Adm. Samuel J. Paparo, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, held his first in-person meeting with Gen. Yang Zhibin, commander of the People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command, on the sidelines of the 28th Indo-Pacific Chiefs of Defense Conference in Victoria, Canada, according to a U.S. Pacific Command readout posted after the August 31–September 2 meetings.
The U.S. statement said the two leaders discussed maintaining open communication between senior American and Chinese military officers to reduce the risk of miscalculation and promote safe, professional conduct between forces. China’s Defense Ministry confirmed on September 4 that Yang attended the Canada conference hosted jointly with U.S. Pacific forces, without detailing the bilateral exchange. Paparo also met Quad, AUKUS, ASEAN, and NATO counterparts during the same conference under the theme of collective security in a contested Indo-Pacific.
The Eastern Theater Command is the PLA organization that would lead major operations opposite Taiwan. That makes a Paparo–Yang channel more than protocol. With U.S. forces heavily committed to the Iran fight and European attention fixed on Russia’s war in Ukraine, Beijing and Washington both have incentives to keep a crisis-management line open even while competing over the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, and allied force posture.
Taiwan’s own military continues to treat invasion defense as a live planning problem. Coverage of the island’s Han Kuang exercises has emphasized more realistic stress-testing of outnumbered forces and civilian institutions rather than parade-ground display. Chinese officials, for their part, continue to denounce Taiwanese defense reports as “independence” agitation while normalizing PLA air and naval activity around the island.
Crisis communication does not equal détente. It is an admission that the probability of dangerous encounters remains high enough to require adult supervision. Against the backdrop of simultaneous wars in Europe and the Middle East, the Victoria meeting is a reminder that the Indo-Pacific remains the theater where a single miscalculation could dwarf every other conflict now in the headlines.
