US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with his Chinese counterpart Dong Jun at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. These are the first such face-to-face talks in 18 months.
The United States and China will resume military communications "in the coming months," Austin said, quoted by AFP.
Beijing welcomed the "stabilization" of security relations between the countries.
Dunn and Austin met for more than an hour at the luxury hotel where the security forum is being held.
Defense officials from around the world attend this forum. In recent years, it has become a barometer of US-China relations.
Austin said phone calls between US and Chinese military commanders would resume "in the coming months", according to the report released by the Pentagon.
It also welcomed plans to set up a "crisis communications working group" with China by the end of the year, it said.
Describing the talks as "positive", Chinese defense spokesman Wu Qiang said US-China relations were "currently halting their decline and stabilizing".
Wu cautioned that it was not possible for Beijing and Washington to resolve all bilateral issues in one meeting, but it was "better to have at least some kind of communication than not to talk at all."
This year's Shangri-La dialogue comes a week after China held military exercises around Taiwan and threatened the US-backed island after the inauguration of President Lai Ching-te, whom Beijing described as a "dangerous separatist".
Self-ruled Taiwan, which Beijing considers part of its territory, tops the list of disputes between the rivals.
China is also angered by the United States' deepening defense ties in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly with the Philippines, and the regular deployment of warships and fighter jets to the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea.
Beijing sees this as part of a decades-long US effort to contain it.
US President Joe Biden's administration and China are stepping up communication to reduce friction between the nuclear rivals. Last month, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken visited Beijing and Shanghai.
A key focus is the resumption of defense dialogue, which is seen as crucial to preventing hot spot disputes from spiraling out of control.
China suspended military communications with the US in 2022 in response to then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan.
In 2023, tensions between Washington and Beijing were further fueled by issues including an alleged Chinese spy balloon that was shot down over U.S. airspace, a meeting between then-Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and Pelosi's successor Kevin McCarthy, as well as a U.S. military aid to Taipei.
The two countries agreed after the summit between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Biden last November to resume high-level military talks.
This includes a channel of communication between the head of US Indo-Pacific Command and Chinese commanders in charge of military operations near Taiwan, Japan and in the South China Sea. | BGNES
