The US power struggle with China is shaping the security conference Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. Much is at stake for East Asia. The first countries in the region are calling for a departure from the policy of confrontation.
As in previous years, this year’s edition of the well-known “Shangri La Dialog” security conference, which took place in Singapore from Friday to Sunday last week, was dominated by the power struggle between the US government and China.
The countries of East Asia and the western Pacific are choosing different strategies to deal with tensions: while each other Japan, South Korea and Taiwan militarily and politically closer to the United States, most Southeast Asian countries are attempting to strike a neutral middle course.
ASEAN in the middle?
At the conference, representatives of several Southeast Asian countries warned of the danger of war. One is “acutely worried” that one would have to take sides in the event of an escalation, the quoted South China Morning Post from the meeting. According to the tenor, Washington and Beijing should repair their ailing relations and maintain contact with each other via open and secret channels in order to prevent misunderstandings and misjudgments from their military.
Singapore’s Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen stressed that the America-China relationship is central to Asia and the countries bordering the Indian and Pacific Oceans. “I don’t think any country wants war,” Ng said, referring to the two adversaries, “but our working hypotheses and scenarios must assume that unintended incidents can happen.”
In the weeks leading up to the conference, several minor incidents had taken place between American fighter and spy planes and naval vessels and Chinese air force and navy units in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Straits – to which Ng was apparently referring.
If more serious incidents occur, Ng says, channels of communication between Washington and Beijing must already be in place to avoid further escalation, such as activation of the military chain of command.
“Top priority” for Asia is to prevent a war between the USA and China and to learn lessons from the Ukraine war.
The countries that make up the Southeast Asian confederation of states, ASEAN, are generally striving to adopt a neutral position between America and China. On the one hand, you benefit enormously from the economic cooperation with Chinabut some also maintain close military ties with the USA – such as the Philippines and Thailand – while Cambodia and Myanmar are more akin to Beijing in terms of foreign policy.
Cambodia’s Defense Minister Tea Banh criticized that the power struggle “harms the harmony and prosperity of other countries.” Cambodia does not want China or the USA to decline because this entails risks for the region and the whole world. “Cambodia would like to see a change in the behavior of rivals – away from retaliation and towards working together for shared benefits, stability and prosperity for the region and the world,” the South China Morning Post quoted Tea as saying.
Philippines Defense Minister Carlito Galvez Junior expressed concern that tensions could spill over into the South China Sea, which has territorial claims alongside China (which has built military infrastructure there), Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei raise.
The Philippine government recently gave the go-ahead for the use of further American military bases on the archipelago. The Americans can now use a total of nine bases in the country, for example to move material, weapons or personnel or to hold exercises.
The activities of the Americans in the Philippines are a thorn in China’s side due to the geographical proximity of the island archipelago to the mainland and the South China Sea, just as the USA would not like lively military cooperation between Beijing and Cuba. Even more threatening from China’s point of view, however, is the fact that the US government is not only supplying Taiwan with weapons, but American instructors are also training Taiwanese armed forces.
It is noteworthy that the ASEAN countries have initiated a relative decoupling from the US dollar in the area of economy and trade by wanting to process payment transactions between their member countries more in their own currencies in the future. Last but not least, the background is concerns about the increased instrumentalization of the world‘s leading currency for political purposes, such as at a conference in Singapore in January.
hardened fronts
On Saturday, the differences between the US and China became clear. Chinese military officials particularly criticized the attempt by the US government to position countries in the region against China in foreign policy and military terms and to build up a military force in Taiwan. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, on the other hand, accused China of “harassment and coercion” with regard to Taiwan.
Austin announced plans to further intensify US influence in China’s geographical backyard. “We are stepping up planning and coordination and training with our friends from the East China Sea to the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean,” the Hong Kong official said South China Morning Post austin “That includes close allies like Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Philippines and Thailand.”
The network of the US and its allies in Asia will provide protection against “coercion,” Austin said. A US destroyer and a Canadian frigate demonstratively crossed the Taiwan Strait on the same day.
The mobilization of allied states against China, as well as the implicitly anti-China AUKUS pact together with Great Britain and Australia, represent elements of the US government’s military pressure campaign against China. This in turn is part of a broader strategic campaign that the Trump administration is launching started their (illegal according to the WTO) trade tariffs in 2018 and which one alongside economic sanctions also includes diplomatic sanctions and other campaigns.
At the Shangri-La Dialoque, top representatives from China’s security apparatus accused the US government of actively stoking tensions around Taiwan and positioning neighboring states against China. “The US does not want a quiet spot in the Taiwan Strait because that would run counter to its Indo-Pacific strategy of moving more troops and weapons systems to the region while Taiwan would have to buy more American-made weapons,” Oberst said Zhao Xiaozhuo from the People’s Liberation Army Academy of Military Sciences.
“The US move to join forces with the Five Eyes Alliance and European countries to meddle in regional affairs will only exacerbate the problem,” Lt. Gen. He Lei said. “You Americans live thousands of miles from the South China Sea. Why do you come here and provoke other countries to confront China?”.
Lt. Gen. Jing Jianfeng, vice chief of the General Staff of the Central Military Commission, warned that current tensions could escalate into a serious crisis if US forces continue to station weapons and personnel on China’s borders and external parties urge it , “interfering in the affairs of the region.”
According to Jing, the US government’s support for those parts of Taiwanese politics calling for secession from China and the establishment of a separate state has compelled the PLA to act to protect China’s state sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The Chinese Navy and Air Force had significantly expanded their drills and maneuvers off the island’s coast, particularly after the controversial visit by then-Congress Speaker Nancy Pelosi in August last year and subsequent visits by high-ranking American politicians to Taiwan.
According to Jing, 32 years after the end of the Cold War, the US political and economic campaign against China has created ideologically entrenched blocs around the world. “The US pursues its own interests regardless of other countries’ desires for stability and uses them as pawns through trickery and coercion.”
Statements by the former Chinese ambassador in Washington, Cui Tiankai, were interesting from a European point of view. Europeans have “mismanaged” their own security, as their response to the Ukraine war now shows, and they should look to the Asia Pacific in their approach to peace and stability. “We should also learn something from Europe’s failure – learn something very important. I don’t want to use the word ‘failure,’ but failure,” Cui said.
Cui is obviously alluding to the overwhelming influence of the United States in Europe and Washington’s key position in the Ukraine conflict, the negative political and economic consequences of which threaten Europeans to a much greater extent than the United States itself.
A meeting with Lieutenant General Jing requested by US Secretary of State Austin was not accepted by the Chinese side because the US government is not prepared to reverse the sanctions imposed on Jing.
Warning from East Timor
At the summit, the President of the small island state of East Timor, José Ramos-Horta, focused on the perspective of poor countries on the power struggle between the great powers: “Hard political solutions and tools that are available to the rich and powerful of the world, are not applied lawfully because those powers that decide between war and peace are too busy wasting resources in narrow and selfish rivalries for regional influence and supremacy,” the quoted the South China Morning Post Ramos-Horta.
Those who have secured a seat on the UN Security Council, the G7 group or the G20 group have also made no attempt to tackle the world‘s major problems such as poverty and the climate crisis, according to the President of East Timor .
The rich countries bailed out their banks during the financial crisis of 2008 and are spending a lot of money on the war in Ukraine, the President said, but are refusing to cancel the debt of countries that are completely over-indebted. “If the affluent North wants to regain the trust of the Global South, then there must be a wiser, more honest and braver strategy to support the hundreds of millions of people who – over decades – have humbly queued for Western aid.”
According to Ramos-Horta, China became a ray of hope for many of the world‘s poorer countries after the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s and Soviet support programs were subsequently abandoned. “It was feared at the time that the collapse of the Soviet Union could have an unpredictable contagion effect on China. Well, China survived all that. Today in 2023, China is a truly global power and a magnet for those disillusioned with the West.”