Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe (4th from right) and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin (left) attend the ministerial roundtable lunch at the Shangri-La Dialogue Summit in Singapore June 11, 2022. ROSLAN RAHMAN / AFP
The Shangri-La Dialogue — the annual summit of defense ministers in Asia-Pacific — held June 10-12 in Singapore, was an opportunity for the United States and China to reaffirm their positions on their most burning issue: Taiwan. But also to show off their differences with the Indo-Pacific and, despite everything, to maintain strategic dialogue at the highest level.
As early as Friday, June 10, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and his Chinese counterpart Wei Fenghe, who were meeting for the first time, had an exchange that lasted an hour, or apparently thirty minutes longer. According to a spokesman for the Chinese minister, he told his counterpart, “If anyone dares to separate Taiwan from China, the Chinese army will not hesitate to start a war at any cost.”
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While the official New China News Agency insists that “the one-China principle is the political foundation of China-United States relations,” it also notes that the two ministers “agreed that the two armies implement the important consensus must be achieved by their heads of state, maintain high-level strategic communication and not turn differences into conflict and confrontation”.
In his June 11 address, Lloyd Austin reiterated Washington’s official position on Taiwan: “We do not support Taiwan independence,” he said. We firmly oppose any unilateral change of the status quo by any party. A message to the Taiwanese leaders, but of course also to the Chinese. Because, according to his statement, “unfortunately, if our policy has not changed, this does not seem to apply to the People’s Republic of China”. “We are seeing a significant increase in provocative and destabilizing military activity near Taiwan,” he said.
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The Indo-Pacific, “The Heart of American Grand Strategy”
But General Austin mainly mentioned the Indo-Pacific, a term he used twenty-one times. The message is clear. Neither the war in Ukraine nor in China will undermine Washington’s desire to see that region as “the heart of America’s grand strategy,” its “focal point.” A region where “more than 300,000 American Army men and women are stationed. More than any other region in the world.”
When he reiterated “not looking for a new Cold War, an Asian NATO, a region divided into enemy blocs,” General Austin reaffirmed the Americans’ commitment to the region, with their allies, their partners, who they find within the Aukus (the Alliance with Australia and Great Britain), the Quad (Australia, Japan, India) or the Asean, these Southeast Asian countries recently invited to a summit with Joe Biden for the first time.
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