General Milley acknowledges the notion of a great-power competition between the United States and China. He has also drawn a clear distinction between competition and war. While speaking at a think tank event in December 2020, General Milley said:

We want to stay in great-power competition. You’re going to have great-power competition. That’s the nature of the world, right. Go back five-ten thousand years in human history. Great powers are going to compete against each other in a lot of different spaces. So that’s okay. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. But make sure it stays a great-power competition and it doesn’t shift to great-power conflict or great-power war.

Nevertheless, as the highest ranking officer of the U.S. military, General Milley inevitably has to address the United States’ perceived China threat on multiple public occasions. For instance, during his confirmation hearing in July 2019, General Milley claimed that the rapidly growing Chinese state and military force will be the U.S. military’s primary challenge for as long as a century. General Milley also noted that China is not the enemy but a competitor. This aligns with President Biden’s definition of China.

As the Biden administration reemphasized its national security priorities in the 2021 Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, the competition with China became an increasingly important issue for the U.S. military. During his testimony to the Senate on June 10, 2021, General Milley said that China is increasing its military capability at “a very serious and sustained rate” as he warned of the risk of increasing threat to peace and global stability.

On August 2, 2021 at the Navy League’s 2021 Sea-Air-Space meeting General Milley said “China is coming at us rapidly” in the economic, diplomatic, and military realms. That challenge, he said, is putting existing international behavior “under tremendous stress.” Milley ultimately called for a higher defense budget for Fiscal Year 2022 that will enhance force readiness and modernization.

In terms of his direct connection with Chinese representatives, it was revealed in September 2021 that General Milley called his Chinese counterpart twice in the final months of the Trump presidency to reassure Beijing that the U.S. would not go to war with China. This inevitably placed the general in the center of a domestic political battle.

General Milley does occasionally publicly comment on topics involving Chinese military and national security, often acting as a voice of Washington. For instance, on October 28, 2021, General Milley likened China’s test of a hypersonic weapon over the summer to a “Sputnik Moment,” calling the development “very concerning” and had “all our attention [in Washington].”

Milley has also recently commented on the status of Taiwan. At the Aspen Security Forum on November 3, 2021, General Milley expressed doubts that China would attempt to seize Taiwan in the next 24 months, but directly noted that, should such an event happen, U.S. forces “absolutely have the capability to defend Taiwan.”