China should set up US communication channels like it offered other countries, top Biden aide says

Indo-Pacific adviser Kurt Campbell points to hotlines Beijing agreed to establish with Vietnam and the Philippines as model for sincere engagement
Comments from Washington are latest in series of responses to breakdown in dialogue between Pentagon and senior Chinese defence officials

US-China relations

Robert Delaneyin Washington

Published: 3:35am, 8 Jun 2023

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Corrected [9:57pm, 12 Jun, 2023]

[9:57pm, 12 Jun, 2023]
An earlier version of this story incorrectly attributed comments in a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing to Noah Barkin, an EU-China relations expert at the Rhodium Group. Those comments were made by Andrew Small of the German Marshall Fund.

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US President Joe Biden’s senior-most official on Asia policy called on Beijing to establish the same kind of communication channels with Washington that it has worked recently to set up with some of its neighbours.

The comments on Wednesday by Kurt Campbell, the White House’s national security coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, were the latest in a series of responses to a breakdown in communications between the Pentagon and senior Chinese defence officials that Campbell and other US officials warned could spark a military conflict.

“We are still relatively early in the process of this round of re-engagement in terms of dialogue and diplomacy between [the United] States and China, and it’s uncertain what trajectory it will take, but I can assure you … we will conduct our diplomacy with China in the closest possible consultation with allies and partners,” Campbell said.

“We believe that the dominant frame of US-China relations is indeed competitive and that will likely remain the case going forward,” he noted during a discussion at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.

The event, themed on transatlantic dialogue regarding the Indo-Pacific, was co-organised by the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy of the Vrije Universiteit Brussels School of Governance.

“I will note – and you will have seen in recent weeks – the Chinese have included … consultation mechanisms and hotlines, numbers, with countries including in Southeast Asia,” Campbell said. “We believe this mechanism should also be constructed and engaged in actively and sincerely with the United States.”

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and then-Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Pham Binh Minh agreed last year to set up a hotline to handle their maritime disputes involving the South China Sea and further boost bilateral ties. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr agreed during a state visit to Beijing in January to do the same.

Officials in Washington have become more vocal in recent weeks about Beijing’s refusal to clear the way for a high-level dialogue with the Pentagon.

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The rift was on full display recently, when Chinese Defence Minister Li Shangfu turned down an offer for talks with US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore because of US sanctions on Li.

In the face of rising bilateral tension, the Biden administration has made cooperation with overlapping alliances including the Group of 7, Nato and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue central to the president’s strategy to counter Beijing,

However, Campbell expressed caution in Wednesday’s discussion over efforts to formalise the inclusion of Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand within Nato’s framework.

The leaders of the four Asia-Pacific countries met on the sidelines of a Nato summit in Madrid a year ago, and became known as the “AP4” component of the decades-old transatlantic defence alliance.

After that meeting, where China was identified for the first time as a “systemic challenge to Euro-Atlantic security”, Japan’s ministry of foreign affairs issued a statement pledging to “communicate closely” with the bloc.

“Based on the recognition that the security of the Indo-Pacific and Europe is indivisible, they also shared the view that they will closely coordinate and promote their cooperation as Nato partners, making use of their respective advantages, and take the lead in deepening communication between the Indo-Pacific and Nato,” it said.

“The four leaders also affirmed that they will continue to communicate closely for the peace and stability of the Indo-Pacific region,” the Japanese government added.

Asked about the prospects for greater AP4 participation in Nato, Campbell said this “was still in a very informal, occasional phase”.

“When you think about institutions in the Indo-Pacific you must tread carefully,” he explained.

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“There are sensitivities that are not just in China but around the region as a whole. Asean is quite sensitive that the East Asia Summit and Asean Regional Forum [are] the dominant political and security institutions in the Pacific.”

“The region has settled at least for now on that existing framework about constant civil consultation and discussion,” Campbell added.

While Campbell downplayed AP4 participation, a witness testifying about transatlantic cooperation on China during a separate event in Washington on Wednesday said more Nato integration with the four countries should be expected at its next summit in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius next month.

Andrew Small, a senior transatlantic fellow with the German Marshall Fund’s Asia Programme, told a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee that “we’ll see some more progress at the Vilnius Summit” on how AP4 “can deepen and integrate security between the Indo-Pacific and the Atlantic theatres”.

“There has been a lot of prep in the last period to try to think through what’s the next phase of these partnerships,” Small said, adding that “we may yet see the [Nato] office in Tokyo”.