U.S., China Defense Chiefs to Lay Out Rival Visions for Asia

(Bloomberg) --

Top American and Chinese defense officials will lay out rival visions for the Indo-Pacific region as they meet in Singapore this week amid a bruising global trade war, tensions over China’s push for technology leadership and the specter of stalled U.S.-North Korea nuclear talks.

Acting U.S. Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan will meet Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe at the Shangri-La Dialogue this week. Both men will deliver closely watched -- and likely contrasting -- keynote speeches at the annual security conference. They will also meet on the sidelines with each other, as well with defense officials from across the region.

After months of disruptive tit-for-tat tariffs, Washington and Beijing are competing to sway skeptical allies in the region wary of finding themselves squeezed in an escalating global trade war. While the U.S. has threatened Beijing with more tariffs and pressured allies to ban Shenzhen-based Huawei Technologies Co. from emerging 5G networks, China has pushed back aggressively against those seen siding with Washington, including Canada -- which saw two of its citizens detained.

“There are wide expectations of a diplomatic face-off between the United States and China in Singapore this week,” said Rory Medcalf, who heads the National Security College at the Australian National University. “The United States and China will both be at pains to sell their own narrative about what is now a comprehensive economic confrontation.”

Even as many countries in Southeast Asia seek a middle way between Washington and Beijing, elections across Asia could consolidate an undercurrent of resistance to China. With an uptick in American warship transits through the Taiwan Strait, there are also questions of whether a U.S.-China cold war could burst out into a new type of confrontation elsewhere, with possible flash points from North Korea to Vietnam and into space and cyberspace, said Scott Harold, associate director of the Center for Asia-Pacific Policy at Rand Corp.

“The U.S. and China will be wooing countries in the region, the U.S. likely with the message that Chinese offers of loans and infrastructure represent a debt trap and a sacrificing of information to an untrustworthy digital infrastructure provider who will then have your data,” Harold said. “China’s will be that the U.S. is an outside actor looking to stir up trouble and prevent the region from developing out of a misplaced concern about China’s rise.”

‘Set the Tone’

The Shangri-La Dialogue -- hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies -- is part of a broader regional tour for Shanahan that began Wednesday in Jakarta. It’s designed to demonstrate U.S. commitment to the Asia-Pacific region and will send a message of support to China’s neighbors in their continuing territorial disputes at sea with Beijing, according to a Pentagon official who previewed the trip on condition of anonymity.

There is likely to be little talk of trade as Shanahan fleshes out the defense dimension of the new U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy, said Bonnie Glaser, a senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington who has advised the U.S. government.

“I expect that Acting Defense Secretary Shanahan will set the tone and the Chinese defense minister will respond accordingly,” she said. “Regional countries don’t want to be forced to choose between the U.S. and China. So I doubt either country will frame their policy in those terms. China is likely to present itself as the victim of U.S. pressure and the champion on multilateralism.”

Shanahan, speaking to reporters en route to Jakarta earlier this week, said he thought trade talks could be managed separate from “candid discussions” around issues such as militarization of the South China Sea. After a similar meeting between Wei and Shanahan’s predecessor, James Mattis, in October, both sides agreed the “military-to-military relationship could be a stabilizing factor” for ties.

“Trade runs a separate track,” said Shanahan, who address the Singapore conference on Saturday. “I want identify areas where we can cooperate, what are things we can cooperate on, and then we will probably talk about the things that that I think are important to be transparent and candid about.”

‘Bang The Table’

Wei, who is also the third-highest-ranked general in the People’s Liberation Army, will deliver a speech focusing on China’s place in the Indo-Pacific on Sunday, the final day of the Shangri-La Dialogue. He’s the first Chinese defense minister to visit the security conference since Liang Guanglie attended in 2011.

It’s a “big deal” that China decided to send its defense minister and his words will be closely parsed by Southeast Asian nations, according to Ong Keng Yong, the executive deputy chairman of Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and a long-time Singaporean diplomat.

“I don’t think they believe they can change the mind of anybody in Japan or India, or elsewhere in Europe, but at least in the neighborhood -- namely, the Southeast Asian countries -- the Chinese side will want to again repeat what they have consistently been putting across, ‘We are here for peace,’” Ong said. “The aim is to win over as many of the regional states as possible.”

With tensions rising in the region and the Trump administration pressuring an increasingly assertive China, as well as North Korea, there are worries about a potential miscalculation. Still, analysts suggest the current confrontation is unlikely to boil over.

“Times may be tense, but it remains unlikely that the technology confrontation will spill over into a military crisis,” said Medcalf, of Australian National University. “China has long pretended to be reckless in order to get its way in places like the South China Sea. Now it faces an America that is beginning to look reckless, too -- that is not an adversary for which the PLA is yet prepared.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Iain Marlow in Singapore at imarlow1@bloomberg.net;Glen Carey in Singapore at gcarey8@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Bill Faries at wfaries@bloomberg.net, ;Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Daniel Ten Kate

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