U.S.-China chills at the Shangri-La Dialogue

Chinese Defense Minister Lǐ Shàngfú 李尚福 spoke at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s largest security forum, on June 2–4 in Singapore. He talked of the importance of dialogue over confrontation in the U.S.-China relationship, but also warned of the dire consequences of conflict.

However, there was not much dialogue, at least between China and the U.S.

During the summit, the U.S. accused a Chinese destroyer of making unsafe maneuvers near a U.S. warship in the Taiwan Strait on June 3, as the summit was taking place. The United States Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) said in a June 3 statement that a Chinese destroyer had cut across the bow of the USS Chung-Hoon during a joint exercise between American and Canadian navy vessels in the Taiwan Strait, coming within 150 yards of the vessel. “Chung-Hoon maintained course and slowed to 10 knots to avoid a collision,” the U.S. statement said.

Talking past each other

Li did not directly address the incident, but took thinly veiled digs at the U.S. as he accused “some country” of intensifying an arms race and interfering in others’ internal affairs. “It likes forcing its own rules on others and even attempts to constrain others with a convention itself has not acceded to,” Li said, in a reference to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which the U.S. has not ratified.

“Conflict [in the Taiwan Strait] is neither imminent nor inevitable. Deterrence is strong today — and it’s our job to keep it that way,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said at the summit. “The whole world has a stake in maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.”

“But make no mistake: Conflict in the Taiwan Strait would be devastating,” Austin added.

Less than a week earlier, INDOPACOM had accused a Chinese J-16 fighter jet of performing “an unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” on May 26 while intercepting a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance aircraft over the South China Sea. Video released by the U.S. Defense Department shows a fighter jet passing directly in front of a U.S. plane’s nose and the cockpit.

“We’re stepping up planning and coordination, and training with our friends, from the East China Sea to the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean,” Austin said at the summit. “That includes staunch allies such as Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand.”

While Li attended a dinner with Austin, they did not have a more in-depth discussion nor did Li accept U.S. requests for military exchanges. Hopes for a dialogue were dashed last week after Beijing denied a request by the Pentagon for their two defense ministers to meet: The U.S. needs to “create necessary atmosphere and conditions for dialogue and communication” between their militaries, China’s Foreign Ministry said when asked about the rejected meeting on May 31. Li has been sanctioned since 2018 by the U.S. because of his involvement in Chinese purchases of Russian combat aircraft and missiles, and the U.S. has not offered to lift the sanctions.

“How can mere words stop steel and fire?”

“The one thing that you can generally say about the bilateral relationship between the U.S. and China over the last three or four years is that when the two leaders speak, they make things better rather than worse.”

Joe Biden and Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 have met only once in person as leaders of their countries, “but they’ve had five or six phone calls,” James Crabtree, IISS Shangri-La Dialogue organizer’s managing director for Asia, told The China Project’s Sinica Podcast last week. “Typically…the challenge is you have these two systems in the U.S. and China. They operate very, very differently, these two bureaucratic systems,” Crabtree added. “But the incentives within those two systems veer toward escalation, as in it’s very hard for a senior administration official on the U.S. side to be out in front in Washington saying, ‘I would like to offer this olive branch to the Chinese,’ because they will then get whacked over their head by people in Congress.”

Military leaders from a host of other nations have called for the two superpowers to speak in order to deter any chances of escalation. Carlito Galvez Jr., senior undersecretary at the Philippines’ defense department, called for “more dialogue, not less,” while Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese urged Indo-Pacific countries to set up more channels of communication as “guardrails” to ensure peace and stability.

“How can mere words stop steel and fire?” Singapore Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen said. “But what else do we have, if not words.”

“As the U.S. and China compete with each across a whole range of different domains, the risk is…that in and of itself causes conflict, or at least it causes ill feeling,” Crabtree said. “It’s quite hard to see what these guardrails that the American side talks about actually are in practice. It’s not really in China’s interest to have these guardrails.”

Li separately held bilateral talks with his counterparts from Malaysia, Germany, Britain, Australia, Japan, and South Korea on the sidelines of the forum.

Spy chiefs hold a secret sidelines meeting

More than two dozen of the world’s spy chiefs held a secret meeting on the sidelines of the conference.

“While attending the Shangri-La Dialogue (SLD), participants including senior officials from intelligence agencies also take the opportunity to meet their counterparts,” the Singapore Ministry of Defense stated in response to press inquiries on June 4. “The Singapore Ministry of Defense may facilitate some of these bilateral or multilateral meetings. Participants have found such meetings held on the sidelines of the (dialogue) beneficial.”

For several years, Singapore’s government has organized such meetings, which have been discreetly held at a separate venue alongside the security summit, according to sources from Reuters. The meetings have not been previously reported.

Representatives from the U.S. and China were present, along with their counterparts from a host of other countries, despite the tensions between the two superpowers. The U.S. was represented by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.

The secret conclave comes just days after the Financial Times reported that U.S. CIA director Bill Burns had paid a secret trip to China last month to speak with top Chinese officials, in a bid to stabilize increasingly deteriorating ties between Washington and Beijing.