US issues warning to China over aggression near Taiwan
SINGAPORE — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned China on Saturday against what he called “provocative and destabilizing” activity near the disputed island of Taiwan, following talks with China’s defense minister, Gen. Wei Fenghe, that focused on preventing regional tensions from escalating.
Taiwan — a self-ruled island of 24 million inhabitants that Beijing claims as its own — was one of the topics of the talks between Austin and Wei in Singapore on Friday, along with disputes in seas around China and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Austin amplified his warnings in a speech to the Shangri-La Dialogue, a security meeting in Singapore, while asserting that Washington did not support an independent Taiwan.
“Our policy hasn’t changed, but unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be true for the PRC,” Austin said Saturday, referring to the People’s Republic of China. “We see growing coercion from Beijing. We’ve witnessed a steady increase in provocative and destabilizing military activity near Taiwan.”
Austin said that increasing People’s Liberation Army flights near Taiwan reflected a pattern of increasing Chinese pressure on neighbors, including India, Japan and Southeast Asian countries that dispute China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea.
Austin indicated that U.S. policy on Taiwan remained unchanged, notwithstanding speculation about recent comments by President Joe Biden.
“We categorically oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side. We do not support Taiwan independence,”
Austin said.
On Friday, Wei put responsibility on the United States for worsening tensions over Taiwan, telling Austin that U.S. weapons sales to the island “gravely damage China’s sovereignty and security interests,” the Chinese Ministry of National Defense said in its summary of their talks.
“Using Taiwan to contain China will never succeed,” Wei said, according to the summary.
Wei is scheduled to address the forum Sunday, giving him an opportunity to respond to Austin’s speech.
The meeting between Austin and Wei was only their second bilateral encounter, following a phone call in April, despite the increasing rivalry between the countries.
Austin “underscored the importance of the People’s Liberation Army engaging in substantive dialogue on improving crisis communications and reducing strategic risk,” the Pentagon said in a statement after the meeting.
Despite the public sparring, both sides also indicated that Austin and Wei had made some progress during their meeting, which lasted about an hour. Senior Col. Wu Qian, a spokesperson for the Chinese defense ministry, said the talks had also covered the South China Sea — where China’s wide territorial claims are contested by Southeast Asian countries — as well as the war in Ukraine.
“China has always believed that it’s better to meet than not meet, and better to talk than not,” Wu said. He added that the talks marked a “very good start” for improved contacts between the U.S. and Chinese militaries.
China has been flexing its military might in Asia in ways that have raised alarms in the region and in Washington. In recent days, U.S. allies have complained about Chinese military jets harassing their planes, flying so close that the pilots could see one another or making provocative, risky maneuvers, such as releasing metallic chaff in the path of an Australian aircraft.
These “dangerous intercepts,” Austin said, “should worry us all. Mistakes are especially stark in the Taiwan Strait.”
Last month, China and Russia held a joint military exercise, sending bombers over the seas in northeast Asia as Biden was visiting the region.
“It’s possible that the Chinese are testing U.S. allies to see if they’ll back down,” said Zack Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies U.S. policy in Asia and was attending the Singapore dialogue. “They may be more likely to test these other countries to see if they are less risk-tolerant.”
American officials and military commanders worry that China’s leader, Xi Jinping, may be willing to go to war over Taiwan in the coming years. Biden has indicated several times that the United States would step in with military support to defend Taiwan if Beijing launched an invasion.