China wants sanctions lifted as condition for military talks with US

The US must lift sanctions against China if the Biden administration wants high-level communication between the Chinese and American armed forces, a Chinese diplomat said on June 28.

“The US side knows the reason for difficulties in its military-to-military relations with China — it actually imposed unilateral sanctions on China,” Liu Pengyu, the spokesman for China’s Embassy in Washington, said in a briefing on June 28, Bloomberg reports.

“Such obstacles should be removed before any exchange and cooperation could take place between the two countries.”

Liu didn’t cite any sanctions by name but was likely referring to a US request to engage with Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu, who was sanctioned by the US in 2018 over a Russian arms purchase. Chinese officials have previously made it clear to their American counterparts that he would not meet with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin unless the US removed the restrictions. 

The Biden administration has sought to increase the number of communication channels with China ever since Beijing severed many of these links to protest then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last summer.

China rejected a request by the Pentagon for a Li-Austin meeting in Singapore in June while the two men were attending a security conference. 

The American side has repeatedly countered that meetings in a third country are allowed under the sanctions, while there has been some confusion about whether the US is considering lifting the sanctions — with President Joe Biden saying in Japan that it was, and State Department spokesman Matthew Miller saying it wasn’t.

The Chinese Embassy briefing came shortly after Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a high-profile visit to Beijing. While there, Blinken said China “has not agreed to move forward” with closer military-to-military communication channels to help avoid an incident escalating into a conflict, something he said was a “continued priority” for the US.

Liu also criticized the US for sending warships and aircraft into the waters and skies around China as part of freedom of navigation and overflight operations. While the Pentagon has objected to Chinese tactics in two recent close encounters between US and Chinese vessels and aircraft as part of increase in “dangerous” behavior by the Chinese, Liu asserted that the American military was at fault. 

“The US vessels and aircraft came halfway around the world to China’s doorstep — they conducted cruising, reconnaissance, muscle-flexing, it is not about freedom of navigation,” Liu said, referring to them as a military provocation. 

“We firmly oppose acts that undermine China’s sovereignty and security in the name of freedom of navigation or overflight,” he continued. “So the Chinese military responded in accordance with the laws and regulations. Their actions were completely professional, lawful, justifiable.”