By Yew Lun Tian
BEIJING (Portal) – Chinese and Russian military chiefs criticized the United States at a security forum in Beijing on Monday, even as China’s second-highest military commander vowed to strengthen defense ties with Washington.
The Beijing Xiangshan Forum, China’s largest annual military diplomacy event, began Sunday without the country’s defense minister, who usually hosts the event, but with a U.S. delegation amid roiling regional tensions.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu warned the West that its involvement in the Ukraine war posed a grave danger.
“The Western line of constant escalation of the conflict with Russia carries the risk of a direct military clash between nuclear powers with catastrophic consequences,” Russian state news agency TASS quoted Shoigu as saying at the forum.
Shoigu also said the West intended to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia in a “hybrid war” and praised the model of Russia-China relations as “exemplary,” Russian state media reported.
Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission under President Xi Jinping, voiced veiled criticism of the United States and its allies and accused “some countries” of trying to undermine the government.
“Some countries deliberately create turmoil, interfere in other countries’ internal affairs and incite color revolutions,” Zhang said in his keynote speech, using the term the Chinese government uses to describe attempts to impose rule on the Communist Party fall.
“Countries should not deliberately provoke other countries on important and sensitive issues,” he said, adding that Taiwan is a core interest of China.
But elsewhere in his speech, Zhang stressed the need for improved military relations with the United States.
“We will deepen strategic cooperation and coordination with Russia and are ready to build military ties with the United States on the basis of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation,” Zhang said in an address attended by military attachés and other parties was observed by diplomats amid tensions over Taiwan and the South China Sea.
In recent years, the Chinese Defense Minister has given the keynote speech.
There have been no high-level military communications between China and the US since the appointment of Washington-sanctioned former Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu in March.
Li was fired without explanation last week and China did not name a replacement. Portal reported last month that Li, who has been missing for two months, was under investigation for corruption.
The US Department of Defense sent a delegation led by Cynthia Xanthi Carras, country director for China in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense.
It is not yet known whether the US team will meet separately with Chinese military officials.
The US delegation’s participation comes as the United States and China intensify exchanges ahead of an expected summit between US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping next month.
Last week, China’s top diplomat Wang Yi met with Biden for an hour in talks that the White House called a “good opportunity” to keep lines of communication open between the two geopolitical rivals.
Many Western countries have either avoided the forum or send only small and low-level delegations, preferring instead to discuss international security issues at the Shangri-La Dialogue, held annually in Singapore.
Zhang, along with the commission’s third-ranking official He Weidong, held bilateral meetings with defense ministers from Laos, Mongolia, Belarus, East Timor and Myanmar, state media said.
(Reporting by Yew Lun Tian and the Beijing Newsroom; Additional reporting by Lidia Kelly in Sydney; Writing by Laurie Chen and Greg Torode; Editing by Gerry Doyle and Tom Hogue)