China has told the US there is little chance of a meeting between the countries’ defence ministers at a security forum in Singapore due to a dispute over sanctions, the latest obstacle to top-level dialogue between the two powers.
US defence secretary Lloyd Austin wants to meet Li Shangfu, China’s new defence minister, at the Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore in June. However, arranging such a meeting is fraught with difficulty because Li was sanctioned by the US in 2018 in relation to Chinese imports of Russian arms when he was serving as a general.
The US has told China that the sanctions do not prevent Austin from meeting Li in a third country. But several people said it would be almost impossible for China to agree to a meeting while they remain in place. Li became defence minister in March.
There was no prospect of the Biden administration removing the sanctions, some of the people said. The White House declined to comment.
The latest stalemate in US-China relations comes as the countries struggle to arrange high-level visits by American cabinet secretaries to Beijing.
Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping agreed that the countries needed to stabilise relations when they met at the G20 in Bali in November. But early efforts to kick-start high-level engagement were derailed after a suspected Chinese spy balloon flew over North America in early February.
The countries are negotiating visits to China by secretary of state Antony Blinken, Treasury secretary Janet Yellen and commerce secretary Gina Raimondo. The US is also trying to arrange the first call between Biden and Xi since the spy balloon incident.
However, Beijing is reluctant to receive Blinken because of concerns that the FBI may release a report into the Chinese balloon.
Concern over the lack of engagement between the countries’ top military officials has mounted over the past year.
Admiral John Aquilino, head of Indo-Pacific command, has been trying to meet his Chinese counterparts for two years. General Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs, has also not had any communication with his counterpart since the balloon episode.
The Shangri-La Dialogue, which is run by the International Institute for Strategic Studies think-tank, frequently serves as a venue for US and Chinese defence officials to meet. Austin last year had a bilateral meeting with Wei Fenghe, Li’s predecessor.
The Pentagon said it wanted “open lines of communication” with Chinese military leaders but blamed China for the impasse. “It has been the People’s Republic of China’s decision to ignore, reject, or cancel multiple US requests for senior-level communication,” it said.
The Chinese embassy did not respond to a request for comment.
Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the German Marshall Fund, said south-east Asian nations were increasingly uneasy with the intensity of the competition between the US and China and the lack of high-level dialogue. She said such countries would be “shocked” if Austin and Li attended Shangri-La without meeting.
“The question is, will they blame the US or China? My sense is that there is recognition in much of the region that the US has been seeking to engage with Chinese counterparts but are being stonewalled,” Glaser added.
Jude Blanchette, a China expert at the CSIS think-tank, said the dispute illustrated how “political dynamics on both sides gum up the possible stabilisation” of Washington-Beijing relations.
“The longer Beijing refuses to meet with the US, the more countries in Europe and across Asia will come to see Chinese behaviour as intransigence,” Blanchette said.
Evan Medeiros at Georgetown University said the best way for the US to achieve its aim of “deterring and constraining China” was to show its Asian partners it was “always open to dialogue with Beijing”.
“The US needs to find a compromise solution for the sake of its strategic goals,” Medeiros added.
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