By Staff
For sixteen years, a quiet program has been flying America's most decorated retired military leaders to Beijing and hosting their Chinese counterparts on American soil. The meetings are private. The agendas are sensitive. And the Chinese side has been coordinated by an arm of the Communist Party's political warfare apparatus the entire time.
The Sanya Initiative, launched in 2008 by retired Admiral William A. Owens, former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, brings together retired four star generals and admirals from both nations for closed door discussions on the most delicate strategic issues of the day: Taiwan, the South China Sea, North Korea, nuclear proliferation, cybersecurity, and emerging military technologies. It is billed as Track II diplomacy, an unofficial dialogue where retired officers can speak candidly without the constraints of formal protocol. Over twelve documented meetings, the initiative has given Chinese military leadership a direct line to the thinking of some of the most experienced strategic minds in the American defense establishment.
The question nobody in Washington seems eager to ask is who is getting more out of the arrangement.
The program's founding was an Admiral Owens production from the start. A Bismarck, North Dakota native who rose to become the second highest ranking officer in the U.S. military, Owens has described spending roughly a quarter of each year living in China. "I started Sanya six years ago with the belief that the Chinese-U.S. relationship was the most important in the world and that if we learned anything from the Cold War it was that we needed to foster the very best Military to Military Relationships, something we didn't do in the Cold War," Owens said in 2012. "I thought that if we got the most senior retired officers together we could foster a warm, open, trusting relationship which might be of great value to the overall relationship in the future."
The inaugural meeting took place on Hainan Island, in the coastal resort city of Sanya, giving the initiative its name. From that first gathering through at least 2020, the program was coordinated by the EastWest Institute, a think tank that positioned itself as a neutral convener. In 2020, the baton passed to the Stimson Center, another Washington foreign policy outfit, which rebranded it as the U.S. China Military to Military Dialogue and promised "updated approaches and end goals."
What did not change was the Chinese partner organization: the China Association for International Friendly Contact, known by its initials CAIFC. This is not a benign cultural exchange club. Intelligence analysts and China watchers have long identified CAIFC as a front for the Chinese Communist Party's United Front Work Department, the sprawling influence and propaganda apparatus tasked with shaping foreign perceptions, cultivating sympathetic elites, and gathering intelligence under the guise of people to people diplomacy.
Every single Sanya Initiative meeting was co-organized by CAIFC. Every Chinese delegation was assembled by CAIFC. The Chinese generals and admirals who sat across the table from retired American commanders were selected and dispatched by an organization whose core mission is advancing the Communist Party's strategic interests abroad.
The asymmetry of the arrangement becomes more glaring upon closer inspection. While the American side sent genuinely retired officers, the Chinese side blurred the line between retired and active. At the 9th meeting in Beijing in December 2017, the delegations met with Admiral Miao Hua, then Director of the Political Department of the Central Military Commission, and Ambassador Cheng Guoping, State Commissioner for Counterterrorism and Security Matters of China. The event report casually notes that "active duty officers from both the United States and China attended the dialogue as observers." At the 11th meeting in December 2019, the group met with General Zhang Youxia, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, one of the most powerful military figures in the People's Republic. The Americans got a photo op. The Chinese got access.
The roster of American participants over the years reads like a who's who of post Cold War military leadership. General James Cartwright, former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Admiral William Fallon, former CENTCOM commander. General Raymond Odierno, former Army Chief of Staff. Admiral Timothy Keating, former PACOM commander. General John Abizaid, another former CENTCOM chief. General Ronald Fogleman, former Air Force Chief of Staff. Admiral Edmund Giambastiani, former Vice Chairman. General Kevin Chilton, former STRATCOM commander. General Charles Jacoby Jr., former NORTHCOM and NORAD commander. These are men who held the nation's highest military posts, who possessed intimate knowledge of American strategic thinking, operational capabilities, and red lines.
The meetings were not casual. The 7th gathering in July 2016 spanned Washington D.C. and New York City. Delegates met with Senators John McCain and Tom Cotton of the Armed Services Committee, Congressman Rick Larsen of the U.S. China Working Group, and Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel. In New York, they dined with Maurice Greenberg, the former AIG chairman whose Starr Foundation was a major funder of the initiative. The 4th meeting in 2012 included sit downs with Senators Carl Levin and John McCain, Pentagon and State Department briefings, and a dinner hosted by former Speaker Dennis Hastert and former Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt. The Chinese delegation also met privately with Henry Kissinger in New York.
The funding trail merits scrutiny. Major sponsors included the China United States Exchange Foundation, a Hong Kong based organization founded by Tung Chee-hwa, the first Chief Executive of Hong Kong after the handover and a man with deep ties to Beijing. The Starr Foundation, controlled by Maurice Greenberg, whose business interests in China span decades and whose company AIG was effectively granted the first foreign insurance license in China under highly favorable terms. Ross Perot Jr., the Dallas billionaire. Kathryn W. Davis, the philanthropist. The money flowed from entities that had every incentive to keep U.S. China relations warm and Chinese leadership happy.
The topics of discussion were not academic exercises. Delegates exchanged views on the South China Sea territorial disputes, where China has been aggressively militarizing artificial islands. They discussed the U.S. deployment of the THAAD anti missile system in South Korea, which Beijing vehemently opposed. They covered cross strait relations with Taiwan, the single most dangerous flashpoint between the two powers. They talked North Korea, cybersecurity, and counterterrorism. These are not abstract policy debates. These are conversations where a retired American admiral's candid assessment of U.S. red lines, capabilities, or political constraints could directly inform Chinese military planning.
Admiral Owens, for his part, has been unambiguous about his commitment. "I am totally committed to helping to make that happen," he said of building trust between the two militaries. He founded Red Bison Advisory Group LLC, a consulting firm. He maintained his relationships in Beijing. He attended meeting after meeting, year after year, the constant gravitational center of the American delegation.
When the Stimson Center took over in 2020, the program was reshaped. New leadership, new funding, new participants, new goals, the organization stated. The 12th meeting took place in November 2023 in Beijing, with four recently retired American three and four star generals meeting five Chinese counterparts over three days. The names of those American generals have not been publicly disclosed. The Chinese co-host remained CAIFC.
There is a case to be made for military to military dialogue. The argument, which Owens and his successors have made repeatedly, is that communication prevents miscalculation, that personal relationships between senior officers build trust, and that the Cold War demonstrated the dangers of two nuclear armed powers operating in mutual ignorance. This is not an unreasonable position on its face.
But the Sanya Initiative was never a neutral exchange between equals. It was a program where retired American commanders, funded in part by entities with vested interests in Beijing's goodwill, organized through a Communist Party front group, sat down with Chinese officers who were selected by that same front group, and discussed America's most sensitive strategic concerns while active duty Chinese political commissars listened in. The Americans came home with handshakes and dinner photos. The Chinese came home with information.
Whether sixteen years of this arrangement made the United States safer or simply made the People's Liberation Army better informed is a question the participants have never had to answer in public. Perhaps that is exactly how everyone involved preferred it.
Primary Source Documents
7th Meeting Report (July 2016) — Stimson Center PDF: https://www.stimson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/7th-meeting-of-the-U.S.-China-Sanya-Initiative_Event-Report.pdf
9th Meeting Report (December 2017) — Stimson Center PDF: https://www.stimson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/us-china-sanya-initiative-dialogue-9th-meeting.pdf
10th Meeting Report (October 2018) — Stimson Center PDF: https://www.stimson.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/us-china-sanya-initiative-dialogue-10th-meeting.pdf
4th Meeting Report (June 2012) — EastWest Institute: https://www.eastwest.ngo/idea/fostering-us-china-military-military-relations
11th Meeting Report (December 2019) — EastWest Institute: https://www.eastwest.ngo/idea/us-china-sanya-initiative-dialogue-report-11th-meeting
11th Meeting (Archived) — Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20200905224025/https://www.eastwest.ngo/idea/us-china-sanya-initiative-dialogue-report-11th-meeting
Top American Generals Joined a CCP Spy Front's Backchannel Pushing China’s Military Agenda in Washington. Some Ended Up on China’s Payroll. https://nataliegwinters.substack.com/p/revealed-top-american-generals-joined?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3382126&post_id=209646721&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=6dl2nb&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Stimson Center — Program Overview: https://www.stimson.org/project/the-us-china-military-to-military-dialogue/
Stimson Center — 12th Meeting Report (January 2024): https://www.stimson.org/2024/the-us-china-military-to-military-dialogue-report-from-the-12th-meeting/
CSIS — 2008 Briefing on the Sanya Initiative: https://www.csis.org/events/briefing-sanya-initiative
North Dakota Trade Office — Sanya Initiative Profile (2012): https://ndto.com/the-sanya-initiative/
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