ATLANTA — The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff spoke today with his counterpart in China, the latest evidence of at least a partial thaw in military-to-military relations that for months had been marked by China’s refusal to engage.
Gen. CQ Brown spoke with People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Chief of the Joint Staff Department Gen. Liu Zhenli by video teleconference, the Joint Staff said in a statement. The two “discussed a number of global and regional security issues,” the statement said.
Specifically, “Gen. Brown discussed the importance of working together to responsibly manage competition, avoid miscalculations, and maintain open and direct lines of communication. Gen. Brown reiterated the importance of the People’s Liberation Army engaging in substantive dialogue to reduce the likelihood of misunderstandings.”
The Defense Department said it was the first talks on such a level since 2022, before Brown took the chairman’s seat. It also comes in the wake of a high-profile visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to the White House in November, during which Xi and President Joe Biden agreed to restart military-to-military communications. National Security Council China expert Sarah Beran had warned shortly after that meeting that it might take time for the mil-to-mil talks to come together.
For months before that US officials had grown increasingly worried that their Chinese counterparts were refusing to speak to them, including during potentially dangerous incidents. In June, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said he was “deeply concerned” about China’s stonewalling.
“For responsible defense leaders, the right time to talk is anytime. The right time to talk is every time. And the right time to talk is now. Dialogue is not a reward. It is a necessity,” Austin said at the Shangri-La Dialogue.
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Weeks before that a top Pentagon official said that the Chinese had refused to pick up the phone for then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley as well as for the head of US Indo-Pacific Command.
“Some of our working-level dialogues that are meant to manage the [political-military] part of this … they have turned all of that off for now,” the official said then. “And we think that’s destabilizing and dangerous, and we think we both ought to be doing a better job of managing.”
The resumption of some talks comes as otherwise tensions remain high in the South China Sea, where China has repeatedly harassed Philippine vessels in disputed waters, actions sharply criticized by the US. The Pentagon has also publicly lambasted China for dozens of unsafe interactions between Chinese and American assets, which compound fears that an accident, coupled with a lack of communication between the two militaries, could spiral into a conflict.
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“These are the kinds of discussions that we need to have to try to avoid misunderstanding and miscalculation,” a senior defense official told reporters ahead of the call. “Having those open channels of communication, obviously, is a key part of that.”