China Rebuffs Pentagon Chief Austin, not keen on Patch up

U.S. had proposed a meeting; China accused the U.S. of insincerity

China has rebuffed a U.S. request for a meeting between their defense chiefs on the sidelines of an annual security forum in Singapore this weekend, the Pentagon said Monday (29.05.2023), showing the limits of a tentative rapprochement between the two rival powers.

The decision by China formally to inform the Pentagon shuts the door for now on a meeting between Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Li Shangfu, China’s new defense minister, which the U.S. had proposed on the sidelines of the annual Shangri-La Dialogue security forum.

China’s dismissal of the proposal also was termed an unusually blunt message, U.S. defense officials said. Beijing has questioned Washington’s sincerity in pushing for the meeting, pointing to sanctions Washington has imposed on Li since 2018 when he ran the Chinese military’s armaments departments and purchased combat aircraft and missile equipment from Russia.

In a statement to The Wall Street Journal, Liu Pengyu, Chinese embassy spokesman in Washington, said the U.S. was “seeking to suppress China through all possible means and continue imposing sanctions on Chinese officials, institutions and companies.”

He added: “Is there any sincerity in and significance of any communication like this?”

In the past, such meetings have come together at the last minute, including last year’s meeting between Austin and his then-counterpart, which was agreed upon hours beforehand.

“Overnight, the PRC informed the U.S. that they have declined our early May invitation for Secretary Austin to meet with PRC Minister of National Defense Li Shangfu in Singapore this week,” the Pentagon said in a statement. “The Department believes strongly in the importance of maintaining open lines of military-to-military communication between Washington and Beijing to ensure that competition does not veer into conflict.”

China’s decision comes after a weekslong effort by the U.S. to secure a meeting, including a letter from Austin to Li. The rebuff could spark concerns among Southeast Asia allies nervous about being caught between the two powers, some U.S. officials warned. They held open the prospect of a Singapore meeting between lower-level officials.

“We’ve had a lot of difficulty, in terms of when we have proposed phone calls, proposed meetings, dialogues, whether that’s the secretary” or other top U.S. defense leaders, Ely Ratner, assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific Security, said last week at an event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.

Relations between Beijing and Washington have been fraught since February, after the U.S. shot down a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon, warned Beijing against arming Russia in the war in Ukraine and allowed Taiwan’s president to stop off in the U.S.

Earlier this month, national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with his Chinese counterpart in Vienna. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo also met with her Chinese counterpart, Wang Wentao, the first cabinet-level meeting in Washington between the two countries during the Biden administration.

Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang met with U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Burns in Beijing and delivered a stern message over Taiwan, accusing the U.S. of undermining the “hard won positive momentum of U.S.-China relations.”

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The U.S. has sought to improve military relations since the balloon incident, in part to avoid miscommunication, as both nations operate militarily throughout the Asia-Pacific and amid rising tensions between the two countries over Taiwan.

In addition to the rebuffed Austin-Li meeting, the two sides haven’t yet rescheduled a visit to Beijing by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, which was postponed because of the balloon incident.

The decision by China to meet with some top U.S. officials, but not top national-security cabinet officials, appears to be a strategic choice, said Zack Cooper, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

“The Chinese believe they have the most leverage when dealing with officials who handle economic issues. So they are prioritizing those engagements over ones involving national security,” Cooper said.

The Biden administration is required to inform Congress should it decide to lift the sanctions on Li. The Trump administration imposed them in 2018 because Li—then head of the Chinese military’s Equipment Development Department—approved the purchase of Russian jet fighters and missiles. He became defense minister this year.

Liu, the Chinese embassy spokesman, said in the statement: “The U.S. side should immediately lift sanctions and take concrete actions to remove obstacles, create favorable atmosphere and conditions for dialogue and communication.”