SINGAPORE: Improving relations between the United States and China is an issue that is “too complex” to be resolved in one meeting like the Shangri-La Dialogue (SLD), Singapore’s Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen told reporters.
This comes after US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe (pic) met face to face for the first time on Friday, the first day of the premier security summit, and traded barbs in their own speeches delivered on Saturday and Sunday.
Wrapping up three days of the dialogue on Sunday, Dr Ng said the fact that Mr Austin and General Wei met still “gives some comfort”.
“Has their meeting and has their engagements improved the US-China relations? I think that would be a stretch. One meeting wouldn’t change it,” he said.
“Would it give pause and give reflections on both sides to say: I know my goals, we know our differences. How do we take the next step? At least where they agree to disagree on is very clear, for example, Taiwan.”
Member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), some of which have contesting claims with China in the strategic South China Sea, will continue working with US and China within the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM)-Plus, Dr Ng said, noting that its next meeting will be held at the end of the year.
The ADMM-Plus is a platform for ASEAN and its eight partners – Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Russia and the United States – to strengthen security and defence cooperation in the region.
“This is a conversation, this is a journey. This is the reality, and that would be how I would characterise it is there’s no summative experience or no summative conclusion,” Dr Ng said.
“It’s just too complex a problem. I mean, the Cold War took a good part of 50 years, so why should you expect this to be resolved within a couple of decades?”
Still, Dr Ng called for an “expeditious conclusion” to negotiations between ASEAN and China on the Code of Conduct (COC) in the South China Sea, highlighting that the document could be key to navigating claims in the disputed waterways.
For many years, ASEAN and China have been jointly working on the code of conduct to prevent tensions in the South China Sea from spiralling into open conflict. In November 2018, Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang expressed hope that the document will be completed in 2021.
Dr Ng said the war in Ukraine, coupled with the pandemic, were two forces that led the world to a “potentially dangerous point in our history”.
“We hope that next year we meet under better times, but there is no guarantee, there is no certainty. But at least we are satisfied that we held SLD at this opportune time in world history,” he added.
