The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr., and his Chinese counterpart, Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Gen. Liu Zhenli, held a video teleconference today.
The talks are the first senior military communication between the U.S. and China since August 2022, and the first talks with China for Brown, who became chairman of the Joint Chiefs on October 1, 2023, when he replaced Gen. Mark Milley.
The talks resume after over a year of strained communication and escalating tensions in the South China Sea. The most recent U.S. Department of Defense report on China Military Power stated, “Between the fall of 2021 and fall of 2023, the United States has documented over 180 instances of PLA coercive and risky air intercepts against U.S. aircraft in the region — more in the past two years than in the previous decade.”
President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed during the APEC summit in San Francisco last month to resume military communications between the two countries. Xi made it clear to Biden during their talks that Beijing is determined to unify with Taiwan in the future.
CIA Director William Burns told the House Intelligence Committee earlier this year that U.S. intelligence indicates Xi has ordered his military to be prepared for a possible invasion of Taiwan as early as 2027, saying, “Now, that does not mean that he’s decided to conduct an invasion in 2027, or any other year, but it’s a reminder of the seriousness of his focus and his ambition.”
