The U.S. and Chinese militaries held the first-ever Crisis Communications Working Group videoconference on Wednesday (Oct. 28). The Pentagon said the meeting discussed “the concepts of crisis communication, crisis prevention, and crisis management.
The meeting provided an opportunity to build mutual understanding between the U.S. military and the People’s Liberation Army based on the principles of crisis prevention and management and reducing risk to the military,” the Defense Department said in a statement Thursday.
The Pentagon statement added: “Both sides agreed on the importance of establishing timely communication mechanisms during a crisis and the need to maintain regular communication channels to prevent crises and engage in post-crisis assessments.”
Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Colonel Wu Qian said Thursday, “On October 28-29, the two militaries held a video conference of the Crisis Communication Working Group.” Referring to a phone call earlier this month between senior military officials of the two countries, he added: “The two sides agreed to conduct the 2020 U.S.-China humanitarian relief and disaster reduction seminar and exchange activities by videoconference in mid-November. Before the end of the year, the two militaries will also hold a video conference for maritime military security consultations, among other things.”
Currently, relations between the two major powers are at a decades-long low, and the two militaries are also experiencing tensions in the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea and other regions. U.S. officials have denounced China’s Communist government as a threat to the order and values of the free world, and the U.S. military has identified China as a strategic threat to the United States. Last week, the United States announced that it would deploy Coast Guard patrol vessels in the Western Pacific due to China’s illegal fishing and harassment of vessels.
This month, the U.S. government approved several arms sales packages that could result in the sale of advanced weapons such as Harpoon coastal defense missiles to Taiwan, and China announced sanctions against U.S. companies and threatened to “continue to take necessary measures to defend its national sovereignty and security interests.
In a speech last week on the 70th anniversary of China’s deployment of troops to the Korean War, Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping declared that China is “not to be messed with” and that “if it is messed with, it will not be easy to deal with. He also called for “stopping the war with war and stopping the war with arms.
At the same time, however, Beijing’s top brass has adopted a number of postures in an attempt to stabilize bilateral relations.
On Thursday, the website of the Global Times, a highly nationalistic Chinese official media outlet, published an article by Chinese Rear Admiral Yang Yi saying, “The more tense the U.S.-China relationship is, the more important it is to hold the bottom line. The author said on the one hand: “Any country, any person who attempts to infringe on our territorial integrity and sovereignty will be resolutely opposed by the Chinese people and will certainly be dealt a heavy blow by our military forces,” and on the other hand, “both sides will make a certain degree of compromise to ensure that the relationship between the two countries remains on track. “The relationship between China and the United States is an important part of the relationship between the two countries.
Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Wu Qian said on Thursday, “The China-U.S. military relationship is an important part of the relationship between the two countries. It is in the interests of both sides to maintain stable relations between the U.S. and China militaries and requires joint efforts.”
The U.S. delegation to the Crisis Communications Working Group video talks included representatives from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, while the Chinese delegation included representatives from the Office of International Military Cooperation of the Central Military Commission, the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission and the PLA’s Southern Theater Command, the U.S. Defense Department said.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Esper and Secretary of State Pompeo have been on foreign trips over the past week to solicit cooperation in countering the security threat posed by China.
Recent Comments