Gen. CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke with his Chinese counterpart on Thursday, in the first of what officials said will be renewed talks between the two nation's senior military leaders, as the Biden administration works to thaw relations with Beijing.
The video call between Brown and Gen. Liu Zhenli is the first senior military communications between the U.S. and China since August 2022, when Beijing suspended all such contacts after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. It comes on the heels of similar conversations between top U.S. and Chinese diplomats, all triggered by the meeting last month between U.S. President Joe Biden and China's President Xi Jinping.
Biden's meeting with Xi, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco, was aimed in part at restoring the military talks amid escalating concerns about frequent unsafe or unprofessional incidents between the two nations’ ships and aircraft in the Pacific region.
