BEIJING, September 18. /TASS/. A prominent Chinese expert dismissed the chances of resuming military communication between China and the United States as a "fanciful hope," unless Washington demonstrates sincerity and stops harming China’s key interests.

"It should be noted that there are still obstacles to bringing the Chinese-US relationship back to normal," Guo Xinning, a senior fellow at the Taihe Institute and Professor at the School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University, told a TASS reporter. "And if Washington does not stop its extremely irresponsible activity, continues to cause problems in the Taiwan Strait, to destabilize the situation in the South China Sea, to deliberately cause problems affecting key Chinese interests, and does not change its strategy and measures that infringe on China's interests, I am afraid, restoring normal exchanges between the two countries’ armies will be nothing more than fanciful hopes," said the expert, who specializes in international security.

Although Guo acknowledged that cooperation between the two armies was now trending in the right direction, he said that, in general, it is "at a low level or has even been halted."

On the one hand, the United States "is taking irresponsible steps," posing a threat to Chinese interests, and on the other hand, "they have signaled to the international community that they would hate to undermine the stability of relations between the armies of China and the United States," the expert added.

According to Guo, although Washington is seemingly racing to get relations started again, "all this is meant to show the world that China is responsible for the current situation regarding cooperation between the two countries’ armies and that the United States has nothing to do with it," a stance that he said was "an absolute distortion of reality."

A high-profile US official told a special briefing over the phone following a weekend meeting in Malta between US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi that there were "limited" early signs that military communication between the two countries may be starting up again.