Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam), 22 Nov. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his Chinese counterpart Wei Fenghe held a meeting in Cambodia on Tuesday, where they discussed “defense relations and regional and global security issues” and the US secretary insisted on “need to manage competition (between the two powers) and keep lines of communication open.”
This was indicated by the US Department of Defense in a statement after what was the first meeting between the two leaders after tensions arose between the two powers in August over Taiwan and the third between senior officials of both powers in eight days.
The meeting took place in the Cambodian city of Siem Reap on the sidelines of the summit of defense ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), to which both are invited.
Regarding Taiwan, the major point of friction between the two powers in recent months, Austin asked Beijing to “refrain from further destabilizing actions” and opposed unilateral changes to the status quo, in line with what senior US officials have expressed in the last months. .
Today is the first meeting between defense officials from the two powers since their meeting at the Shangri La Dialogue in Singapore last June, before tensions skyrocketed in August following a trip to Taiwan by the then Speaker of the House of US representatives, Democrat Nancy Pelosi.
Beijing responded to the visit with the largest military exercises around the island in decades, as well as trade sanctions on Taipei.
At the meeting, the Pentagon official reaffirmed US commitment to the One China policy and stressed the importance of “peace and stability” in the Formosa Strait, which separates Taiwan from mainland China.
Austin, according to the statement, also stressed “the importance of substantive dialogue to reduce strategic risk, ameliorate communications crisis, and enhance operational security.”
In this sense, he expressed his concern about the “increasingly dangerous behavior” of Chinese military aircraft in the Indo-Pacific region, which “increases the risk of accidents”, and said that the United States will continue “to fly, navigate and operate where permitted by international law”.
This is the third meeting between high-level representatives of China and the US in eight days, after the two meetings between the president, Joe Biden, and his vice president, Kamala Harris, with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping in Bali and Bangkok.
In last week’s meeting between Biden and Xi on the sidelines of the G20 summit on the Indonesian island of Bali, both leaders staged a rapprochement to prevent their tensions from escalating into a warlike confrontation.
Biden delivered a message to Xi almost identical to the one Austin conveyed to Wei today: Washington has not changed its One China policy, but opposes “any unilateral change to the status quo” by either side.
For his part, Xi warned Biden that Taiwan is “the first red line that must not be crossed” and assured that he hopes the United States will “honor their promise” not to support the island’s eventual independence. EFE extension
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