China, US step up top-level military exchanges amid ongoing tension

An expected visit to Hawaii by the head of China’s Southern Theater Command next week will come just days after a high-ranking Pentagon official attended a defense conference in Beijing.
The visits, analysts said, are part of an effort to expand high-level exchanges between the U.S. and China and boost top-level military-to-military communication. It is unclear, though, how much the exchanges will do to help avoid miscommunication and keep tensions in the Indo-Pacific under control, they added.
Earlier this week, the head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Sam Paparo, and the head of the PLA or People’s Liberation Army Southern Theater Command, General Wu Yanan, held a video call for the first time in years.
The Chinese defense ministry said the two commanders had an “in-depth exchange of views on issues of common concern” while Paparo urged the Chinese military “to reconsider its use of dangerous, coercive and potentially escalatory tactics in the South China Sea and beyond.”
Wu is expected to attend a defense conference held by the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii next week, U.S. defense officials have confirmed to VOA.
Meanwhile, Michael Chase, the U.S. assistant secretary of defense for China, Taiwan and Mongolia, is holding defense policy coordination talks with Chinese defense officials while attending the annual Xiangshan Security Dialogue held in Beijing this week.
A meeting that took place on the sidelines of the Xiangshan forum was designed to “underscore the United States’ shared vision for the region,” according to a U.S. Department of Defense readout Thursday.
The Biden administration has been working to restore communication between Chinese and American militaries since the U.S. president’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC summit in California last November.
Chase’s visit to Beijing this week and Wu’s expected reciprocal visit next week follow a first meeting between U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan and China’s vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, Zhang Youxia, last month.
During that meeting, Zhang said maintaining military security is “in line with the common interests of both sides” and Sullivan highlighted the two nations’ shared responsibility to “prevent competition from veering into conflict or confrontation.”
Some analysts see a potential for further communication and engagement between the two militaries.
“I won’t rule out the possibilities that Beijing and Washington may look to establish a hotline between the two militaries, and whether that mechanism could be extended to the theater command level remains to be seen,” Lin Ying-Yu, a military expert at Tamkang University in Taiwan, told VOA by phone.
While the resumption of top-level communication allows Beijing and Washington to avoid miscalculations, other experts say it is unclear whether China and the U.S. can establish a more sustainable mechanism to cope with potential crises.
“While having contact and knowing your interlocutors are positive things during non-crisis times, the real test is whether these contacts can hold back any unintended escalation when incidents happen,” said Ian Chong, a political scientist at the National University of Singapore.
Chong said since theater commanders from the U.S. and China oversee implementing rather than formulating policies, it is unclear whether the latest development can become established protocols.
“If there’s a persistence of [maintaining military-to-military communication], then it would suggest that it has become a policy,” he told VOA by phone.
Tensions remain high over contentious issues
Tensions remain high between China and the U.S. over a range of issues, including the repeated collision between Chinese and Philippine vessels near disputed reefs in the South China Sea and Beijing’s increased maneuvers in waters and airspace near Taiwan and Japan.
During the Xiangshan forum, Lieutenant General He Lei, the former vice president of the PLA Academy of Military Sciences, characterized the Philippines’ attempt to safeguard its territorial claims in the South China Sea as “a unilateral change of the status quo” while accusing the U.S. of undermining security across the Taiwan Strait by selling weapons to Taiwan.
“The Chinese people and the People’s Liberation Army will never allow any external forces to interfere in China’s internal affairs or invade China’s territory,” he told Chinese state broadcaster CGTN in an interview.
Some analysts say there are limits to what military-to-military communications can do to ease tensions over what are essentially political disagreements.
“The military tension is only a manifestation of their political differences over Taiwan and the South China Sea, so if their disagreements are not resolved, the military tension is very unlikely to see a permanent resolution,” Yun Sun, China program director at the Stimson Center in Washington, told VOA by phone.
With less than two months until the U.S. presidential election, Chong in Singapore said Beijing and Washington’s recent efforts may be an attempt to lay the foundation for bilateral military-to-military communication to be continued after the November election.
“On the Democrat side, if some of the current team stays [after November], perhaps we would see this momentum continue,” he told VOA.
“On the Republican side, things are a bit messier, because you have those who prefer the isolationist approach, those who advocate a containment approach in Asia, and people who talk about competing against China to win,” Chong added.
Sun said if Donald Trump wins the election in November, Beijing will expect instability in bilateral relations and be prepared for the military relationship to be affected.