China rebukes West over military activity near its waters after close call in Taiwan Strait

China has warned Western militaries that the waters and airspace near its borders are open to fire if they want to avoid a dangerous confrontation with the People’s Liberation Army, showing growing risks of unexpected conflict as geopolitical competition escalates. stay out of

After a blunt message from China’s new Defense Minister General Li Shangfu, a near collision A Chinese and a US warship in international waters on Saturday cut directly ahead of the US vessel as the US and a Canadian warship crossed the Taiwan Strait.

“Why does all this happen near China’s sovereign waters and airspace? Chinese ships and aircraft never approach other countries’ airspace and waters,” Li said at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue security conference in Singapore on Sunday.

“The best way to prevent this from happening is to prevent military ships and aircraft from coming close to our waters and airspace. What does this have to do with your security? Keep an eye on your territorial waters and airspace, then no problem Will be.

Li criticized China for the dangerous incidents in the air a day after US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand used their speeches on the platform.

Austin said the People’s Liberation Army was conducting an “alarming” number of risky air blockades over the South China Sea. Anand called China an “increasingly disruptive global power that increasingly disregards international rules and norms”, referring to similar intercepts by Canadian military aircraft monitoring the implementation of UN sanctions against North Korea.

Those rising tensions add to a growing sense of urgency in US efforts to reopen military talks cut short by China in the wake of bilateral friction over the takedown of an alleged Chinese spy balloon in US airspace in February.

Lee said he met defense leaders of 11 countries in Singapore. But breaking with tradition, Beijing rejected US requests for talks with Austin on the sidelines of the forum until Washington lifted sanctions imposed on Li in 2018 for his role in buying arms from Russia.

Austin on Saturday called on the PLA to engage with the US military, saying “responsible defense leaders” should be ready to talk at any time. He said the talks are “not a prize”, a response to China’s repeated demands from the US to modify its behavior as a precondition for talks.

Li claimed that communication channels should remain open but said that dialogue and exchange should be based on mutual respect. “If even this cannot be guaranteed, then there will be no result,” he said.

In his first public talk to an audience including hundreds of Western defense officials, Li stuck to the general lines of Chinese military diplomacy by pledging Beijing’s efforts to maintain peace and stability while accusing Washington of upsetting regional stability.

Chinese defense ministers are far less powerful in the overall security and military bureaucracy than their Western counterparts. Although Lee, who became minister in March, is a member of the Central Military Commission, the country’s top-level defense leadership, his role is limited to military diplomacy.

Echoing increasingly assertive rhetoric from Chinese leader Xi Jinping on China’s role in the global security order, Li said: “China will help build a security order of a higher standard (and) an even more comprehensive multilateral security order.” ready to.”

He likened Beijing’s approach to hegemonic and destabilizing tendencies, a swipe at the US, though he did not directly mention Washington in that context.

Lee said, “They are using the excuse of freedom of navigation to conduct navigational hegemony.” He also hit out at “foreign forces using Taiwan to contain China”, which he called “the root cause of tensions in the Taiwan Straits (and) the biggest troublemaker in the Taiwan Straits”.

Following Li’s speech, the Pentagon said it was “concerned about the PLA’s increasingly risky and coercive activities in the area in recent days”.

A senior US defense official said, “Actions speak louder than words, and the dangerous behavior we’ve seen from the PLA around the straits in the South and East China Seas really says it all.”