and Russia in the region.

Speaking in Tokyo, he said it is far beyond a “marriage of convenience” between Beijing and Moscow, and he urged China to stop escalating maritime confrontations with its neighbors.

China’s defence ministry, meanwhile, has criticised the US for interfering in both Taiwan and the South China Sea, charging that American arms sales to Taiwan are making the situation more dangerous.