Why US push for high-level military talks with China is getting nowhere for now

Although the two countries’ defence ministers met in Cambodia in November, there have been no contacts since, even though a hotline remains in place.

Beijing declined a request for a phone call between Austin and then defence minister Wei Fenghe after Washington brought down an alleged Chinese spy balloon in February.

Both US and Chinese analysts highlighted the increased risk from cutting channels of communication, but the two countries take a different view on how to handle the situation.

“We are beginning to see a number of near accidents, close and dangerous encounters at sea and in the air, if we do not have communication mechanisms in place to prevent those from happening in the first instance, and also to deal with them, to manage them … then I think it makes the situation much more risky,” said Paul Haenle, the National Security Council’s China director under both George W Bush and Barack Obama.

The restoration of high military communications seems “a difficult problem right now”, as China is “trying to use the military to military dialogues as leverage” to get Washington to change its behaviour, said Haenle, now a China analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-based think tank.

He added that it was important that the two militaries be engaged and keep communication channels open, including mechanisms such as the Maritime Military Consultative Agreement established in 1998 and suspended by Beijing last year.

But Hu, from Peking University, said mechanisms such as that were not that “useful” given the two sides’ different viewpoints and intentions.