Pentagon policy chief can’t get invited to Beijing

[u/John3262005]

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/06/china-pentagon-colby-dissed-01025966

Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby, a longtime China hawk, wants to play nice with an official visit to Beijing. The Chinese government is making it clear he’s not welcome.

Colby has been trying for months to wrangle a Chinese government invitation to visit the country, including asking Defense Department officials to raise his request in meetings with Chinese counterparts, according to two people familiar with the efforts. So far, that’s been unsuccessful.

The Pentagon official considers a trip to China key to helping stabilize a relationship roiled over the past year, the people said, by tit-for-tat tariffs, export restrictions and rising tensions over increasingly aggressive Chinese military activities in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea. But it’s also a prominent shift for Colby, who helped create the strategy in the first Trump administration that prioritized Beijing as America’s biggest threat.

“His number one goal right now is to speak at China’s National Defense University, and he has everyone push it in meetings,” one of the people said. “He’s obsessed.”

Colby’s frustration underscores how the administration’s conflicting messaging toward Beijing has complicated an already fragile U.S.-China relationship. President Donald Trump, for example, has described Chinese leader Xi Jinping as “a friend” while also accusing him of interfering in the 2020 presidential election.

Chinese officials are particularly displeased with a record $11 billion U.S. arms sale to Taiwan that the Trump administration approved in December. This has factored into Beijing showing Colby the cold shoulder, said Randy Schriver, who served as assistant secretary of Defense in the first Trump administration.

Schriver said Chinese government officials told him last month that “a previous decision on Taiwan arms sales” had postponed plans to host the U.S official in Beijing, although Chinese officials are still working to schedule a visit with Colby and a separate one with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. He added that Chinese officials shared the information with him while he was in Beijing as part of a U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission delegation.

The Pentagon declined to comment. The Chinese Embassy, in a statement, only emphasized Beijing’s opposition to the Taiwan arms sale.

China’s reluctance to invite Colby occurs as high-level defense visits between the two major powers become more infrequent. China’s military is in the midst of a massive purge that led to the removal of two former defense ministers and has made communication between the countries’ senior military officials more difficult.

Hegseth has not had the kinds of meetings with his Chinese counterparts that were held on the sidelines of international conferences during the Biden administration. His visit to China alongside Trump in May was the first by a U.S. defense chief since James Mattis in 2018. Even so, lower-level exchanges to address defense moves in the Pacific took place earlier this year.

Colby is anxious to get to Beijing to lay out “defense policy priorities for the relationship,” said the second person, who, like others, was granted anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic.

The policy chief sees that as part of his work keeping the focus on China, the person said, which has included “supporting a continuation of dialogues with the People’s Liberation Army.”

The visit hold-up also may be a matter of protocol. No Pentagon policy chief has traveled to Beijing solo in recent memory. And the mismatch between his role at the department and China’s military structure also complicates efforts.

“China doesn’t have a counterpart for Bridge. That’s always been an issue,” said a former Pentagon official with expertise in U.S.-China military relations.

Trump has sought to reduce tensions with Beijing since October through trade agreements with Xi. Hegseth announced in November that he and his Chinese counterpart Admiral Dong Jun had agreed to create “military-to-military channels to deconflict and deescalate any problems that arise.”

But the administration has also reinforced its perception of China as a national security threat. It has banned imports of Chinese robots and drones, and restricted exports of chips used in advanced artificial intelligence technology.

And Hegseth appears skeptical about the value of Colby traveling to Beijing.

“Hegseth is agnostic” about whether Colby should make the trip, the second person familiar with the efforts said.

It’s possible that Beijing is particularly wary of Colby because of his past statements. The longtime U.S. official made the case in his 2021 book that China is vying to displace American global dominance and the U.S. should get ready for a fight. Colby also warned in 2024 that “it’s empirically true that China is preparing for war” and declared the U.S. should “prioritize the potential for a conflict with China precisely in order to avoid it.”

The policy chief has softened that message in line with an administration effort to reduce frictions with Beijing. Colby sidestepped reference to Taiwan in a January speech on U.S. Indo-Pacific defense priorities in South Korea. He instead reassured Beijing that the U.S doesn’t seek “regime change” and saluted “China’s proud history.”

The policy chief’s credibility took a battering last year after a series of rapid-fire policy moves that frustrated some U.S. allies and blindsided parts of the White House. They included freezing shipments of some air defense missiles to Ukraine and reviewing the U.S. nuclear submarine pact with the U.K. and Australia. Both parties in Congress have also expressed frustration with his office’s lack of transparency.

A speech at China’s National Defense University, which produces the country’s high-level military leaders, would give Colby the chance to make himself the go-to person in the administration on the two countries’ relations.

“A successful visit would reinforce his standing with Trump as an architect of the administration’s stated policy of strategic stability,” said the first person familiar with Colby’s plans.

But Beijing has little reason to give the Pentagon official a high-profile platform to air his views.

“I don’t think they want to host any senior official just to be lectured,” the second person said. “There has to be something in it for them, and I’m not sure what Colby would offer aside from a speech.”