SINGAPORE — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin and Chinese defense minister Dong Jun met on Friday, their first face-to-face meeting, as Washington and Beijing seek to stabilize military relations and avert a crisis in Asia.
The United States has been pushing China to work together to prevent miscommunication and to reestablish military hotlines to prevent an accident spiraling into crisis. This is particularly important in the South China Sea, where Beijing is engaged in standoffs with American allies like the Philippines, and amid escalating Chinese military activity around Taiwan, the island democracy Beijing claims as its territory.
The pair met on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, a regional security summit, the first time such a meeting has taken place since Austin met his Chinese counterpart in 2022.
Since then, Beijing has twice replaced its defense minister, and also cut off high-level military-to-military dialogue for 15 months in protest over a visit to Taiwan by then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
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Beijing only agreed to reopen those communication channels in November when President Biden met Chinese leader Xi Jinping in California. Dong and Austin spoke by phone last month.
Dong, a 62-year-old former head of the Chinese navy, was appointed in December, replacing Li Shangfu four months after Li abruptly disappeared from public view.
The reshuffle is part of broader campaign by Chinese leader Xi Jinping seeks to root out corruption and streamline the command structure to turn the People’s Liberation Army into a “world-class” fighting force able to go toe-to-toe with the United States.
As defense minister, Dong’s role is primarily about military diplomacy. Operations and strategy are set by Xi and senior members of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Military Commission. Dong, unlike his predecessor, is not even a member of the commission.
Navigating China’s rise and its increased frustration at the American presence in areas Beijing considers its backyard — including the South China Sea — has become a top priority for countries in Southeast and East Asia, especially among those countries that want to strengthen trade and economic ties with China while relying on the United States for defense.
China’s “economic, diplomatic and security coercion has been uneasily felt” by its neighbors, said the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the London-based think tank that organizes the Shangri-La Dialogue, in its annual assessment of regional security priorities released on Friday.
“Managing the anxiety over China’s coercion while being bullish over its economic prospects is now a constant preoccupation for many policymakers” in the region, the report said.
While Beijing’s aggression has created growing push back from the Philippines and other claimants in the South China Sea, it has succeeded in deepening its economic and security relationship with countries like Cambodia.
U.S. officials say China has secretly built a new naval base in northern Cambodia, though both countries deny it. “China never says no to us,” said a Cambodian security analyst based in Phnom Penh who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Ninety percent of what we ask for, they give.”
China has invested billions of dollars in Cambodia to upgrade military facilities and build new infrastructure, though it’s not clear, said the analyst, what they want in return. “They want something. But what is it they want? It’s a fair question. We don’t know,” he said.