BEIJING (AP) — A senior Chinese military officer demanded Thursday, in a rare meeting with an American official, that the U.S. end its “collusion” with Taiwan, the self-ruled island that China says must come under its control.
General Zhang Youxia, one of two vice chairmen of the Central Military Commission, told White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan that promoting what China calls Taiwan’s reunification with the mainland is “the mission and responsibility” of the military, according to a statement from China’s Defense Ministry.
Sullivan just wrapped up a three-day trip to China, his first as national security adviser, and aimed to maintain communication to avoid differences over Taiwan and other issues escalating into conflict. Both governments are keen to keep relations on an even keel ahead of the change in the U.S. presidency in January.
“Your request to meet with me shows the value you attach to military security and the relations between our armed forces,” Zhang said in his brief opening speech.
Sullivan said “it is rare that we have the opportunity to have an exchange of this kind” and stressed “the need for us to manage the US-China relationship responsibly.”
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, second from left, speaks next to U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, third from left, during a meeting with Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission, unseen at the Bayi Building in Beijing, Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, Pool)
Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Ng Han Guan
The meeting came a day after the White House announced that both countries would schedule a phone call between Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Joe Biden in the coming weeks. There was no indication whether the two leaders might meet in person before Biden leaves the Oval Office.
The announcement followed Sullivan’s most important talks of the trip, during which he met for a day and a half with Wang Yi, the ruling Communist Party’s foreign minister and top foreign policy official.
The United States does not recognize Taiwan as an independent country, but is the country’s main supplier of weapons for defense. China and Taiwan separated in 1949 after a civil war that brought the Communists to power in China. The rival nationalists fled to Taiwan, where they set up a government on the island, about 160 kilometers from the Chinese coast.
“China calls on the United States to end the US-Taiwan military collusion, stop arming Taiwan, and stop spreading false representations about Taiwan,” the Chinese Defense Ministry said in a statement, without elaborating on what the false representations were.
A White House statement said the two “acknowledged the progress made in continuous, regular communication between the military over the past 10 months” and mentioned an agreement announced the day before to hold a telephone conversation between the theater-level commanders in the near future. On Taiwan, the US statement said only that Sullivan had stressed the importance of peace and stability between both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
China suspended communications between the two militaries and in some other areas after a senior U.S. politician, then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, visited Taiwan in August 2022. It was not until more than a year later, after Xi and Biden met outside San Francisco in November, that talks gradually resumed.
A theater-level phone call will take place between Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii, and his Chinese counterpart, said Danny Russel, vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York.
“This command-level dialogue is critical for crisis prevention, but the Chinese military is resisting it,” said Russel, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific.
Paparo said this week that the U.S. military was ready to consult on escorting Philippine ships in the South China Sea, where they have clashed with Chinese vessels that have tried to block their access to small islands and rocky outcrops claimed by both countries.
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Associated Press writers Didi Tang and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed.
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