Chinese Military Invites US talk

In the Wall Street Journal today was an article about the US military and China setting up a deconfliction communications channel which might help to prevent inadvertent engagements between US and Chinese ships and planes should it come to war with North Korea.  That should tell us something about the seriousness of these kinds of discussions.  They don't get that far unless the engagement was close enough to consider deconfliction.

What I was more interested in was the last paragraph of this article which mentioned, almost in passing, what the issues we expected the Chinese to bring up in these talks.  There is nothing new there, but it serves as a reminder to note them:  (1) US ships in the South China Sea, (2) reconnaissance flights off the coast of China, (3) US Policy and Arms Sales to Taiwan, and (4) the deployment of the THAAD missile defense system to South Korea.  That was an interesting list because it includes things that the US is not going to stop doing, such as reconnaissance flights, ballistic missile defense, and Taiwan support.

The Chinese have always used the Russian philosophy that "What is mine is mine, and what is yours is negotiable".  They have tried to trade a lessening of joint exercises with South Korea for a reduced diet of missile testing by the North.  That shows us that they have the influence to stop the missile testing but they don't use it until they get something for it.  They don't like those joint exercises with South Korea because they are trying to lock up the South China Sea to control it the way they did with Hong Kong.  All four of these things keep them from that objective, and one thing about the Chinese, they stay after an objective until they win.  They will have to wait awhile longer.