Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is working with his Chinese counterpart, Adm. Dong Jun, to create U.S.-China military communication systems aimed to prevent disagreements or misunderstandings from spiraling into unintended conflict in the Indo-Pacific.
Hegseth said inan X post Saturday that he had spoken with Dong on both Thursday and Friday on the sidelines of the ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting-PLUS in Malaysia about the need for “peace, stability, and good relations” between the U.S. and China.
“Admiral Dong and I also agreed that we should set up military-to-military channels to deconflict and deescalate any problems that arise,” Hegseth said.
Hegseth added that U.S.-China relations had “never been better” and that President Donald Trump’s meeting with China’s leader Xi Jinping in South Korea on Thursday “set the tone for everlasting peace and success for the U.S. and China.”
The Chinese embassy didn’t respond to a request for comment.
That messaging contrasted sharply with Hegseth’s warning to ASEAN defense ministers of “China’s sweeping territorial and maritime claims in the South China Sea,”per ABC News on Saturday. “We must ensure that China is not seeking to dominate you or anybody else,” Hegseth added.
Hegseth said he and Dong will hold follow-up meetings to flesh out the details of such ties. U.S.-China military communications channels are becoming even more important given rising friction across the Taiwan Strait and China’s aggressive naval challenges of Philippine vessels in Manila’s waters in the South China Sea.
Dong suggested that Beijing sees value in forging such links. He told Hegseth that the U.S. and China should create “a military-to-military relationship based on equality and respect, peaceful coexistence, and stable, positive development,” China’s Defense Ministry saidin a statement Friday.
Quick results are unlikely. The U.S. has long struggled to foster reliable military-to-military communications with China, and Beijing cut off all U.S.-China military dialogues after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan trip in 2022. The Biden administration had managed to persuade Beijing to resume key military dialogues by the end of 2024 that connected high-level military officials in in-person discussions on issues of mutual concern.
They included the China-U.S. Theater Commanders Talks, China-U.S. Defense Policy Coordination Talks and the bilateral Military Maritime Consultative Agreement meetings by the end of 2024. However, these were seen as small steps because Chinese participation in those discussions was vulnerable to restrictions or outright cancellation by Beijing. They also didn’t provide a reliable crisis communications link between the two militaries at either the most senior levels nor at the operational level on and above the high seas in the Indo-Pacific.
It’s unclear how much of the Biden administration efforts have continued under Trump, and the Defense Department last month declined to provide details about current U.S.-China military communications. Hegseth’s pursuit of such links comes as the Pentagon prepares to release the National Defense Strategy in the coming weeks. That strategy will likelyshift focus away from countering China and instead focus on domestic and regional missions.
