Beijing and Washington held “candid and constructive” exchanges at a meeting in Hawaii on air and maritime safety last week, agreeing that improved communication could reduce miscalculations and enhance professionalism, the Chinese Navy said.
The May 28-29 meeting was attended by representatives from both sides’ militaries, it said in a statement late on Monday.
A separate statement from the US Indo-Pacific Command said that it hosted representatives from the People’s Liberation Army in Honolulu for discussions focused on reducing the risk of unsafe and unprofessional encounters.
The meeting follows a high-profile summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump last month and could ease concerns about a lack of communication after the absence of top Chinese military officials at the Shangri-La Dialogue, a regional defence forum, in Singapore over the weekend.
At last month’s summit, Xi and Trump agreed to pursue a “constructive relationship of strategic stability”, which analysts say could set practical boundaries for how the two powers interact.
“This shared strategic framing shifts the bilateral dynamic beyond reactive crisis management towards more deliberate, forward-looking stability-building,” said Wang Dong, an international studies professor at Peking University.
In addition to stressing the importance of communication, the statement by the Chinese Navy also said that China “firmly opposes any action that undermines China’s sovereignty and security”. — Reuters
