China and the United States ramp up verbal warfare
Beijing hits back after Secretary of Defense Hegseth’s warning about Indo-Pacific ‘balance of power’
Verbal warfare broke out at the Shangri-La Dialogue over the weekend. In the claustrophobic corridors inside Singapore’s luxury hotel complex that hosted the security summit, China was left scrambling to repair its ruptured reputation.
A hard-hitting speech by the United States Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, warned that Beijing was planning to “alter the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific.” He stressed that the risks posed by the People’s Liberation Army represent a clear and present danger.
“There’s no reason to sugarcoat it. The threat China poses is real, and it could be imminent,” he told an audience peppered with diplomats, defense officials, spies, and arms dealers from across the world.
Reaction from China was predictable if factually flawed. Glossing over Beijing’s bullying and coercive tactics in the East and South China Seas, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs blamed the US for “undermining peace and stability” in the Asia-Pacific region.
“To perpetuate its hegemony and advance its so-called ‘Indo-Pacific strategy,’ [Washington] has deployed offensive weaponry in the South China Sea and has kept stoking flames and creating tensions in the Asia-Pacific,” the Foreign Ministry said.
We have seen [from China] the single biggest increase in military capability.
Richard Marles, Australia’s Defense Minister
Warning shots:
- But those remarks infuriated frontline nations in the Asia-Pacific.
- Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro told the Reuters news agency that China had a “deficit of trust and credibility.”
- His Australian counterpart, Richard Marles, echoed similar sentiments when he backed Hegseth’s speech and military threat.
Delve deeper: “What we have seen from China is the single biggest increase in military capability and buildup in a conventional sense by any country since the end of the Second World War,” Marles told a media briefing on Sunday.
Between the lines: “That is one of the key features of the strategic landscape which all of us face within the region and which is faced around the world,” he said.
Big picture: China’s President Xi Jinping is pursuing a “coercion campaign to strangle” Taiwan. His Communist Party state considers the democracy a “rogue province.” Yet it has never ruled the island, making “reunification” a myth.
Bottom line: “There’s general agreement in the United States and Taiwan that if China wanted, it could quarantine or blockade Taiwan today,” Bonny Lin, of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, told The Wall Street Journal in March.
China Factor comment: Comrade Xi is determined to turn the East and South China Seas into his own private lakes and the Asia-Pacific region into a ‘no-go area’ policed by the People’s Liberation Army. The US and its allies cannot allow that to happen.