China and the U.S. are working to finalize what would be the first face-to-face meeting between their top defense officials on the sidelines of a conference in Singapore in June.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has said he will travel to the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual defense conference to be held this year June 10-12. The attendance of Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe hasn’t been announced, but he intends to participate in person, according to the people.
Defense ministers and other officials typically meet in private before and during the conference. A meeting between Mr. Austin and Gen. Wei would take on extra significance because of increased tension between the U.S. and China over Taiwan.
Beijing reacted angrily after President Biden said during a recent visit to Tokyo that the U.S. would get involved militarily in response to any Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a self-ruled island that China says should be governed by Beijing.
Gen. Wei, who was the commander of China’s strategic missile force and was appointed defense minister in 2018, held talks with then acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan during the Shangri-La Dialogue in 2019. The event, organized by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think tank, didn’t take place in 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic.
The people cautioned that a meeting between Gen. Wei and Mr. Austin had not been fixed and plans could still change. China’s Ministry of Defense didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, and a Pentagon press officer said there was no information immediately available about a meeting.
Mr. Austin and Gen. Wei spoke for the first time by phone in April. The two discussed defense relations, regional security issues and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to the Pentagon’s account of the call.
In the China Defense Ministry’s slightly different summary of that conversation, Gen. Wei said it would have a “disruptive impact” on China-U.S. relations if the Taiwan question isn’t handled well, and that China’s military would defend national sovereignty, security and territorial integrity.
There are no clear signs China intends to attempt to seize Taiwan by force, but it hasn’t ruled out the use of its military to try to bring the island under its control.
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