Top defence officials from US and China meet after Taiwan rift

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The Pentagon’s most senior China official has met his Chinese counterpart for the first time since he flew to Taiwan in February on a secret trip that derailed top-level military talks between the two men.

Michael Chase, the top US defence official for China policy, recently met Major General Liu Zhan, the Chinese defence attaché in Washington, according to people familiar with the meeting, including a US defence official. The meeting occurred before the summit between presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping in San Francisco last month.

The meeting suggests the US and China are making some progress towards improving relations between their militaries after Beijing closed formal communication channels in August 2022 after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan.

Biden and Xi agreed in San Francisco to restore military relations, but defence experts have been waiting to see how quickly the two sides would work out the details to arrange high-level engagements.

Chase travelled to Taiwan six months after Pelosi’s visit. It was the first such trip by a senior US defence official since 2019 and he was the first deputy assistant secretary of defence for China to travel to Taiwan since the US normalised relations with Beijing in 1979. The visit, which was first reported by the Financial Times, prompted the Chinese embassy to halt all communications between Liu and Chase.

The people familiar with the situation said the US and China were negotiating a series of senior-level military engagements for 2024 after the Pentagon submitted an initial proposal to Beijing.

But they cautioned that arranging the series of engagements they are hoping for would take time, partly for bureaucratic reasons. The situation in China is also complicated because Beijing has not replaced Li Shangfu, who was formally removed from his post as defence minister in October…