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The U.S. and China agreed on the talks when Dunford met with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing in August. While in China, Dunford observed a Chinese military drill at Shenyang, about 120 miles from the North Korean border \u2014 an unusual stop for an official visit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wednesday\u2019s talks were being led by Lt. Gen. Richard Clarke, the Joint Chiefs\u2019 planning director, and Maj. Gen. Shao Yuanming, a senior Chinese military official. They\u2019re especially noteworthy given the deep strategic mistrust between the U.S. and China, and Beijing\u2019s increasing challenge to America\u2019s post-World War II dominance in the Asia-Pacific.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
China has been more explicit in saying what the talks are about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yao Yunzhu, a retired general who specializes in U.S.-Chinese defense relations at China\u2019s Academy of Military Science, said this summer they should include Northeast Asia, where North Korea is located. She also mentioned the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yun Sun, an expert on Chinese foreign policy at the Stimson Center think tank, said Dunford raised North Korean contingencies at the August meeting and the two sides discussed the potential danger of a conflict or a nuclear disaster. U.S. officials wouldn\u2019t confirm that account. Sun said she anticipated those talks would continue Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While such discussions have occurred in recent years among non-government experts, they hadn\u2019t yet happened at official levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, Oriana Skylar Mastro, a Georgetown University professor, said her Chinese contacts indicated willingness to broach North Korea contingencies in the military dialogue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThings are shifting right now in both China and the United States. There seems to be an opening,\u201d said Mastro. She expected the talks would still be at a preliminary stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis type of discussion is difficult among friends. It\u2019s much more difficult between potential adversaries, but absolutely necessary,\u201d Mastro said. \u201cThe type of war that might break out (with North Korea) is one that would be more costly than anything that generations of Americans have experienced.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Political limitations exist on both sides, making some experts skeptical that progress would be made or even that North Korean contingencies would be addressed at all. The U.S. must be wary of offending South Korea, which isn\u2019t in the dialogue. China risks further alienating a paranoid ally at a time Beijing is supporting increasingly tough U.N. sanctions on North Korea\u2019s economy in response to its missile and nuclear tests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Chinese side is very worried that if North Korea gets word it might turn them into a hostile neighbor,\u201d said Frank Aum, a former Pentagon adviser on North Korea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chinese opinions are divided. But in a sign of growing antipathy toward Pyongyang, some Chinese intellectuals have called for radical policy change. Not only is North Korea a liability for China\u2019s global standing, it also poses a nuclear risk on its doorstep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A collapse of North Korea\u2019s state, or another crisis, could push Beijing into conflict with the U.S. and South Korea. Bonnie Glaser, an Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, mentioned North Korean nuclear facilities within 50 miles of the Chinese border, and said both sides could try to secure loose nukes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There have been grave miscommunications before. Abraham Denmark, a former senior U.S. military official for East Asia, cited the run-up to the Korean War, when Washington thought Beijing knew it would not seek to invade China; the Chinese thought the Americans knew that if U.S. forces advanced north of the 38th parallel into North Korea, China would intervene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBoth sides at the time thought that they were being extremely clear, but neither side had any idea of what was going on,\u201d Denmark said. \u201cThat suggests to me that both sides need to be very up front with one another.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
AP writer Robert Burns contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
___<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This story has been corrected to fix the spelling of the name of Oriana Skylar Mastro.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
U.S. and Chinese generals engaged in an unusual set of security talks on Wednesday, just hours after North Korea\u2019s most powerful missile test yet, focused on how the mighty American and Chinese militaries might communicate in a crisis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":89924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":8,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[101,8,12,26,62],"tags":[],"coauthors":[250],"class_list":["post-50921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-flashpoints","category-news","category-newsletters","category-pentagon-congress"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"X7KVRCL5TJHD3LL7WAFWAFUWCM","arc_canonical_url":"\/flashpoints\/2017\/11\/29\/us-china-hold-quiet-military-talks-amid-north-korea-tensions\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n