US, China rebuild military-to-military contacts, as Beijing warns about Taiwan

A Chinese military leader and U.S. President Joe Biden’s top security adviser agreed on Thursday to theater-level contact between their militaries, the White House said, although China warned that Taiwan independence was “incompatible with peace” and an “insurmountable red line” in relations.

U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, on the third and final day of a visit to China, told Gen. Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, that their countries had a responsibility to “prevent competition from veering into conflict,” the White House said in a statement.

“The two sides reaffirmed the importance of regular military-to-military communications as part of efforts to maintain high-level diplomacy and open lines of communication,” it said.

China froze top-level military talks and other dialogue with the U.S. in 2022 after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi became the highest-ranking U.S. official in 25 years to visit Taiwan. Sullivan was the first U.S. national security advisor to visit Beijing in eight years.  

The island has been self-governing since it effectively separated from the mainland in 1949 after the Chinese civil war.

China, which regards Taiwan as a renegade province and has not ruled out an invasion to force reunification, was infuriated by the Pelosi visit and canceled military-to-military talks, including contacts between theater-level commanders. 

President Joe Biden persuaded his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, to resume contacts in November 2023, when they met on the sidelines of an APEC summit near San Francisco.

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In December, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff met his People’s Liberation Army counterpart and the following month, military officials from both sides resumed U.S.-China Defense Policy Coordination Talks at the Pentagon, after a break of more than two years.

Sullivan and Zhang “recognized the progress in sustained, regular military-military communications over the past 10 months and planned to hold a theater commander telephone call in the near future,” the White House said.

But Taiwan remains a highly sensitive issue for the two sides, which Zhang stressed to Sullivan.

“China demands that the United States stop military collusion between the United States and Taiwan, stop arming Taiwan, and stop spreading false narratives involving Taiwan,” according to China’s defense ministry.

For his part, Sullivan “raised the importance of cross-Strait peace and stability.”

The U.S. diplomat also met briefly on Thursday with Xi, state broadcaster CCTV reported. 

“China’s goal of being committed to the stable, healthy and sustainable development of Sino-US relations has not changed,” the Chinese president said. “We hope that the United States will work with China, view China and China's development with a positive and rational attitude, regard each other’s development as an opportunity rather than a challenge, and work with China to find a correct way for the two major countries to get along.”

Sullivan earlier met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, securing an agreement for a phone call between Biden and Xi “in the coming weeks.”

Sullivan and Wang discussed trade disagreements, ways to stop the illegal flow of synthetic drugs such as fentanyl to the U.S., territorial disputes in the South China Sea and the two countries’ concerns about the situation in North Korea, Myanmar and the Middle East, according to the White House.

Wang told Sullivan that “the security of all countries must be common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable, and the security of one country cannot be built on the basis of the insecurity of other countries,” China’s foreign ministry said.

Radio Free Asia (RFA), a news service affiliated with BenarNews, produced this report.