This conversation occurred just weeks after President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping agreed to resume high-level military communication.
The chairman of U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Brown, spoke virtually with his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Liu Zhenli, Thursday in the first direct high-level engagement between the two militaries in more than a year.
This meeting comes just after President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping agreed to resume high-level military communication in their bilateral talks on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ summit in San Francisco last month.
“The meeting between General Brown and General Liu is indicative of both sides’ desire to sustain more stable engagement in the months ahead, a goal that senior officials in both countries have repeatedly reiterated in the wake of the Biden-Xi meeting,” Eurasia Group’s China analysts wrote in a client note.
Beijing stopped high level military communication after the former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August 2022 as ties between the world’s two biggest economies soured.
Beijing had rebuffed U.S. efforts to resume communication, notably at a regional defense summit in Singapore earlier this year.
The resumption of direct talks comes at a time Beijing and Manila are escalating their face-off in the South China Sea, defending their territorial claims in the crucial waterway.
