Amid tension, U.S. and China defense chiefs hold first meeting in two years

The two also traded accusations of blame for recent tensions between Beijing and Taipei, with Austin expressing concern over China’s launch of large-scale military exercises close to Taiwan’s airspace and maritime territory, soon after Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te’s inauguration last week.

Dong accused the United States of sending “seriously wrong signals” to “separatist forces” in Taiwan.

Although the meeting yielded no major announcements, it was “long overdue,” said Zhou Bo, a retired senior colonel in the Chinese military who is now at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Zhou said he feared Taiwan’s Lai would prove more “provocative” than his predecessor, compelling China to carry out even more military exercises around Taiwan, and creating “a new status quo that Washington doesn’t want to see.”

The United States maintains unofficial relations with Taiwan but does not recognize it as an independent state. However, U.S. policy opposes any Chinese action to take Taiwan — which China considers its territory — by force, and allows for the United States to arm Taiwan and defend it.

China cut off high-level military-to-military dialogue with the United States in 2022 to protest a visit to Taiwan by Nancy Pelosi, at that time the House speaker. Communications resumed in November when President Biden met Chinese leader Xi Jinping in California.

The United States has been pushing China on the necessity of such regular exchanges to prevent an accident or military miscalculation in the region from spiraling into a crisis. This is particularly important in the South China Sea, where Beijing is engaged in standoffs related to territorial disputes with American allies like the Philippines, and amid escalating Chinese military activity around Taiwan.

Both sides said the 75-minute meeting represented progress toward a stabilized relationship. Wu Qian, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of National Defense, called it “positive, pragmatic and constructive.” The United States underscored China’s commitment to resume theater-level telephone conversations within months and convene the working group on crisis communications before the end of the year.

“It’s vitally important,” said Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), who attended the conference with a delegation of U.S. lawmakers. “We went through a period where Secretary Austin tried to call and nobody answered the phone. We need to have regular contact between our militaries. And I do think it’s important for us to be on the record with one another with where we stand.”

But there was no sign of a breakthrough on the most contentious issues in the relationship.

Austin expressed concern about the Chinese drills that surrounded Taiwan, days after Lai was sworn in. “[China] should not use Taiwan’s political transition — part of a normal, routine democratic process — as a pretext for coercive measures,” he said.

Dong reprimanded Washington for sending congratulations and a delegation to the inauguration, and urged the United States to “take concrete actions to correct its mistakes,” Wu said.

The standoff over Taiwan and the South China Sea, where China says it is merely patrolling its territory, and where Biden has promised a U.S. response to any attacks on Philippine forces or ships, has presented the most formidable obstacles to a détente.

“We don’t want to fight. But there are issues on which … it’s to some extent, intractable,” Adm. Samuel Paparo, the commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said Friday during a panel discussion.

Cui Tiankai, a former vice minister of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who spoke alongside Paparo suggested that the United States was the true aggressor in the South China Sea.

“I don’t think anyone should have the illusion that they could easily violate Chinese sovereignty and integrity without any cost,” Cui said.

The Chinese are also skeptical of the crisis hotline established by Xi and Biden, said Zhao Minghao, a professor of international relations at Fudan University in Shanghai.

“China wants crisis prevention while the United States prioritizes crisis management, which sounds to China like all these communication channels are only going to make the United States feel emboldened to create new crises with impunity,” he said.

Dong, a 63-year-old former head of the Chinese navy, was appointed in December, replacing Li Shangfu four months after he abruptly disappeared from public view.

The reshuffle is part of a broader campaign by Xi as he seeks to root out corruption and streamline the command structure to turn the People’s Liberation Army into a “world-class” force, able to go toe-to-toe with the United States.

As defense minister, Dong is primarily responsible for military diplomacy. Operations and strategy are set by Xi and senior members of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Military Commission. Dong, unlike his predecessor, is not a member of the commission — a fact that some of the congressional Republicans attending pointed to as potentially limiting the effectiveness of the meeting.

“It is important to recognize, and I know secretary does, that this guy is not the equivalent of Secretary Austin at all,” said Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), who co-led the Senate delegation with Duckworth. “He’s called the defense minister, but in terms of the power structure of that country and that government, and the Communist Party, he’s not really even a player.”

Navigating China’s rise and its increased frustration at the American presence in areas Beijing considers its backyard has become a challenging exercise for countries in Southeast and East Asia, especially among those that want to strengthen economic ties with China while also relying on the United States for defense.

“Managing the anxiety over China’s coercion while being bullish over its economic prospects is now a constant preoccupation for many policymakers” in the region, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the London-based think tank that organizes the Shangri-La Dialogue, said in its annual assessment of regional security priorities released Friday.

While Beijing’s assertiveness has drawn pushback from some, it has also successfully deepened its economic and security relationship with others, like Cambodia. U.S. officials have accused China of building a secret naval base in northern Cambodia, though both countries deny it.

Lyric Li in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed to this report.