China And NATO Talk Regularly: "Getting To Know You'

The People's Republic of China and NATO hold little known high-level consultations, usually twice a year.

"We have had regular exchanges with the Chinese. They are not frequent," James Appathurai, NATO's deputy assistant secretary general for political affairs and security policy said yesterday. He mentioned the Chinese meetings in passing during a briefing about NATO relations with its many partner nations.

The NATO official described the talks as semi-annual exchanges "at a high level."

One of Washington's top experts on the Chinese military was surprised by word of the regular consultations.

"VERY interesting deal. It allows back-channel communications (not necessarily a bad thing). It seems to occur with little public notice (not necessarily a bad thing)," Dean Cheng of the conservative Heritage Foundation wrote in an email. "On the other hand, five years of this going on, and no real records about it means that we don't know what HAS been discussed here."

Cheng said the NATO-China talks, which Appathurai said included discussions between the NATO Secretary General and Chinese ambassadors to Belgium, raise "an interesting question of whether the Chinese increasingly assume that any conflict with the US WILL involve Western Europe, and on the US side at that. Which makes Chinese space targeting, in particular, an interesting question."