The U.S. secretary of defense, Lloyd J. Austin III, and China’s minister of defense held their first face-to-face talks in 18 months on Friday, exploring tentative steps to manage military tensions despite their opposing positions on Taiwan, the South China Sea and other disputes.
The 75-minute meeting in Singapore between Mr. Austin and Adm. Dong Jun, his Chinese counterpart, came after a succession of Biden administration officials had traveled to Beijing for talks about trade imbalances, U.S. limits on technology trade with China, Chinese support for Russia during its war against Ukraine and other sources of tension.
President Biden has made the case that the United States and China must stay in high-level communication to avoid potential crises. Yet military issues have remained the most intractable area of tension between the two nations, and one where disagreements could erupt into conflict, especially in the Pacific Ocean, where their ships and military aircraft come close to one another.
Mr. Austin and Admiral Dong discussed possible steps to prevent accidents or miscommunication from spiraling into conflict. Mr. Austin raised an earlier proposal for Chinese and U.S. military commanders to hold phone calls in coming months, and he “welcomed plans to convene a crisis communications working group by the end of the year,” the Pentagon said in a statement about the talks.
“Secretary Austin emphasized the importance of maintaining open lines of military-to-military communication between the United States and the P.R.C.,” the Pentagon said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.
Senior U.S. Defense Department officials told reporters that Mr. Austin raised a proposal for the commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Samuel J. Paparo Jr., to hold calls with Chinese counterparts. The Chinese and U.S. militaries created a crisis communications working group in 2020 to discuss ideas for defusing possible conflict, but the group met only once.
A spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Defense, Senior Col. Wu Qian, said Admiral Dong and Mr. Austin had “agreed to have more communication and exchanges in the next stage,” but Colonel Wu sounded more cautious about the timing of any calls between commanders and a new crisis communications group meeting.
“The relevant departments of our two militaries are in coordination and communication on that,” he said when asked about the calls.
The military rivalry between China and the United States, and worries about incidents at sea turning into a crisis, are rooted in longstanding disputes that are not easily resolved. These include China’s claim to Taiwan, the island democracy that relies on the United States for security, and Beijing’s increasingly assertive claim over vast areas of the South China Sea, which has alarmed its neighbors.
Pentagon officials have also warned that People’s Liberation Army military aircraft and ships have become increasingly aggressive and reckless in closely tailing and harassing American military vessels and aircraft that fly close to China, along with those of allies like Australia, often for intelligence collection.
Mr. Austin pressed Admiral Dong about Chinese military activities around Taiwan. And Mr. Austin also signaled that the United States would keep sending military ships and aircraft into international skies and seas near China, despite frequent harassment by the Chinese military.
“The secretary made clear that the United States will continue to fly, sail and operate — safely and responsibly — wherever international law allows,” the Pentagon’s summary of the talks stated.
But Beijing rejects the idea that other countries have a right to operate military planes and vessels close to Chinese shores. In the view of its officials, agreeing to stricter rules about encounters between military planes and ships would simply give U.S. forces greater license to approach the Chinese coast and scoop up useful images and signals.
“China believes that being able to sail doesn’t mean being able to run amok,” Colonel Wu told reporters. “We believe that security is mutual, and is not about letting one side have absolute security at the expense of another side.”
For over two years, the Pentagon has been focused on supporting Ukraine, and on containing risks in the Middle East while Israeli forces fight Hamas. But China’s growing military remains the “pacing challenge” in the eyes of Pentagon planners: a long-term, tectonic shift that could, if badly mismanaged, pull the United States into war with another nuclear-armed power.
The United States has by far the world’s largest military. The Pentagon budget remains about three times as large as China’s annual military spending, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
But Beijing does not have the same globe-spanning commitments and operations as the U.S. military, and has focused on projecting power in Asia, especially toward Taiwan and across the seas, where Beijing is in territorial disputes with neighbors from Japan to Indonesia.
Admiral Dong became defense minister late last year after his predecessor abruptly disappeared, apparently caught up in expanding inquiries into corruption or other misdeeds in the People’s Liberation Army. He is seen as lacking the power to make big strategic decisions.
“He’s not a member of the Central Military Commission, much less the Politburo,” said Drew Thompson, a visiting senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, referring to two top tiers of power in the Chinese Communist Party.
“This is an opportunity for the two sides to exchange well-established talking points,” said Mr. Thompson, who formerly served as a Pentagon official dealing with the Chinese military.
Admiral Dong’s predecessor, Gen. Li Shangfu, was under U.S. sanctions and refused to hold talks with Mr. Austin in Singapore last year. Mr. Austin and Admiral Dong previously spoke over a video link in April. Mr. Austin last held face-to-face talks with a Chinese defense minister in November 2022, when he met Gen. Wei Fenghe in Cambodia.
Summing up the latest talks, Colonel Wu offered a familiar refrain: “It’s better to meet and talk than not.”
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines underscored the regional risks, speaking at the same security forum in Singapore where Mr. Austin and Admiral Dong had met on the sidelines.
The Philippines has been at loggerheads with China over their rival claims in the South China Sea, in an area that Manila calls the West Philippine Sea. Asked whether the Philippines would call on support from the United States under a mutual defense treaty in the event that a Chinese vessel caused the death of a Philippine sailor, Mr. Marcos stated his expectations.
“If a Filipino citizen is killed by a willful act, that is, I think, very, very close to what we define as an act of war,” he told an audience of diplomats and defense officials at the meeting, known as the Shangri-La Dialogue. The Philippines, he added, “will respond accordingly, and our treaty partners, I believe, also hold that same standard.”
After Mr. Marcos’s speech, the Chinese delegation at the meeting organized a late-night news conference to denounce his comments and warn against U.S. intervention.
“We adamantly oppose countries from outside the region meddling and intervening in the South China Sea issue,” Lieutenant General He Lei, a former vice president of the People’s Liberation Army’s Academy of Military Sciences, told reporters. “We’ll never let a wolf enter the house.”
