Shangri-La Dialogue not a front against China

AMISTAKEN impression that the Shangri-La Dialogue is meant to be a common front against China might emerge from the speeches delivered by French President Emmanuel Macron and US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth on May 31 in Singapore. While Hegseth warned that the threat from China was “real and potentially imminent", Macron called on “key allies in Asia" to increase military spending as the NATO members had done, “thanks to President Trump." However, the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, which is held at the iconic hotel in Singapore, was not started as a front against China. It was envisaged in 2001-2002 when the US policy towards the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was a combination of “Pacific military rebalance" and “invitation to China into a far different, but equally successful, multilateral security network," as the late Ashton Carter, former US Secretary of Defence (2015-2017) had said in an article for the Belfer Center of Harvard Kennedy School in October 2018. This is because American leaders had, over the years, detected two strands of Chinese strategic thinking: one which valued partnership and increased integration with global security structures, and the other leaning towards unilateral action, refusing to acknowledge global norms which “inhibit" China’s interests. Hence, a brief history of US-China relations is relevant. After the Jimmy Carter-Deng Xiaoping bonhomie in the 1970s, US institutions started debating over a new policy towards the PRC, examining whether military ties might advance US security interests during the Cold War. The groundwork for a relationship with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) started through strategic dialogue, reciprocal exchanges in functional areas and arms sales during the 1980 visit of Defence Secretary Harold Brown to Beijing after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan formally removed the ban on arms sales to China. In 1983, US Defence Secretary Casper Weinberger visited Beijing. This was followed by direct military sales and military technological cooperation. However, all these were stopped when the PLA cracked down on students at the Tiananmen Square in 1989. The recovery of relations started in October 1994 during the Bill Clinton presidency when William J Perry became the first US Secretary of Defence to visit China after the 1989 crisis. Perry, as a Pentagon official, had visited Beijing during Carter’s regime to sell American military technology to China to contain Soviet military power. He was accompanied by two powerful US Senators Sam Nunn (Democrat) and John W Warner (Republican). Following this, Perry gave a keynote address on February 13, 1996 at the National Defence University (NDU) in Washington DC, calling for regular meetings between the defence chiefs of China, Japan, the US and other Asia-Pacific nations under the auspices of a regional forum like the ‘Europe’s Partnership for Peace’, which promotes western military alliances without formal security guarantees. Perry also said that if China felt that it was encircled by a US containment policy, it would not cooperate with America’s vital security objectives in Asia and containment could create security problems for the US. During this period, various incidents creating bilateral friction with China took place, like the 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait crisis, mistaken NATO bombing of the PRC embassy in Yugoslavia in 1999 and the EP-3 aircraft collision crisis in 2001. The 2001 incident, on April 1, was when a PLA Navy F-8 fighter collided with a US Navy EP-3 reconnaissance plane over the South China Sea. The EP-3’s crew made an emergency landing on China’s Hainan Island. The PLA detained the 24 US Navy personnel for 11 days. That was the beginning of a period of bilateral friction. Although bilateral visits and military-to-military relations continued, it was felt that the US should “rebalance" its presence in Asia-Pacific, while continuing its dialogue with the PRC. In 2012, President Obama and Defence Secretary Leon Panetta issued a “Defence Strategic Guidance" on how to maintain US military superiority and to “rebalance" priorities, posture and presence to stress attention to Asia as well as West Asia. It was decided to adopt a “whole Government approach", which was a comprehensive policy that included diplomatic, defence and economic subjects, which also meant a “constructive relationship with China and its PLA." This was because the mere military-to-military relationship earlier had led to a situation where America experienced “miscalculations and misperceptions, while dealing with repeated cycles in which the PLA suspends contacts and then leverages the timing when it chooses to resume talks." Thus, the objective was to “shape China’s rise as a peaceful, responsible, and rules-based power through engagement and more mature relationship." A similar idea was proposed by Thai Defence Minister Chawari Yong Chiayi, who felt that the ASEAN conferences were dominated by diplomats and not defence leaders. This idea was carried forward in 2002 by John Chipman, president and CEO of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), in London, after noticing that Asian officials were unable to speak on their problems at the annual Munich Security Conference. China, always suspicious, sent only lower-level military officials till 2007 when Zhang Qinsheng, then Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, attended. Qinsheng gave a speech titled ‘Strengthening Dialogue and Cooperation to Maintain Peace and Prosperity’. In 2011, for the first time, China sent Liang Guanglie, its Defence Minister, to participate as the conference had set up a special agenda for China. Since then, China has been regular in attending the conference, although with delegations at varying official hierarchies, as it feels that it is an important forum to explain its security and defence policies to Asian countries and rebut accusations against it. In June 2010, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who attended the conference, had chastised China, like Pete Hegseth in 2025, declaring that America would remain a power in the Pacific and South China Seas to ensure freedom of navigation. Thus, the overall global impression is that the Shangri-La Dialogue has served its purpose as a forum for “multilateral, bilateral, trilateral and other small-scale defence diplomacy.” Views are personal Vappala Balachandran is former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat.

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