The Chinese military commander whose forces would lead any operation against Taiwan sat down with his American counterpart for the first time on September 4. General Yang Zhibin, head of the People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command, met Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of US Indo-Pacific Command, on the sidelines of the 28th Indo-Pacific Chiefs of Defense Conference in Canada.
The meeting was confirmed by Jiang Bin, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Defense.
Why this meeting is different
Previous high-level military dialogues between the US and China were conducted with the PLA’s Southern Theater commander. The Southern Theater oversees the South China Sea. But the Eastern Theater Command is the one that matters most when it comes to Taiwan.
General Yang Zhibin took over the Eastern Theater Command in 2025. Admiral Paparo, who assumed command of INDOPACOM on May 3, 2024, has publicly described recent PLA activities around Taiwan not as routine training exercises but as “rehearsals” for forced unification.
