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Jack Lau

Defence dialogues between Beijing and Washington have been restored following a rare meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Joe Biden near San Francisco on Wednesday.
However, analysts were less optimistic that these lines of communication could resolve deep-seated disagreements between China and the US on security in the Asia-Pacific.
Disagreements over Taiwan and US sanctions against Beijing’s former defence minister have suspended these lines of communication for more than a year.
Beijing halted telephone calls between theatre commanders as well as meetings to coordinate defence policy and discuss maritime safety after then US House speaker Nancy Pelosi led a US delegation to Taiwan in August 2022.
The trip angered Beijing, which said the visit showed clear American support for Taiwanese independence advocates.


The US and Chinese defence chiefs have also not talked since November 2022. Beijing said formal meetings were impossible without Washington lifting its sanctions against Li Shangfu, who served as China’s defence minister from March until his unexplained removal in October. Washington said the sanctions did not prevent any such meetings.
A war of words ensued at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in June. US and Chinese defence officials blamed each other for the lack of engagement to prevent collisions between military planes and warships, especially in the disputed and resource-rich waters of the South China Sea.
Following Xi and Biden’s meeting, the US and Chinese governments welcomed the return of military-to-military talks as an improvement to tense ties.
While they agreed that restored dialogues would put a limit on how bad the strained military ties could get, analysts were sceptical about how far the deal would go in maintaining security in the Asia-Pacific.
Xi and Biden clear ‘low bar for success’ but bigger hurdles loom
Jian Zhang, an associate professor at the University of New South Wales Canberra, said the resumption of military dialogues was more a reflection of warming ties than something that could further improve them.
“So people shouldn’t have great hopes that we’ve had a return of military-to-military interaction and there will have no possibility for miscalculation or other risks,” said Zhang, who specialises in Chinese foreign and security policy.
He said he did not expect significant changes in US or Chinese actions, and dialogues between the US military and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could be cut off again if the relationship became tense.
One of the communication channels suspended after Pelosi’s Taiwan trip were meetings under the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement (MMCA) designed to defuse tensions and avoid collisions at sea and in the air. The treaty was signed in 1998.
But the MMCA showed its limits just three years after its signing during a crisis in which a US Navy EP-3 spy plane collided with a Chinese J-8 interceptor fighter jet off Hainan in southern China.

In the past two years, Washington has complained that more Chinese jets have flown “dangerously close” to US planes over the East and South China Seas.
“With military-to-military communication and interaction, hopefully, they may reach some agreement on the code of conduct,” Zhang said.
China and the US have long held different views over the rights of their planes and ships near the Chinese coastline and in the South China Sea.
Beijing claims several artificial islands and reefs in the South China Sea, many of which are disputed by its neighbours, including Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.
Beijing has not clarified what rights it has over different areas within the “nine-dash line” that demarcates its claim to most of the waters.
China will host 6-nation military drills with Southeast Asia to ‘deepen trust’
An international arbitral ruling invalidated Beijing’s nine-dash line claim in 2016 on the grounds that it conflicted with the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea, a treaty China has signed. Beijing has said it does not recognise the ruling.
Another communication channel that has been restored is the annual Defence Policy Coordination Talks (DPCT), first held in Washington in December 2006.
These meetings, led by a PLA international cooperation director and a US deputy assistant defence secretary, have discussed a range of issues, including military exchanges, arms sales to Taiwan and safety at sea.
Zhou Bo, a senior fellow at Tsinghua University’s Centre for International Security and Strategy, said it was problematic for the major powers to not be in dialogue, but the channels should not be expected to resolve fundamental differences over military actions in and over the South China Sea.


Zhou, also a retired PLA senior colonel, said that for Washington, Chinese interceptions of US planes were a safety concern, while Beijing saw the manoeuvres as necessary for national security.
“But there is one consensus: nobody wants a collision. Not only would it be bad, it is unclear how [a crisis caused by a collision] could be resolved,” he said.
“If you don’t want accidents, then you should either not come or reduce your flights to China,” Zhou said, referring to US forces. “When you want to come to China but also do not want an accident, that’s a double standard. That’s hard to achieve.”
The Pentagon maintains that it will fly and sail ships wherever international law allows.
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Many unknowns remain following Wednesday’s announcement. For example, no timetable has been released for the first set of restored talks, and China has not had a defence minister since Li’s removal last month.
It is also unclear which military theatres would be involved in the telephone calls between commanders.
Sarah Beran, senior director for China and Taiwan affairs at the US National Security Council, said on Friday that Washington would wait until Beijing appointed a counterpart to US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin.
China’s defence minister is a largely diplomatic role without decision-making power over the military.
Zhou and Zhang said the decision to hold minister-level talks would not speed up Beijing’s appointment of a defence minister. That process would follow the domestic political process.


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US-China relations

Xi-Biden talks help restore US-China defence dialogues – but security disputes won’t go away, say analysts

The US and Chinese governments have welcomed the return of military-to-military talks as an improvement to tense ties. Photo: Reuters

An American EP-3 spy plane, damaged in a collision with a Chinese jet, is hauled off to a work area at Lingshui Airfield on Hainan island on June 18, 2001. Photo: Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co handout via Reuters

Xi-Biden summit: why the US push for military guard rails with China could be a near miss

Illustration: Davies Christian Surya

In this image made from video provided by US Indo-Pacific Command, a Chinese J-11 is seen from a US Air Force B-52 bomber. The US military said the jet came within 10 feet of the US plane, nearly causing an accident. Photo: US Indo-Pacific Command via AP

US renames key ‘nimble, self-contained’ military unit in Japan’s Okinawa to counter perceived Chinese aggression in region

Japanese Ground Self-Defence Force’s Apache helicopter flies over its Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade soldiers and the US Marines during the brigade’s military drill at an uninhabited Irisuna island close to Okinawa. Photo: Reuters

Soldiers of Japanese Ground Self-Defence Force’s Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade take part in a military drill as a US Marine personnel looks on, at an uninhabited Irisuna island close to Okinawa. Photo: Reuters

Japan Maritime Self Defence Force’s Izumo-class helicopter carrier Kaga at a naval base in Sasebo, on the southwest island of Kyushu. Photo: Reuters

China’s military involved in over 180 ‘coercive and risky’ incidents against US since 2021: Pentagon

An image released by the Pentagon shows an intercept of a US warplane by Chinese aircraft in the Pacific Ocean in January. Photo: US Department of Defence via AP

A still from Pentagon video footage shows a US warplane being intercepted by a Chinese aircraft over the Pacific Ocean in May 2022. Photo: US Department of Defence via AP

A Pentagon image shows an intercept of a US warplane by a Chinese aircraft over the Pacific Ocean in June 2022. Photo: US Department of Defence via AP

US further restricts China from AI chips to hinder military development

The US is further restricting the sale of chips that the Nvidia Corporation designed for the Chinese market. Photo: Reuters

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said that the US updated and broadened its export controls to stop China from acquiring advanced computer chips and the equipment to manufacture them. Photo: AP

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China

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Diplomacy

‘People shouldn’t have great hopes’ that return to military interactions will eliminate risks or miscalculations, policy expert says
Observers say renewed communication channels cannot fix fundamental disagreements on issues such as military conduct in South China Sea


Observers say renewed communication channels between PLA and US military cannot fix fundamental disagreements on issues such as military conduct in South China Sea.
