Representatives from the Chinese and US militaries held a working group meeting of the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement in Hawaii on Thursday and Friday. That was the first formal naval and air force working group exchange since the US president's visit to China from May 13 to May 15.

The two sides had candid and constructive exchanges on the current China-US air and maritime safety and security situation, evaluated the execution of the Rules of Behavior for Safety of Air and Maritime Encounters since the MMCA in 2025, and discussed measures to improve China-US military maritime safety and security, according to a release of the People's Liberation Army.

On Thursday, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce announced that the Chinese and US teams have agreed in principle to discuss, under the trade council, a reciprocal tariff reduction framework arrangement on products of equivalent scale and worth $30 billion or more on each side. Whether it is military communication or progress in the economic and trade fields, both demonstrate the shared willingness of China and the United States to translate the outcomes of the US leader's visit to China into concrete actions and tangible results.

Multiple rounds of China-US economic and trade consultations have already taken place, and bilateral trade relations have shown signs of stabilization in recent months. Yet direct military engagement between the two sides has remained far less frequent. Meanwhile, tensions in the Asia-Pacific region have persisted due to a variety of factors. As a result, the Hawaii meeting has drawn widespread attention. That also reflects the region's broader expectation that China and the US will properly manage their military relationship, as well as the general hope for peace and stability in the region.

As agreed by the two sides in Hawaii, effective communication and exchanges between the two militaries can help frontline troops perform tasks in a more professional manner, deepen mutual understanding and avoid misperception and miscalculation. But apart from that, it is hard to ignore that the PLA stressed in its release on the meeting that China firmly opposes any action that undermines China's sovereignty and security under the pretext of "freedom of navigation and overflight", and opposes any infringement, provocation and close-in reconnaissance and harassment targeting China. It added that China will continue to firmly safeguard national territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, and uphold regional peace and prosperity.

The timing of the Hawaii meeting could hardly be starker, which explains the PLA's reiteration of its principled stance. On the day before the Hawaii meeting opened, China's military drove away the Dutch frigate, HNLMS De Ruyter, which had illegally entered Chinese waters around the Xisha Islands. While Japan and the Philippines announced on Thursday they will hold talks to "delimit an exclusive economic zone and continental shelf" east of China's Taiwan island. And five days before the meeting, the Canadian frigate, HMCS Charlottetown, conducted a spuriously described "routine transit" through the Taiwan Strait.

The Netherlands and Canada have both defended their respective actions as exercises of "freedom of navigation". Meanwhile, Japan and the Philippines are cloaking their provocations against China under the guise of safeguarding a "free and open Indo-Pacific". These narratives are all "intellectual property" of the US, and all such actions are taken within the broader "Indo-Pacific" strategy framework engineered by Washington. This says nothing of the considerable efforts the US has made to revive the Quad, most notably through last month's foreign ministers' meeting in New Delhi.

Thus, China is experiencing an increasingly contradictory approach: a US that professes its desire for communication and de-escalation, as reflected in US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's toned-down remarks at last week's Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, set against an increasingly reckless and provocative cohort of US allies and partners.

In other words, while Washington has signaled a desire to stabilize ties with China and expand communication channels, some actions by US allies and partners continue to create tensions and complicate efforts to build mutual trust. This divergence between diplomatic messaging and developments on the ground remains a source of concern for regional stability. In the process, Japan has emerged as the most enthusiastic. Under the logic laid out by the US — that the free-riding era is over as Hegseth underscored again in Singapore — Tokyo is buying US missiles and expanding military cooperation in return for US tolerance of its remilitarization. For Washington, this is convenient burden-shifting. But Japan is the real beneficiary, using US support to break free of historical constraints.

If military mutual trust between China and the US is to have any substance, the US is obliged to curb the actions of its regional allies. The repeated harassment and provocative military activities on China's doorstep only serve to raise the risk of misjudgment. The region's most dangerous trigger for conflict might be the US' unwillingness to rein in a Japan that is increasingly acting as a loose cannon. The US cannot on the one hand prepare the table for dialogue, and on the other hand permit its allies and partners to recklessly try to usher its guest away from the table.