Defense Secretary James Mattis is reportedly uninvited from talks in Beijing

Jim Mattis.
(Image credit: MARK SCHIEFELBEIN/AFP/Getty Images)

Beijing has canceled planned U.S.-China defense talks that would have seen Defense Secretary James Mattis visiting China later this month, The New York Times reported Sunday, citing an unnamed American official. A similar CNN report described Washington as the party that decided to cancel. Neither version of events has yet been publicly confirmed by the Pentagon.

The negotiations were due to address topics including arms sales, Taiwan, and the disputed waters of the South China Sea. The cancellation is but the latest aspect of escalating tensions between Washington and Beijing thanks to the Trump administration's trade war policies.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.