The meeting, due to take place in Singapore on Friday night, will focus in part on “setting guardrails for the relationship,” an official said, while calling for more sophisticated crisis communication mechanisms to ensure the growing competition between the two is paramount globally World powers do not escalate into conflicts.
The upcoming meeting during the IISS conference is the first between Austin and Secretary of Defense General Wei Fenghe. Despite the US focusing on the Indo-Pacific as a priority region for the future and calling China a “pace challenger,” Austin spoke to Wei only once, in a phone call on April 20. It was the first such call since the previous government. US officials have negotiated the specifics of the meeting, the official said, aiming to avoid the very public spectacle of the first US-China meeting under the Biden administration. That meeting, held in Alaska in March 2021, quickly resulted in Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Chinese counterpart accusing each other of violating everything from the meeting’s established rules to international ones Order.
“One of the ground rules we want to establish with the PRC is that we will characterize our position and they can characterize their position,” the official said. “I think we’re making every effort to ensure this is a professional, substantive meeting.”
The meeting comes during Austin’s fourth trip to the Indo-Pacific region following a formal request from Chinese military leaders.
In addition to attempting to establish lines of communication at the highest levels of the military, the US also wants to see communication mechanisms between commanders at the theater of operations level.
“This has been a priority for us in the defense relationship,” the official said. The US also has a “relatively new” crisis communications working group with China, the official said. While there is no date for the next meeting, both sides agree that it should take place this year. According to the official, Wei emphasized the working group in the appeal.
The US has frequently cited China’s growing aggression in the region and accused the People’s Liberation Army of unsafe and dangerous activities, particularly in the South China Sea and Taiwan.
Australia – one of America’s closest allies in the Indo-Pacific – condemned Beijing when a Chinese fighter jet fired chaff and flares near an Australian surveillance plane late last month. At the same time, China has been vocal in condemning US-Taiwan relations. After a congressional delegation visited Taiwan late last month, the Chinese embassy in Washington urged the US “not to send false signals to the ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces,” the embassy statement said. In the same week, China sent 30 fighter jets into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, the highest daily number in four months.
“The Taiwan issue will feature prominently in all of the minister’s talks,” said the senior defense official.