China is withholding approval for a planned visit by Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s top policy official, until the Trump administration makes a final decision on a $14 billion arms package for Taiwan, people familiar with the discussions told the Financial Times, raising fresh tensions at an already fragile moment in US-China relations.
Colby’s Beijing Visit: What We Know
Elbridge Colby, the US under-secretary of defence for policy, has been in discussions with Chinese officials about a summer visit to Beijing.
However, China has signalled it cannot approve the trip until Washington resolves the question of the pending weapons package, which includes Patriot interceptor missiles and Nasams advanced surface-to-air missile systems, according to the FT report.
This is not the first time the arms package has disrupted diplomatic momentum. The Financial Times reported in February that the administration had compiled the $14 billion package following a record $11.1 billion arms sale announced in December. Beijing reacted sharply, cancelling an earlier round of negotiations with Colby over a potential China visit.
According to FT report, Pentagon declined to comment on what it described as “potential travel” by officials, but a defence official said that the department was “committed to building on President Trump and secretary .”
“Secretary Hegseth, under-secretary Colby, and other key department officials already engage with their PRC counterparts on a regular basis, and they look forward to continuing doing so in a spirit of respect, realism and clarity,” the official said.
Trump’s ‘Negotiating Chip’: The $14bn Taiwan Arms Package Explained
The $14 billion US weapons package to Taiwan sits at the centre of a delicate diplomatic calculation for the Trump administration. In an interview with Fox News following his summit with President Xi Jinping last week, Trump said he was holding the weapons “in abeyance,” describing the package as a “very good negotiating chip.”
He subsequently declined to confirm whether he would approve the sale, a stance that has generated considerable anxiety in Taipei. The administration had originally planned to notify Congress of the arms sales in February but delayed that decision following criticism from Beijing.
Asked about the matter on Wednesday, Trump suggested he would also speak with . Such a call would be highly unusual. Trump spoke to then-president Tsai Ing-wen in 2016 as president-elect, but no sitting American president has spoken directly with a Taiwanese leader since Washington transferred its diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979.
China Using Diplomatic Visits as Leverage, Analysts Warn
Security analysts say Beijing is deliberately deploying the prospect of high-level military dialogue as a pressure tool to delay or diminish the arms package before Xi Jinping’s expected state visit to Washington in September.
“I suspect that Beijing will use any future trip by Bridge Colby or defence secretary Pete Hegseth as leverage to push the Trump administration to delay, divide or downgrade a prospective arms sales package for Taiwan,” Zack Cooper, an Asia security expert at the American Enterprise Institute, told Financial Times.
Dennis Wilder, a former senior CIA China expert, offered a similar assessment to Financial Times: “The Chinese are well aware that President Trump is not going to end arms sales to Taiwan, but their ultimate goal is to delay the announcement of another major arms package until after Xi Jinping’s late September state visit to Washington. It is less a test of Trump’s commitment to assisting with Taiwan’s defence than an effort to save Xi any embarrassment.”
Pete Hegseth’s Historic Beijing Visit Sets the Stage
The diplomatic backdrop to the Colby discussions is significant. when he travelled to Beijing with Trump last week, marking the first time a Pentagon chief had accompanied a sitting president to China.
One person familiar with the situation told FT that Colby’s planned visit to China would, in part, be used to lay the groundwork for a return trip to Beijing by Pete Hegseth, suggesting the Pentagon is pursuing a sustained channel of military-to-military engagement with the People’s Liberation Army.
What a Colby Visit Could Achieve
Beyond the immediate question of the arms package, analysts say a Colby visit would serve broader strategic purposes at a time of growing military tension in the Indo-Pacific.
“A would provide an opportunity to convey US concerns about Chinese pressures and coercion against US partners and allies, its nuclear modernisation, and cyber and space activities,” said Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the German Marshall Fund.
Glaser added that Colby could also elaborate on the US national defence strategy he helped draft and open discussions on military AI applications and crisis communications protocols between the two militaries.
Taiwan Strait Tensions and the PLA’s Military Exercises
The diplomatic wrangling over Colby’s visit comes against a backdrop of intensifying military activity in and around the Taiwan Strait. Admiral Samuel Paparo, head of US Indo-Pacific Command, has described recent People’s Liberation Army exercises around Taiwan as “rehearsals” for possible future military action against the island, over which mainland China claims sovereignty.
The Pentagon has been pushing to strengthen direct communication channels between US and Chinese military commanders, citing the growing frequency and scale of PLA exercises as a key driver of that effort. Whether Colby’s visit ultimately proceeds may depend less on diplomatic goodwill than on which way the White House decides to move on a weapons package that has become, by Trump’s own admission, a tool of geopolitical negotiation.
