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US lawmakers on a rare visit to China have called for greater military-to-military dialogue between the two countries, as Washington and Beijing seek to stabilise ties amid trade frictions.
The bipartisan delegation was led by Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, who said that China now possessed “such a large military” that it needed to have “more conversations with the other large militaries in the world”.
Smith said that the US and Chinese militaries should be communicating on basic matters such as “deconfliction” of aircraft and ships as well as emerging domains such as artificial intelligence, cyber and space warfare.
“The risk of a misunderstanding of capabilities on one side or the other is great,” he told reporters in Beijing on Tuesday, a day after meeting China’s defence minister Dong Jun.
“When you’re getting up into the hundreds, close to a thousand, on nuclear weapons, it’s time to start having a conversation about it,” he said.
China has focused on strengthening its military capabilities in recent years, with a particular focus on expanding its nuclear arsenal, which the US has estimated could include 1,000 operational warheads by 2030.
Smith was joined by two fellow Democrats and one Republican, making the trip the first such visit by members of the US lower house of Congress since 2019. A group of US senators visited China in 2023.
China had cut off military-to-military dialogue with the US in 2022 after the then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan. But the sides resumed communications following an agreement the next year between former president Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in San Francisco.
Dong told the visiting Americans that “both sides” needed to “correct their strategic perceptions to prevent misunderstandings and miscalculations”, according to a Chinese statement.
He agreed on the need to keep military channels of communication open.
The US lawmakers also met Chinese premier Li Qiang and vice-premier He Lifeng, who has led the Chinese side of trade talks with Washington.
Chinese state media said He asked the representatives to help “actively build channels of communication” to strengthen ties. The US lawmakers said they discussed Beijing’s restrictions on rare earth exports, a point of contention in the trade talks, which Smith said remained unresolved.
The visit came days after US President Donald Trump announced he would meet Xi on the sidelines of this year’s Apec summit in South Korea next month. Trump also said he would also visit China early next year.
The Financial Times has reported that US officials pushed to delay Trump’s China visit as the two sides remained far apart on issues such as trade and tackling the flow of fentanyl ingredients.
US ambassador to China David Perdue said on Tuesday that the sides were “days or weeks” away from completing negotiations over a “huge order” of Boeing aeroplanes.
Asked about a deal to split TikTok in the US from its Chinese parent company, Smith said he did not believe that issue of ByteDance’s continued involvement in operating the app’s algorithm had been fully resolved.
He said he expected Congress to have concerns if ByteDance remained in the picture. “We want to make sure there is privacy and security,” he said.
