The Washington Post-Ending long freeze top Pentagon general talks to Chinese counterpart
December 21, 2023 4 min 694 words
这次美中军方高层对话标志着中美关系降温后的一次重要接触。这一年多来，中方中断了军事对决，但由于分歧激烈，一直未有实质进展。布朗将军强调合作的重要性，着重管理竞争、避免误判，并保持沟通畅通。然而，中方在官方声明中提到对台湾问题的强硬立场，突显潜在深层次分歧。中美两国高层军事对话的罕见性反映了两国紧张局势的加剧。在这种环境下，美国强调与中国进行高水平的军事对话是必要的，但要注意在合作的同时，也要坚定捍卫核心利益。这次对话是缓解紧张局势的一步，但也是中美关系复杂性的体现。
2023-12-21T17:31:11.724Z
The U.S. military’s top general spoke with his Chinese counterpart Thursday, the Pentagon said, a thawing in a long freeze after China broke off military-to-military communication more than a year ago following pointed disagreements.
Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke with Gen. Liu Zhenli, chief of the joint staff for the People’s Liberation Army, Pentagon officials said. It marked Brown’s first meeting with his Chinese counterpart and the first time that a Joint Chiefs chairman had done so since Gen. Mark A. Milley, Brown’s predecessor, held a similar call in July 2022.
Brown focused on the “importance of working together to responsibly manage competition, avoid miscalculations, and maintain open and direct lines of communication,” said Navy Capt. Jereal Dorsey, a spokesman for Brown. The chairman also reiterated the need for China to engage in “substantive dialogue to reduce the likelihood of misunderstandings” between the two nations, and reaffirmed the importance of opening lines between U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and Chinese military commanders, Dorsey said.
The Chinese Defense Ministry confirmed the call in a statement, saying the discussion occurred after President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping reached an agreement in a summit in California last month to resume military-to-military communication in an effort to promote stability.
But the ministry’s statement hinted at deeper issues, too, noting that Beijing wants no foreign interference in Taiwan, the democratic self-governed island that Xi has promised to reunify with the mainland. Biden has said U.S. forces would defend Taiwan if China invades, infuriating Beijing, which sees the island as a breakaway province.
Top-level military discussions between the two superpowers have become increasingly rare amid rising tensions. In Washington, a broad bipartisan swathe of officials see China as the chief competitor to the United States — and are vocally calling for more coercive economic and military pressure.
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Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has not conversed with his Chinese counterpart since November 2022 and probably will not do so until at least this coming spring, when Xi is expected to name a new defense minister after the October firing of Li Shangfu under the cloud of a corruption probe.
While relations have been frosty for some time, China cut communication in August 2022 after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) made a trip to Taiwan.
The lack of communication with China at the most senior levels of the Defense Department has been considered especially urgent as the two nations navigate disputes that include China flying a surveillance airship across the United States this year; provocative intercepts of American aircraft; and an increasingly tense territorial dispute in the South China Sea with the Philippines, an American ally.
After last month’s summit, the White House said that while Biden emphasized that Washington and Beijing are in competition, the two world leaders had agreed to resume cooperation to combat drug manufacturing and trafficking and continue “high-level military-to-military communication.”
Brown, speaking this month at the Reagan National Defense Forum, said he was “standing by” to hear from China and saw dialogue with “our adversaries” as important “to understand what we are both doing and prevent that miscalculation.”
Army Lt. Col. Martin Meiners, a Pentagon spokesman, said Thursday that the Defense Department wants to see “open lines of military communication at all levels” with China, including with Adm. John C. Aquilino, the chief of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. In October, the Pentagon dispatched Cynthia Carras, a defense official focused on China, Taiwan and Mongolia, to attend a forum in China to discuss similar issues, Meiners said.
“We’re ready to deliver on what President Biden announced,” Meiners said.
The Pentagon’s annual report on China, released in October, said Chinese defense officials declined, canceled or ignored numerous invitations to communicate with the United States over the last 18 months. But there were exceptions. In April, the report said, Chinese military officials requested U.S. assistance to evacuate Beijing’s diplomats from Khartoum, Sudan. The Pentagon offered evacuation routes in response.