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US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke to his Chinese counterpart for the first time, in the latest attempt to ease tensions between the military since President Joe Biden held a summit with Xi Jinping last year.
The Pentagon said Austin spoke on Tuesday with Dong Jun, a retired admiral who became defense secretary in December. This was the first significant ministerial-level engagement between the armies since November 2022.
The call is the latest effort to stabilize ties since Xi, China’s president, agreed in San Francisco to resume military commitments that China had halted after then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had visited Taiwan in 2022. Blinken is preparing to visit China in the coming weeks.
A senior U.S. defense official said the call and other engagements “provide us with an opportunity to keep the competition from veering toward conflict by speaking openly about our concerns,” which he said include the South China Sea and peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.
The Pentagon said the two officials discussed a range of regional and global security issues and that Austin stressed the importance of freedom of navigation guaranteed by international law, particularly in the South China Sea.
Austin met then-Defense Minister Wei Fenghe in Cambodia two years ago. Wei was succeeded by Li Shangfu in March 2023, but Beijing refused to arrange a meeting with Austin unless Washington removed sanctions imposed on Li by the Trump administration in 2018.
At the Shangri-La Dialogue advocacy forum in Singapore in June 2023, Austin and Li exchanged pleasantries when sitting at the same table during a dinner. But Li disappeared from sight shortly after returning to China and was ousted in October in connection with a corruption investigation.
In a sign of less tension since the San Francisco summit, Chinese fighter jets have stopped “risky and coercive” interceptions involving dangerous maneuvers around US spy planes.
But the Pentagon remains deeply concerned about Chinese behavior around Second Thomas Shoal, a disputed reef in the South China Sea. In recent months, China’s coast guard has tried to stop the Philippines from resupplying marines on a ship called the Sierra Madre, which ran aground on the reef.
Manila grounded the ship in 1999 to strengthen its claim to the reef. China’s coast guard used water cannons to block refueling missions, injuring Filipino sailors. Biden last week warned China that the U.S.-Philippines mutual defense treaty applies to the Sierra Madre.
Earlier this month, U.S. officials from the Indo-Pacific Command met with Chinese officials for talks on the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement, designed to reduce the risk of military-to-military incidents.
U.S. and Chinese defense policy officials also restarted a previously routine dialogue in January. And in December, General CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of the United States, held his first call with his counterpart, General Liu Zhenli.
But the top defense official said Monday that China has not yet agreed to arrange a meeting between the head of the Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral John Aquilino, and his two People’s Liberation Army counterparts.