US, China Fail to Talk on Defense as Taiwan Tensions Rise

The heads of defense China and USA accused each other of the tensions between the two superpowers during a forum of security which ended this Sunday in Singapore without direct dialogue between the two parties and while ships from the two countries almost collided in the Taiwan Strait.

The Shangri-La Dialogue, the largest annual security forum in Asiaended today without the US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, and the Chinese Defense Minister, Li Shangfu, present at the conference, sitting down to talk, as had happened between representatives of both parties in previous editions.

Beijing had on Monday denied the request for Washington for the two to meet in Singapore, blaming the decision on the US, which sanctioned Li in 2018 after accusing him of buying weapons from the Russian state-owned company rosoboronexport.

Thus, Li and Austin did not exchange more than a brief greeting and a handshake in public at the opening dinner on Friday, when they shared a table, in addition to listening to the recriminations that both devoted to taking the podium to deliver speeches, the American on Saturday and Chinese this Sunday.

In his address, Li assured today that his country is “open” to communication with the US side, but stressed that “if there is no mutual respect, the dialogue is not productive”, a day after Austin urged his Chinese counterpart to dialogue for “to be able to avoid miscalculations that lead to conflict”.

Incident in the Taiwan Strait

Some comments that coincided with a new episode of tension in the Taiwan Strait, where a Chinese military ship maneuvered on Saturday just 137 meters from the US destroyer USS Chung-Hoon, while it was carrying out joint maneuvers with the Canadian Navy, avoiding an immediate collision. extremis.

USA The US and Canada assure that they were in international waters, while Beijing insists that these are its territorial waters, and in a statement, the spokesman for the Eastern Command of the Chinese Army, Shi Yi, defended that the Chinese forces acted within the law.

Asked about the incident, Li denounced today that “It is not about innocent journeys, but about provocations”and reiterated China’s position on Taiwan, a self-governing island that Beijing has considered a rogue province since Kuomintang nationalists withdrew there in 1949 after losing the civil war.

Combining the firm tone with the reaffirmation that China seeks a “peaceful” reunification, the minister stressed that his country “does not promise to give up force” to take Taiwan if provocations arise, reiterating that “It is up to China to decide how to solve” The issue.

For his part, the US Secretary of Defense, which supplies the island with weapons and in principle would defend it in the event of an attack, had stated on Saturday that his country “will continue to categorically oppose a change in the (Taiwan) status quo by either party.”

“We do not seek conflict or confrontation, but we will not waver in the face of coercion or abuse,” added, in line similar to Li.

other meetings

In contrast to the absence of dialogue between the two, Austin and Li took the opportunity to hold a good number of bilateral and multilateral meetings with other leaders in the forum; the American, for example, strengthened ties with its allies in Philippines, Japan and Australia in what is their first joint Defense meeting.

Li, for his part, did lend himself to awkward meetings with his counterparts from Japan and South Korea, Yasukazu Hamada and Lee Jong-sup, in respective meetings on the sidelines of the conference, as well as with the Ukrainian Defense Minister, Oleksii. Reznikov, who also participated in the Dialogue.

Organized by the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS)based in London, this is the twentieth edition of the Shangri-La Dialogue, which is being held at the homonymous hotel in Singapore, the “Asian Switzerland” for its neutrality, and has become one of the most important international security conferences.

Also participating in this edition were the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, and the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, who inaugurated the forum on Friday, then urging dialogue as a “containment measure” in the face of a potential conflict between China and the US .USA.

A call repeated by many of the participants that went unheeded, although high-level contacts between China and the US continue elsewhere, learning on Friday that the director of the CIA, Bill Burnsmade a secret trip to China in May, his first visit to the Asian country since he took office.

“It’s not the end of the world that Li and Austin don’t get together. They could agree to maintain contact in the future, but, after the recent talks between the US and China on commercial and political matters, that there is no Defense is acceptable ”Singaporean foreign affairs analyst Ja-Ian Chong told EFE.