BEIJING — A top Chinese military officer, in a rare meeting with a visiting American official, demanded Thursday that the United States stop “collusion” with Taiwan, the self-governing island that China says must come under its rule.
Gen. Zhang Youxia, one of two vice chairs of the Central Military Commission, told White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan that promoting what China calls the reunification of Taiwan with the mainland is “the mission and responsibility” of the military, according to a statement from China's Defense Ministry.
Sullivan was wrapping up a three-day trip to China, his first as national security adviser and one aimed at maintaining communication to avoid differences over Taiwan and other issues from spiraling into conflict. Both governments are eager to keep relations on an even keel ahead of a change in the U.S. presidency in January.
“Your request to meet with me shows the value you attach to military security and the relationship between our militaries,” Zhang said in brief opening remarks.
Sullivan said "it is rare that we have the opportunity to have this kind of exchange” and underscored “the need for us to responsibly manage US-China relations.”
The meeting came one day after the White House said that both countries would plan for 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 main talks on this trip, a day and a half of meetings with Wang Yi, the foreign minister and the ruling Communist Party’s top foreign policy official.
The U.S. doesn't recognize Taiwan as an independent country but is its main supplier of arms for its defense. China and Taiwan split in 1949 at the end of 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 (100 miles) across the Taiwan Strait from the Chinese coast.
“China demands that the United States stop military collusion between the U.S. and Taiwan, stop arming Taiwan and stop spreading false narratives about Taiwan,” the Chinese Defense Ministry statement said, without elaborating on what the false narratives are.
A White House statement said the two had “recognized the progress in sustained, regular military-military communications over the past ten months” and noted an agreement announced the previous day to hold a telephone call between commanders at the theater-level in the near future. On Taiwan, the U.S. statement said only that Sullivan had raised the importance of cross-Strait peace and stability.
China suspended communication between the two militaries and in a few other fields after a senior U.S. lawmaker, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, visited Taiwan in August 2022. Talks were only gradually resumed more than a year later, after Xi and Biden met outside San Francisco in November.
A theater-level call would be between Adm. Samuel Paparo, who heads the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii, and his Chinese counterpart, said Danny Russel, a vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York.
“This theater command-level dialogue is critical for crisis prevention but something the Chinese military has been resisting,” said Russel, a former assistant U.S. secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs.
Paparo said this week that the U.S. military is open to consultations about escorting Philippine ships in the South China Sea, where they have clashed with Chinese ships trying to block them from small islands and outcroppings that both countries claim.
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Associated Press writers Didi Tang and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed.
