US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is expected to meet China’s Defence Minister Dong Jun at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore later this month, a US official has said. The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said while a meeting was planned, last minute changes could impact it.
The meeting will be the first substantial in-person engagement between US and Chinese defence chiefs in two years, though Austin and Jun spoke on the phone last month. Jun was appointed defence minister in December last year.
The countries are trying to reopen communication lines that were closed as relations plummeted in 2022. China had shut down military-to-military communications with Washington after then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in 2022, enraging Beijing. Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to reopen the channels between the two militaries when he held a summit with President Joe Biden in San Francisco in November, which was aimed at stabilising relations.
In another sign of re-engagement, Ely Ratner, the top Pentagon official for the Indo-Pacific, spoke to Major General Li Bin, head of the Central Military Commission office for international military cooperation, yesterday. It was the first exchange between them since 2019.
“We see value in frank conversations between defence and military leaders from the United States and the People’s Republic of China at multiple levels, because they provide our officials with an opportunity to speak candidly about issues of concern,” said a US defence official. “Opening lines of military-to-military communication is important to help prevent competition from veering into conflict,” he added.
Asked about the Singapore meeting, a Pentagon spokesperson said: “We don’t have any specific meetings to announce today”. But he said Ratner’s call with Li underscored that the US was “committed to delivering on the president’s direction to increase military to military communication”.
With inputs from Reuters
