The annual Singapore sound-off between the defence ministers of China and the US had a little less roar-roar and a fraction more jaw-jaw.

A positive from the 21st Shangri-La dialogue on 31 May to 2 June was that US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin actually sat down with his new Chinese counterpart, Admiral Dong Jun, and indeed for a 75-minute meeting with him. Mark that as the progress of small steps.

At the same Asia security summit last year, the two sides couldn’t even agree to hold talks. The only personal contact Austin could manage last year was to walk up to China’s minister before dinner for an impromptu handshake. And even that handshake ambush was dismissed by the Chinese delegation as an unfriendly act.

The atmosphere at Shangri-La this time was still chilly, but some chat was mixed in with the usual biff and bluster.

Like Japanese Kabuki theatre, the annual Shangri-La performance has developed ritual moves and traditional lines. The US defence secretary always addresses the opening session on Saturday while China’s defence minister takes the same first slot on Sunday. China and the US each gets a session to itself, while other defence ministers do sessions in threes.

Austin’s speech described the US effort to build a lattice of relationships in the Indo-Pacific to underpin its competition with China; he also emphasised the need for more communication. Austin began with what’s now a familiar line on dealing with China: ‘dialogue is not a reward; it’s a necessity’.

Dong, the first navy man to become China’s defence minister, was appointed to the job in December. For his first big international outing, Dong went full wolf-warrior with a series of rants about Taiwan.

The big thought in Austin’s Shangri-La speech was what he called the ‘new convergence around nearly all aspects of security in the Indo-Pacific’. The American vision is of the region converging around a set of principles and norms that China wants to overturn.

Washington had moved from its old Asian hub-and-spokes model of a series of military alliances with the US as the hub, Austin said. ‘This new convergence is not a single alliance or coalition, but instead something unique to the Indo-Pacific—a set of overlapping and complementary initiatives and institutions, propelled by a shared vision and a shared sense of mutual obligation.

‘This new convergence is about coming together, and not splitting apart. It isn’t about imposing one country’s will; it’s about summoning our sense of common purpose. It isn’t about bullying or coercion; it’s about the free choices of sovereign states.’

De-escalating the superpower tensions is what Asia is asking for. A typically tough question to the US defence secretary from leading Jakarta analyst Dewi Fortuna Anwar went to the sort of balance America is seeking: ‘If Washington and Beijing are talking closely to each other again while at the same time coercive policies in the South China Sea continues, how will you manage this? Because we are also worried if you guys get too cosy, we also get trampled.’

Austin replied that the relationship with China would be based on competition, but it did not have to be contention: ‘War or a fight with China is neither imminent, in my view, or unavoidable. So leaders of great power nations need to continue to work together to ensure that we’re doing things to reduce the opportunities for miscalculation and misunderstandings. And every conversation is not going to be a happy conversation. But it is important that we continue to talk to each other.’

Just being able to talk is a low bar, but it’s one that Beijing and Washington are only just touching again.

In its annual regional security assessment, the Shangri-La host, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, judged that US–China relations had gone through their worst period since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1979.  Low points IISS identified were the visit to Taiwan by the US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2022 and the flight across America by a Chinese high-altitude balloon before it was shot down in February 2023. Add to that mix the one thing Donald Trump and Joe Biden agree on in this US election year: a tariff war against China.

Dong’s speech had plenty of kabuki elements as he denounced the US while hardly mentioning it by name. A dangerous nation was decoupling and building high trade walls while risking ‘chaos and conflict’, Dong said: ‘We will not allow hegemonism and power politics to undermine the interests of the Asia-Pacific. We will not allow anyone to bring geopolitical conflict or any war, hot or cold, to our region.’

Dong’s harshest language was directed at Taiwan’s new president, Lai Ching Te, and his government, accusing separatists of making ‘fanatical statements’. He said China’s military would smash any steps towards Taiwanese independence: ‘Whoever dares to split Taiwan from China will be crushed to pieces and suffer his own destruction.’

Dong also saw US meddling: ‘They are trying to contain China with Taiwan.’

A strength of the Shangri-La show is that after the ministers have done their star turn, an expert audience gets to critique the performance and throw questions. Dong faced queries ranging from China’s recent behaviour on the high seas to its grimy gangsterism in the grey zone. Rather than answer, the admiral’s response (despite repeated prods from the chairman) was another Taiwan monologue.

The value in the show was bringing the US and China face-to-face. Military talking has resumed.

Austin said he’d promised always to take a phone call from Dong, and he saw some chance that Beijing would answer his calls.

Communication offers a chance to deal with mishaps, and to put more structure around the US defence secretary’s statement that US–China war should not be treated as inevitable.

The US and China came to Singapore’s Shangri-La security dialogue to argue and score points, to talk and to taunt.

The face-off presented as drama and fight.

As the reigning champ, the US got to throw the first public punch in the first session on day one. As challenger, China starred in a mirror session, to start day two. This was conference scheduling to express the drama that today obsesses the Indo-Pacific.

Beyond the public performances, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and China’s Defence Minister Wei Fenghe had a bilateral meeting plus two ministerial forums chaired by Singapore’s Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen.

Austin kicked off on Saturday because at every Shangri-La Dialogue since the second was held in 2003, the US defence secretary has been the first speaker at the first session. Being number one has its privileges.

Austin was 25 minutes into his speech before he named China, but it was central to his description of the Indo-Pacific as the ‘core organising principle’ of US national-security policy:

Today, the Indo-Pacific is our priority theatre of operations. Today, the Indo-Pacific is at the heart of American grand strategy … And today, American statecraft is rooted in this reality: no region will do more to set the trajectory of the 21st century than this one. And so the Indo-Pacific is our centre of strategic gravity.

Austin offered plenty of new stuff to illustrate that strategy: AUKUS, three Quad summits, ‘close partnership with Pacific island countries’ and ‘new opportunities for cooperation among Japan, the Republic of Korea and more’. It’s been a while since a US defence secretary listed the South Pacific among his top issues or expressed optimism about Japan and South Korea working together.

Austin promised that the US would stand by its friends as they upheld their rights in dealing with ‘a more coercive and aggressive’ China that was using ‘political intimidation, economic coercion or harassment’:

We do not seek confrontation or conflict. And we do not seek a new Cold War, an Asian NATO, or a region split into hostile blocs … [G]reat powers should be models of transparency and communication. So we’re working closely with both our competitors and our friends to strengthen the guardrails against conflict. That includes fully open lines of communication with China’s defence leaders to ensure that we can avoid any miscalculations. These are deeply, deeply important conversations.

For a long time, China treated Shangri-La with suspicion, fearing some form of Anglo entrapment at an event run by Britain’s International Institute for Strategic Studies in partnership with the Singaporean government.

The IISS kept promising Beijing that if it sent its defence minister, they’d get equal billing. This year is the third time China’s defence minister has attended. The first such visit was in 2011 and General Wei attended the previous, pre-pandemic Shangri-La Dialogue in 2019. His performance in 2019 (promising an equal readiness to talk or fight) set an instant Shangri-La tradition of mirror sessions for China and the US.

As with other regional forums, China has worked through its initial caution and started to use the pulpit, showing up ready to rumble. That’s despite the uncomfortable fact that almost half the defence minister’s performance time was free-form rather than scripted when he faced a volley of questions following the speech. Wei stepped up to the challenge with a crisp military salute at the start of his speech, another salute at the end of the speech, and a third after questions.

China’s defence minister said he rejected the ‘smearing accusations and threats’ of the US defence secretary and Washington’s ‘obsession with values-based alliances’. The US Indo-Pacific strategy, Wei said, was an attempt to build a small, exclusive group that can hijack countries in the region.

In facing questions, Wei used boilerplate to deflect pointed jabs from the audience. Would China use force to overturn the status quo with Taiwan? ‘Taiwan is Chinese Taiwan. It’s a province of China,’ he replied.

A delegate from Vietnam pinged the general’s claim that China had never seized an inch of another nation’s country, pointing out that China had often invaded Vietnam (‘I assume your framework is for the future?’). Read the history carefully, responded Wei.

He faced questions on why China had not denounced Russia for violating Ukraine’s sovereignty. Why had China not condemned Russia’s ‘unprovoked, illegal aggression’? The general’s reply was to call for peace talks. The only condemnation was of those giving weapons to Ukraine and imposing sanctions on Russia, because such actions would not solve the problem.

The Australian Financial Review’s Emma Connors raised the incident over the South China Sea on 26 May when a Chinese fighter jet flew dangerously close to a Royal Australian Air Force P-8 surveillance aircraft, releasing aluminium chaff that was ingested into the P-8’s engine. Connors noted a Chinese statement calling Australia’s patrol provocative and threatening serious consequences. What consequences?

Wei’s boilerplate didn’t mention Australia or the actions of China’s jet: ‘China grows its defence capabilities to ensure national security and ensure peace. The development of the military of China is never intended to threaten others or seek hegemony. China is never a threat and has never threatened any others. China will not be the bully.’

Shangri-La did its usual important job, bringing together a dizzying array of defence ministers and military officers from across the Indo-Pacific and Europe, cramming Saturday and Sunday with speeches, bilaterals and multilaterals. As Singapore’s Defence Minister Ng observed, this is ‘the Mount Everest of speed dating’.

Lots of exchanges. Much talking. Perhaps some understanding.

Whether the dialogue shifted any Chinese or US views is moot. Much of the show was aimed at persuading others. And the taunts weighed as much as the talk.

The defence supremos of the US and China had a face-off in Singapore at the weekend.

Both sides came for a compare-and-contrast contest conducted as a rhetorical rumble. The two biggest players in the game exchanged stares, plus plenty of jabs and a few kicks. The handshakes were less convincing than the glares.

The event was the 18th annual Shangri-La Dialogue, hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, drawing defence ministers and military chiefs from ‘38 countries across Asia, Australia, North America and Europe’.

In the opening keynote address, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said that the most important bilateral relationship in the world is beset by ‘tensions and frictions’ that’ll define the international environment for years to come.

Americans now talk openly of containing China, and to do so soon before it is too late—the way they used to talk about the USSR and the Soviet bloc. This negative view of China has permeated the US establishment … In China, views are hardening too. There are those who see the US as trying to thwart China’s legitimate ambitions, convinced that no matter what they do or concede on individual issues, the US will never be satisfied … The fundamental problem between the US and China is a mutual lack of strategic trust. This bodes ill for any compromise or peaceful accommodation.

So the stage was set for the showdown that framed the conference. As is traditional, the first session on Saturday was devoted to a speech by the US defence secretary and questions from the audience.

Then came the novelty. The first session on Sunday was a mirror version, devoted to a speech by China’s defence minister, followed by questions. It’s only the second time China’s minister has come to Shangri-La. The previous visit was in 2011; that seems like an era long ago in calmer, happier times.

The US acting defence secretary, Patrick Shanahan, laid out the charge sheet against China and the terms of the US challenge in the workmanlike manner to be expected from an engineer who spent 30 years at Boeing.

China’s defence minister, General Wei Fenghe, performed with the discipline of an artillery officer who joined the People’s Liberation Army at 16 and has risen to the Central Military Commission (a salute at the end of his speech, another at the end of questions). The PLA came ready to rumble, sending a delegation of 54 people, including 11 generals.

One of the best moments in Shanahan’s performance was his response to the final question of his session (posed by a Chinese major general) about how his Boeing experience would shape his Pentagon role.

‘China was our biggest customer and our biggest competitor; you have to understand how to live in that duality’, Shanahan replied. ‘We can develop a constructive relationship and we can understand how to compete in a constructive way.’

The duality dynamic was illustrated by a bit of simultaneous dual theatre from the Americans. As Shanahan rose to speak, the US also released its Indo-Pacific strategy report.

The report reprised and amplified America’s critique of China as a revisionist power: ‘As China continues its economic and military ascendance, it seeks Indo-Pacific regional hegemony in the near-term and, ultimately global preeminence in the long-term.’ (The Russia headline was as sharp, calling Russia ‘a revitalized malign actor’.)

In response, Wei described security issues as ‘daunting and complex’ but said military relations with the US were ‘generally stable, despite twists and difficulties’.

‘As for the recent trade friction started by the US, if the US wants to talk, we will keep the door open. If they want to fight, we will fight till the end’, Wei said.

‘As the general public of China says these days, “A talk? Welcome. A fight? We’re ready. Bully us? No way”.’

The general’s speech was Beijing boilerplate. Then came questions and Wei tackled almost everything tossed at him—around 20 questions delivered in two tranches. About the only question he didn’t touch was one on whether China is still a communist state.

On the militarisation of the South China Sea, Wei used the same line several times. China was merely responding to all those foreign naval vessels: ‘In the face of heavily armed warships and military aircraft, how can we not deploy any defence facilities?’

To a question about ‘concentration camps’ in Xinjiang (see ASPI’s mapping of the ‘re-education camps’), Wei replied that there’d been no terrorist attacks there in two years and China’s policy was to deradicalise and reintegrate people.

On this year’s 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Wei answered: ‘How can we say China didn’t handle the Tiananmen incident properly? That incident was political turbulence and the central government took measures to stop the turbulence which is a correct policy. Because of that handling of the Chinese government, China has enjoyed stability and development.’

The result of the face-off? It was, of course, inconclusive. Not a draw. Just one round in a contest with many more rounds to come.

The strategic discussion between the US and China can’t be called a dialogue of the deaf. The talk is loud and each side hears the other.

Yet a lot of mishearing is happening. Perhaps the metaphor should be a security debate shaking on a sea of scrambled semiotics.

Everybody purports to be talking about the same thing when really they’re talking about different things. Same subject, divergent understandings.

Take the subject du jour:the South China Sea. The issue under discussion should be clear and well understood. This is about rocks and reefs, contested ownership and rights in some vital maritime territory. When each side talks about the South China Sea, however, they’re also talking about lots of things that look nothing like rocks and reefs; scrambled semiotics in spades.

The big shared understanding is that the South China Sea is one element in a much larger process—the shift in Asia’s balance of power.

Beyond that, though, the South China Sea becomes a subject of conflicting and confusing signs and symbols and understandings.

For everyone else, China’s rampant terraforming in the South China Sea shows the raw power of Asia’s biggest player, grabbing what it wants on the international commons. China, though, sees it as a domestic issue, restoring historic rights torn from China in its time of humiliation. The Party has been telling the people the humiliations-of-history story for a long time—and the people believe it. Domestic imperatives mean the Party must press on or be punished by the people. This is about domestic politics, not the international system.

Listening to Beijing is to hear a litany of complaints about all the injustices imposed on China despite its indisputable rights and interests. The language of valiant victimhood is striking. Everyone is ganging up against poor China, but China will emerge victorious. The deep wounds of history throb. China proudly proclaims its power but the message is wrapped in a teenager’s question: Why is everyone so mean to me?

The crucial question that Beijing constantly worries about, often glimpsed, is the valiant victim conviction that everyone is plotting to foil its inevitable success. No wonder China faces huge problems and difficulties, with so much ranged against it.

So it was that I turned on my mental decoder to listen to the Shangri-La speech by Admiral Sun Jianguo, Deputy Chief of the PLA.

Admiral Sun spoke of China’s ‘enormous restraint’ and its goal of peace and stability:

We hope relevant countries will work together in the same direction to build the South China Sea into a sea of peace, friendship and cooperation.

My decoder heard: We’re certainly going to keep building. Mountains of sand! Get used to it. Accept the new facts of our fait accompli. And by the way, America, this is our equivalent of the Caribbean.

Admiral Sun concluded: ‘We hope that all countries in the world will, in the spirit of win-win and all-win cooperation, strengthen communication and consultation, and make concerted efforts to safeguard peace and stability.’ Ah, yes, communication and consultation. The decoder offered this understanding: win-win means Beijing wins twice, all-win means that China always wins. Scrambled semiotics, indeed.

The US speaks about freedom of navigation and freedom of overflight. And, crucially, rule of law. The decoder, though, keeps throwing up Barack Obama’s State of the Union line that the US should write the rules, not China.

Who rules and who is writing the rules?

When Xi Jinping proclaims an Asian future run by Asians for Asians, there’s a big power surge on the US decoder. The American translation, as offered by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in its 2015 Asia Pacific Regional Security Assessment is that China’s objective is ‘to weaken US alliances, erode American centrality in China’s neighbourhood and eventually create a new security order with Asia at its core.’

When the US says freedom of navigation and rule of law, what does China’s decoder hear? As Yanmei Xei interprets it, Beijing:

likely does not see the US Navy’s action as being aimed at upholding international law. Rather, it thinks Washington is mainly out to block its rise, a narrative that already dominates China’s geopolitical consciousness.

Evelyn Goh saw something similar in what has become the well-rehearsed theatre of the annual Shangri-La Show:

For the Chinese, the Shangri-La Dialogue tends to highlight the uncomfortable reality that the Asia Pacific is filled with American allies and friends, many of whom have superior resources.

Beijing is acting on the assumption that its island-creation in the South China Sea (the assertion of its natural rights in its Caribbean) will be only a second or third order issue in the great power relationship with the US.

The US takes no position on the merits of any claims. Fine by Beijing. The US concern is freedom of navigation. Tick, says Beijing. And quickly on to more important matters.

The overarching concern, Beijing assumes, is to build the g2 to become the G2, the shadow condominium of the world’s top two powers. Many in Washington see the logic. Xi Jinping’s ‘new type of great power relationship’ will get another big show when he visits the US in September.

The only problem with this view of the South China Sea as a non-core g2 issue is that Beijing’s decoder may not be picking up all the different signals coming from the US. For the US Navy, this is core business. And, as the old line goes, the 7th Fleet steers a lot of US foreign policy. There’s a reason the Commander of the US Pacific Command is always a Navy man.

From the US Navy perspective, what the US says about the South China Sea is exactly what it means. China may need to turn up the power of its decoder to consider the question posed by Nick Bisley: Why does the US risk upsetting the tenor of Sino–American relations over rocks, islets and reefs?

Nick thinks China has been ‘genuinely surprised by the shift in tone and behaviour’ by the US over the South China Sea. To lessen the chance of any more surprises, Beijing should go back and re-read the speech that Admiral Harry Harris made to ASPI in March about China’s ‘great wall of sand’.

When Harris made that speech, he was Commander of the US Pacific Fleet. Now he’s just stepped up to the top job: Commander of the US Pacific Command.

When decoding what the other side is saying, it’s always important to see who is saying what, and what power they have to enforce their words.

The Asian security dialogue is about verbal jabs and thought balloons. And policy signalling and point scoring. And, ideally, some meeting of minds, reaching towards actual agreement.

The Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, the 14th Asia Security Summit, had plenty of the usual show and shove.

Compared to the last couple of years, though, the verbal biffo from the Chinese delegation was dialed down a few notches. Having been busy creating new geographic features in the South China Sea, terraforming with mountains of sand, the Chinese at Shangri-La seemed keen to judge the effect of their recent show, rather than do much shoving.

What response would they get to their fast build towards a fait accompli? The leader of the Chinese delegation was a Navy man, so they came prepared. The relative calm of China’s pushback suggested a certain comfort with the jabs they got.

The shoving from the ASEAN side was as vigorous as you’re likely to get from ASEAN, especially the strictures delivered by Malaysia and Singapore. Australia joined the fray via the speech by Defence Minister, Kevin Andrews, in private bilaterals and in the trilateral with Japan and the US.

Australia has sent its Defence Minister to every Shangri-La Dialogue since its inception in 2001—a record matched only by Japan and the host, Singapore.

The routine is well established. What has come on strongly in the last few years is the annual sidelines trilateral between the US Defence Secretary and the Defence Ministers of Australia and Japan.

The US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said that ‘America’s trilateral networks are blossoming’. And the first blossom he listed was the trilateral with Japan and Australia.

From the moment it took office, the Abbott Government has inserted more iron in the idiom in talking about China’s territorial ambitions, certainly when compared to the cautious restraint of the previous Labor Government. The trilateral process—both Foreign and Defence Minister versions—has been a key venue for developing that idiom.

Australia’s rhetoric has shifted beyond promoting freedom of navigation and secure sea lanes to specific warnings to China about altering the status quo.

The trilateral poking of China is done by the Foreign and Defence Ministers. The US President and the Prime Ministers of Japan and Australia get to take the trilateral high road.

At their trilateral in Brisbane during November 2014, Obama, Abe and Abbott ‘reaffirmed the global reach of their cooperation and the value of comprehensive US engagement in the Asia-Pacific region.’ Not a trace of China baiting to be seen. That’s a job for Defence Ministers.

The weekend statement in Singapore on the fifth trilateral meeting of the Defence Ministers of the US, Japan and Australia lined up against China with communique language of strong opposition and serious concern.

The US, Japan and Australia underscored their shared interests (peace, stability, respect for international law, freedom of navigation and overflight) and ‘unimpeded commerce in the East China and South China Seas.’

The ministers then made the trilateral jab at China:

‘They expressed strong opposition to the use of coercion or force to alter the status quo in the East China and South China Seas unilaterally and their serious concern over Chinese land reclamation activities in the South China Sea.’

This second half of that sentence is an add-on, one step up the scale, from the trilateral communique the US, Japan and Australia produced at last year’s Shangri-La meeting, when the Defence Ministers:

‘expressed their strong opposition to the use of coercion or force to unilaterally alter the status quo in the East China and South China Seas.’

So this year it isn’t just an admonition directed at ‘claimants’ but specifically to China.

The trilateral process can go only so far in coordinating process and language. Carter’s announcement in his speech was a new Southeast Asia Maritime Security Initiative, to spend up to $425 million on building maritime capacity in the region.

The speech after Carter was made by Japan’s Defence Minister, Gen Nakatani, who had his own announcement.

Nakatani proposed what he called a Shangri-La Dialogue Initiative to enhance maritime and aerial security.

The US thought balloon bumped into the Japanese thought balloon. Such are the problems of signalling and scoring and seeking agreement at Shangri-La.