China’s new top envoy urges Pentagon official to "remove obstacles" impeding military ties

China’s new top envoy to the US, Xie Feng, held talks with a senior US defence official for Asia on Wednesday, an apparent resumption of bilateral dialogue on military issues.

The Chinese embassy in Washington issued a statement saying that Xie was invited by Ely Ratner, the US assistant secretary of defence for Indo-Pacific security affairs for a meeting in which the ambassador urged the US side to “remove obstacles and manage differences with concrete actions”, South China Morning Post reports.

The statement added that Washington must “prudently handle important issues such as the Taiwan question” in order “to bring state-to-state and [military-to-military] relations back on track”.

Citing a brief statement from US Defence Department spokesperson, Lieutenant Colonel Martin Meiners, Bloomberg and Reuters reported that Xie and Ratner discussed a “range of international and regional security concerns”.

Ratner emphasised during an exchange lasting about 90 minutes the importance of keeping open lines of military communications between the two countries, which have been virtually non-existent since then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan last August.

The US Department of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The United States has consistently pushed for the resumption of communications, a proposal Beijing has been reluctant to accept. China rejected a meeting requested by US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin with Chinese Defence Minister Li Shangfu during the Shangri-La Dialogue in June.

Later that month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken mentioned that he had “expressed this concern multiple times” during his visit to Beijing. The Chinese side referred to the resistance in restoring communication channels as a result of the US sanctions.

Li Shangfu was sanctioned by the US in 2018 for his alleged involvement in the procurement of fighter jets and equipment from Rosoboronexport, Russia’s leading arms exporter.

Since then, while high-level engagements between US and Chinese officials have made headlines - most recently with US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s visit to Beijing this past weekend - Biden administration officials had not been optimistic about a resumption of bilateral dialogue on the military front.

Last month, for example, Daniel Kritenbrink, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, cautioned that military-to-military exchanges were not likely to resume any time soon.

Re-establishing those has been problematic, Kritenbrink said at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, because Chinese counterparts “state that they’re worried about providing ...assurances that will somehow embolden the United States to take additional actions that they don’t want to see”.

Formerly a foreign affairs vice-minister for China, Xie was confirmed as the new Chinese ambassador to Washington in May, pledging to enhance exchanges with the US in what he called an “important mission”.

Xie visited US former national security adviser and secretary of state Henry Kissinger days after his arrival in the US to pass on Beijing’s congratulations on the elder statesman’s 100th birthday.