Editorial | Taiwan remains the elephant in room of China-US dialogue
- It is good that the Chinese and American defence chiefs had a ‘positive, practical and constructive’ meeting at the Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore to ease tensions but there can be no compromise over sovereignty
This year’s Shangri-la Dialogue security forum will be remembered for a meeting on the sidelines between the Chinese and American defence ministers – the first face-to-face encounter in two years amid heightened tensions.
Regular high-level military-to-military contact is important to management of difficult relations between the two rivals.
It was therefore good to see a positive note in readouts from both sides on the 75-minute meeting between China’s new Defence Minister Dong Jun and Lloyd Austin and their supporting officials.
A Chinese defence ministry official described it as “positive, practical and constructive” communication at the strategic level, including an exchange of views on the deeply divisive issues of Taiwan, the South China Sea and the Ukraine war.
It also included discussions about creating a crisis communication working group to avoid miscalculations and misunderstandings.
The Pentagon said Austin welcomed this outcome of “frank and important” discussion. Indeed, this accord is a significant achievement of this year’s forum.
That said, Dong and Austin also laid out serious concerns on hot-button bilateral issues, which were amplified in separate forthright speeches to the forum.