CCP Committed to Undermining World Order Amid Communications Blackout, Austin Says

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at a Rose Garden event at the White House in Washington, D.C., on May 25, 2023. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The nation’s top defense official said that China’s continued refusal to accept communications with the United States is a threat to national security.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin made the comments following the announcement that his Chinese counterpart, Li Shangfu, had refused to meet him during the upcoming Shangri-La Security Dialogue in Singapore this week, though both will be in attendance.

Regardless of the decision, Austin said, the United States remains open to communications with China.

“I think that is unfortunate,” Austin said during a June 1 press hearing in Tokyo. “I would welcome any opportunity to engage with Li.”

Austin said that Li’s decision not to meet was problematic due to several dangerous encounters between their military’s aircraft in recent months.

Earlier this week, a Chinese fighter jet carried out an “unnecessarily aggressive” maneuver near a U.S. plane over the South China Sea, according to the Pentagon.

Austin expressed concern that, without open lines of communication, a similar incident “could very quickly spiral out of control.”

He reiterated the administration’s vow to keep its lines of communication open regardless of China’s silence.

“The provocative intercept of our aircraft and our allies’ aircraft is very concerning, and we would hope they would alter their actions,” Austin said. “I think defense departments should be talking to each other on a routine basis or should have open channels for communications.”

Calls to China ‘Not Answered’

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China as a single-party state, has systematically cut off communications with Biden administration officials at every level over the course of the past year.

The regime first severed regional military communications with the United States following then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last year.

Since then, the CCP has refused numerous requests for meetings with Austin, regional military commanders, and even civilian Department of Defense employees, according to Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Ely Ratner.

“We’ve had a lot of difficulty,” Ratner said during a May 25 talk with the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. “We have repeatedly had those requests rejected or not answered.”

The Biden administration is now trying to draw China back to the table out of a fear that the lack of communication could lead to a catastrophic miscommunication, such as the one hinted at by Austin.

The administration is persisting in its strategy to charm, cajole, or coerce Beijing back into communications as part of a desire to re-create the apparent progress achieved by President Joe Biden’s in-person meeting with CCP leader Xi Jinping in Bali last November.

During a press call last month, National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby described the process as a whole-of-government effort to re-create the “spirit of Bali,” which the White House initially hailed as a thaw in Sino-American relations before a Chinese spy balloon traversed across the continental United States.

Since then, the administration has struggled to re-create its Bali moment, with officials frequently citing it in their diplomatic efforts to little avail.

US Is ‘Deeply Concerned’

Despite the administration’s romanticization of Bali, and the CCP’s continued rebuffs, it is unclear what good the administration’s previous contacts with the regime were doing to begin with.

When Austin met with Li’s predecessor, Wei Fenghe, at the Shangri-La summit last year, for example, the then-defense minister used the occasion to threaten the United States and vowed to “start a war” over Taiwan.

It is possible a meeting with Li would have undermined U.S. credibility in Europe, given that Li has been under sanctions since 2018 for his role in purchasing Russian military equipment for China.

Those few high-level China-U.S. meetings, such as Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s recent meeting with her CCP counterpart in Washington, D.C., have borne no fruit.

According to Austin, the regime remains committed to undermining the United States and the international order it upholds, regardless of the current state of international communications.

“We are deeply concerned by [China’s] coercive nature and its attempts to undermine the rules-based order,” Austin said.

Reuters contributed to this report.