American and Chinese military officers have sat down for rare deconfliction talks in Hawaii, soon on the heels of the Trump-Xi summit in Beijing last month. According to a late Monday statement from the Chinese Navy, the two superpowers held what they described as "candid and constructive" exchanges during a two-day closed-door meeting. It happened last week in Honolulu, reports have newly revealed.
The sides came away agreeing that improved communication could successfully reduce tactical miscalculations and enhance professionalism in the highly contested waters and skies of the Indo-Pacific.
There's been a recent uptick in Chinese PLA military drills near Taiwan, with warplanes frequently buzzing the self-ruled island. But Washington has been fairly quiet in response to these developments which have put Taipei's armed forces frequently on high alert.
The sudden outbreak of US-China military-to-military dialogue is clearly designed to ease diplomatic anxieties especially after top Chinese military officials noticeably boycotted the high-profile Shangri-La Dialogue defense forum in Singapore over the weekend.
President Trump in the meantime has been making clear that he will not have direct contact with Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, in line with long-running status quote policy.
That a sitting US president is not speaking to Taiwan's elected leader is actually normal based on Washington's policy of strategic ambiguity, and official acknowledgement of 'One China'.
Trump is strongly signaling that this will not change for now:
No sitting U.S. president has spoken directly with a Taiwanese leader since 1979 due to diplomatic sensitivities in managing relations with China, although in December 2016, while Mr. Trump was president-elect, he received a congratulatory call from then-Taiwanese President Tsai Ying-wen.
"I think [Lai], if he has time, would love to tell him our side of the story, the Taiwan story, which is one that — of resiliency, of a state staying up against the Chinese aggression," Alexander Yui, Taiwan's Representative to the U.S., told "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on May 17.
At last month's summit, Xi and Trump reportedly agreed to pursue a "constructive relationship of strategic stability." Geopolitical analysts are spinning this as an attempt to finally establish practical boundaries for how the two nuclear-armed titans interact on the global stage.
Wang Dong, an international studies professor at Peking University, summarized the shift in a statement to Reuters: "This shared strategic framing shifts the bilateral dynamic beyond reactive crisis management toward more deliberate, forward-looking stability-building."
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth has lately made a surprising declaration which indicated relations between the US and China are actually better than they've been in many years. However, this might be news to Beijing. But if the White House keeps staying relatively quiet on the Taiwan issue, China will indeed see this as a win.