An influential retired Chinese general has warned that Sino-US military ties are failing to keep pace with the two nations’ rapidly evolving economic and political relationship.

“The military-to-military relationship lags behind the overall relationship between the Chinese and the American authorities,” Xiong Guangkai, former head of military intelligence for the People’s Liberation Army, told the Financial Times at the end of an unprecedented fence-mending visit to the US. “We’ve spent the past eight days working to raise the level of this relationship.”