US officials warn of growing danger as China rebuffs crisis communication efforts
- Beijing’s ‘reluctance to engage’ elevates risk of military miscalculation, says White House’s Indo-Pacific coordinator
- Remarks come days after a close call between military vessels in the Taiwan Strait
The potential for a military miscalculation between the United States and China is “real and growing”, a senior White House official warned on Tuesday.
Kurt Campbell, the national security coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, acknowledged that Washington has been unable to create effective ways to allow for crisis communication in “moments of unintended conflict or tension” since Beijing remained “reluctant to engage in some of these mechanisms”.
His remarks came after China and the US traded accusations of “provocation” in the Indo-Pacific region at the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual defence summit in Singapore, after Washington cited “dangerous” Chinese interaction with an American warship during a US-Canada joint exercise in the Taiwan Strait.
“They are not here for innocent passage, they are here for provocation,” Li Shangfu, the Chinese defence minister who denied US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin’s request for a one-on-one conversation on the sideline of the forum, said on Sunday.
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Austin has said the US, which has a freedom of navigation policy in the region, “will not flinch in the face of bullying or coercion” while expressing “deep concerns” over Beijing’s unwillingness to engage.