China rejected Lloyd Austin’s phone calls ‘after US defence secretary requested wrong person’
- Asking to speak to Central Military Commission vice-chairman instead of Defence Minister Wei Fenghe was seen as diplomatic faux pas, source says
- Beijing has reportedly rejected Austin’s request for a conversation three times, although restraint by both militaries has kept tensions in check
Misunderstandings and protocol disagreements have affected dialogue between the Chinese and US militaries, but without causing an immediate crisis, analysts and sources said.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the matter, the source said Austin’s counterpart should be Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe, rather than Xu – the No 2 in the CMC below President Xi Jinping, who chairs the body.
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“Both Xu and Wei report to Xi, but in diplomatic protocol, Austin’s counterpart is Wei,” the source said. “The Pentagon realised this when [Austin’s predecessors] Mark Esper and James Mattis were in office.”
The Financial Times reported that Beijing had on three occasions rejected Austin’s requests to speak to Xu by telephone, citing an anonymous source from the US defence department. On Monday, nationalistic Chinese tabloid Global Times said the Pentagon “did not follow diplomatic protocol”.
Chinese international relations experts said communication channels between the two countries’ governments and militaries had been almost suspended since the heated talks between their top diplomats in Alaska in March.
In those talks, China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi, who outranks Foreign Minister Wang Yi, told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan that China would not accept unwarranted accusations from the US.