Speeches by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chinese counterpart Dong Jun at the Shangri-La Dialogue heavily referenced Taiwan and underscored growing U.S.-China tensions.
SINGAPORE — Defense leaders from the United States and China laid out their competing visions of a modern security order in the Indo-Pacific this weekend, with the American side championing Washington’s expanded network of security partnerships, while Chinese officials promoted their own such alliances and cast the United States as a foreign aggressor meddling in Asian affairs.
In his address to the conference Saturday, Austin stressed the United States’ vast and expanding network of security partnerships in the Indo-Pacific — a clear warning to Beijing, observers said, that further Chinese military aggression in the region could prompt a U.S. response.
In remarks that hewed closely to Beijing’s usual talking points, Dong described China’s aspirations to live in a “multipolar world” — as opposed to one dominated by the United States — and appealed to the rest of the region’s “unique Asian wisdom” and shared experience of “imperialism” from outside forces.
Meanwhile, when a Chinese military officer and academic at China’s Institute of War Studies, Sr. Col. Cao Yanzhong, suggested Saturday that NATO expansion in Europe “led to the Ukraine crisis,” Austin garnered applause when he said he “respectfully” disagreed with that claim. Even as some Asian officials brooked stronger public dissent with China than in previous years, many were cautious not to take their criticism too far.
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