A senior Chinese military official, in an extraordinary meeting with visiting U.S. officials on Thursday, urged the United States to stop “colluding” with the autonomous region of Taiwan, which China says should be under its rule.
According to a statement from the Chinese Defense Ministry, General Zhang Youxia, one of the two vice chairmen of the Central Military Commission, told White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan that it is the military's “mission and responsibility” to promote what China calls the unification of Taiwan with mainland China.
Sullivan was wrapping up a three-day visit to China, his first as national security adviser, aimed at maintaining lines of communication to prevent differences over Taiwan and other issues from escalating into conflict.
Both governments are keen to keep relations stable ahead of the U.S. presidential transition in January.
“Your request to meet with me demonstrates the importance you attach to military security and the relationship between our two militaries,” Zhang said in brief opening remarks.
“Opportunities for exchanges like this rarely come around,” Sullivan said, emphasizing “the need to manage U.S.-China relations responsibly.”
The meeting came a day after the White House announced the two countries were planning a phone call between Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Joe Biden in the coming weeks.
It is unclear whether the two leaders might meet in person before Biden leaves the Oval Office.
The announcement came after Sullivan's main meeting of the visit – a day and a half of talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, the ruling Communist Party's foreign policy chief.
The United States does not recognise Taiwan as an independent country but is its main arms supplier for its defence. China and Taiwan split in 1949 at the end of a civil war that saw the Communist Party take power in China.
The rival Nationalists fled to Taiwan and set up a government on an island about 100 miles across the Taiwan Strait from the Chinese coast.
“China demands the United States to end U.S.-Taiwan military collusion, stop providing weapons to Taiwan, and stop spreading false reports about Taiwan,” a statement from China's Defense Ministry said, without elaborating on what the false reports were.
According to a White House statement, the two sides “acknowledged the progress made in sustained and regular military-to-military communications over the past 10 months,” and also noted an agreement announced the previous day to hold theater-level commander-to-command telephone conversations in the near future.
Regarding Taiwan, the U.S. statement said only that Sullivan stressed the importance of peace and stability on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
China suspended communications between the two militaries and in several other areas following then-U.S. House Speaker Senator Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan in August 2022.
The talks have been gradually resuming more than a year since Xi and Biden met outside San Francisco in November.
Danny Russell, vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York, said the theatre-level call would be between Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii, and his Chinese counterpart.
“This theater commander-level dialogue is critical to crisis prevention, but the Chinese military is resisting it,” said Russell, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs.
Paparo said this week that the U.S. military was open to talks about protecting Philippine ships in the South China Sea, where Chinese and Philippine vessels have clashed as they try to block access to islets and reefs claimed by both countries.
