KEY TAKEAWAYS
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The recently concluded 2024 Shangri La Dialogue in Singapore provided another useful opportunity for senior U.S. and Chinese national security officials to engage in face-to-face bilateral discussions and interact with officials and experts from other states. While these engagements have value in theory, they highlight three persistent problems in the practice of U.S.-China relations. First, the United States and China tend to talk past each other. Second, the United States and China have dissimilar systems, which makes identifying and engaging with appropriate counterpart officials very difficult. Third, the United States and China possess fundamentally different understandings about the role of third countries in managing confrontation and mitigating conflict.
While U.S.-China dialogues on security matters are almost always better than the alternative, discussions as performative art can have little if any value. At best, they can permit the two sides to clarify each other’s policies and stances. The problem is that dialogues can produce holding patterns while giving the illusion of progress or fuel false expectations. More worrisome is the potential for exacerbating existing mutual suspicions and distrust if one side concludes that the other is negotiating in bad faith. Given the current abysmal state of U.S.-China relations, one side drawing conclusions about what is driving these bad faith actions could engender an even more toxic environment.
While U.S.-China dialogues on security matters are almost always better than the alternative, discussions as performative art can have little if any value.
While this year’s Shangri La Dialogue saw U.S. and Chinese defense chiefs meeting in-person for the first time since 2022, Austin and Dong’s meeting held a familiar pattern of high-level officials talking past each other. Chinese Minister of National Defense Dong Jun in a speech warned that “anyone who dares to separate Taiwan from China will only end up in self-destruction” and blamed an array of actors for fomenting instability and elevating the threat of conflict in the Taiwan Strait and elsewhere in China’s extended neighborhood. China itself remains a blameless victim — at least in its own telling. Dong reiterated long-standing Beijing talking points about China “never provoking incidents or easily resorting to the use of force” to resolve its “border and maritime disputes.”
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin meanwhile did not stray far from the usual U.S. talking points about “respect for sovereignty and international law” as well as “freedom of the seas and skies.” Austin spoke of “openness, transparency, and accountability.” He reiterated U.S. preferences for “the peaceful resolution of disputes through dialogue” over resolution via “coercion or conflict.”
Austin and Dong were the highest-level U.S. and Chinese officials in Singapore. On the surface these two leaders appear to be appropriate counterparts: each hold a similar title that suggests that he is the most senior official from their respective military establishments. Yet nothing could be further from the truth.
While in the United States, the secretary of defense is the most senior civilian official in the Pentagon, in China the minister of defense is a largely ceremonial position always occupied by uniformed general officer — Dong is an admiral in the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Navy. China’s minister of defense might best be characterized as the PLA’s “chief foreign liaison officer.” The incumbent typically derives his power and authority from concurrently occupying a seat on the Central Military Commission. However, Dong is an unusual defense minister in that he is not a member of the CMC. He was selected in a somewhat haphazard fashion in late 2023 to fill the vacancy created by the mid-2023 purge of the last minister (who did occupy a seat on the CMC).
The dialogue between Secretary Austin and Minister Dong was a serious mismatch. The two are clearly nowhere close to being counterpart defense officials.
The dialogue between Secretary Austin and Minister Dong was a serious mismatch. The two are clearly nowhere close to being counterpart defense officials. While the former is President Joe Biden’s most senior military advisor located at the apex of the Pentagon chain-of-command, the latter is not even comparable to a U.S. service chief. His exclusion from the CMC signals that Dong is certainly not roughly equivalent to a member of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (the former organ has been compared to the latter). Dong almost certainly does not have the ear or confidence of China’s commander-in-chief and chair of the CMC, Xi Jinping, in the same way that Austin has close and routine contact to Biden.
The United States and China possess fundamentally different understandings about the role of third countries in managing confrontation and mitigating conflict in the Western Pacific and beyond. China views the U.S. alliance network as threatening and directed against China. Beijing tends to see even countries that are not formal U.S. allies as likely falling under the strong influence or direct sway of the United States, presuming that U.S. allies are essentially controlled and dominated from Washington.
This means that Beijing perceives countries like the Philippines as mere puppets of the United States. Hence, when Manila has expressed outrage at dangerous Chinese provocations against Philippine vessels in its exclusive economic zone, Beijing assumes all this rhetoric is orchestrated by Washington rather than seeing this as a genuine manifestation of indignant Filipino nationalism in reaction to Chinese bullying. In his public address at the Shangri La Dialogue, Dong insisted that the Philippines was being “emboldened by outside powers.” China’s defense minister continued, “We will not allow any country or any force to create conflict and chaos in our region.” Although Dong did not identify either the Philippines (“a certain country”) or United States (“hegemonism”) by name, there was no doubt about the countries he was criticizing.
Washington, by contrast, tends to presume that all foreign capitals proceed and act as autonomous if not independent players. From a U.S. perspective, all states, even U.S. allies, make decisions about defense policy based upon their own perceived national interests. These can be consistent with U.S. national interests and strategic preferences or not.
In short, when it comes to U.S. allies and partners, Beijing gives short shrift to their agency or autonomy.
The implications of these troublesome takeaways are significant. First, the number and frequency of ongoing security dialogues — whether bilateral or multilateral, whether track 1, track 2, or track 1.5 — should not be used as a reliable barometer of U.S.-China relations. Moreover, one should be wary of analyzing the substance and tenor of these dialogues to discern positive trends in bilateral relations. Dialogues can proceed for many years without tangible outcomes or achievements. Talking about tough issues is not unimportant but one should not equate one or both sides blowing off steam with the building of meaningful trust or the formulation and implementation of concrete policy solutions.
Second, identifying and regularly pairing genuine counterpart national security officials and organizations presents a tremendous ongoing challenge. Certainly, China’s minister of defense is not the counterpart of the U.S. secretary of defense. A closer equivalent is one of the uniformed vice chairs of the CMC. The United States should insist at a minimum that its secretary of defense have high-level policy meetings with a vice chair of the CMC if the incumbent PRC minister of defense does not have a seat on the CMC. This counterpart conundrum is exacerbated by the reality that China’s Ministry of National Defense is a shell entity created almost entirely to interface with the military establishments of other states. The PLA’s “actual command power” is concentrated in the CMC.
China’s overarching assumption that the United States exerts a high degree of influence over and control of its allies in the Western Pacific means Beijing tends to belittle countries like the Philippines.
Third, China’s overarching assumption that the United States exerts a high degree of influence over and control of its allies in the Western Pacific means Beijing tends to belittle countries like the Philippines. Concretely, Beijing tends to assume that Manila can be swiftly coerced through the application of force or easily enticed by attractive offers of economic incentives. China tends to direct its strategic messaging squarely at the United States. Overestimating the degree of influence and control that Washington exerts over allies like Manila, leads Beijing to maintain elevated threat perceptions of the United States and further perpetuate its presumption that the United continues to be vigorously engaged in “containing China.” Confirmation bias makes it exceedingly difficult to break this cognitive loop of China’s circular logic.