Stuff Digital Edition

Little to meet his Chinese counterpart

As the world grapples with the return of greatpower competition, Thomas Manch previews an Asian defence summit in Singapore this week.

Thomas Manch in Singapore The journalist’s travel has been supported by the Asia NZ Foundation.

Defence Minister Andrew Little is set to meet China’s Defence Minister, Li Shangfu, on the sidelines of a summit in Singapore, at which Li has reportedly refused to meet his US counterpart.

Little arrived in Singapore yesterday for the Shangri-La Dialogue, a major meeting of defence officials and military leaders in the region that is taking place later this week. Alongside speaking at the summit, he plans to meet defence ministers from Britain, Canada, Ukraine and Singapore, and Li.

‘‘We have a strong trade relationship with China, obviously, and . . . notwithstanding concerns we have about some of the conduct on the world stage, it is important we do what we can to maintain and strengthen that relationship,’’ Little said earlier this week. ‘‘Irrespective of the concerns we might have, we have got to have those channels of dialogue.’’

Despite rising tensions with China, such meetings between defence leaders are commonplace.

In May, the vice-chief of the defence force, Tony Davies, and the deputy secretary of defence, Richard Schmidt, travelled to Xi’An for a meeting with Chinese defence officials dubbed ‘‘cordial’’ by the Defence Force.

The prospect of a meeting between US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and Li, appears to have been quashed. The Wall Street Journal reported Chinese officials had said there would be no such meeting, in a message said to be ‘‘unusually blunt’’.

The Chinese spy balloon was a spoiler. Relations between the United States and China had been frozen throughout the pandemic years, but finally there was promise of a thaw.

An hours-long meeting between US President Joe Biden and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping on the side of a G20 summit in Bali in November was followed by a promise: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken would travel to Beijing to keep the conversation going.

Then, more than two months later, the US shot down an alleged Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic Ocean, after it had travelled across the span of the continent. Chinese officials said it was a mistake. Blinken postponed the trip.

In the months since, China has been declining US invitations to talk. And, as defence leaders and top-ranking soldiers meet in Singapore this week, it may have just shot down another opportunity.

‘‘The global security picture is probably the worst it’s been for many decades,’’ says David Capie, director of Victoria University’s Centre for Strategic Studies.

‘‘We’ve got a raging, large, conventional war in the middle of Europe. We’ve got nuclear threats. And you’ve got, you know, the coldest relationship between the two most powerful countries in the world.

‘‘There’s quite a lot to worry about.’’

Great-power competition is back. After decades of what former prime minister Helen Clark referred to as an ‘‘incredibly benign’’ strategic environment, and a prolonged war on terror waged by unmatched US military prowess, the world is becoming increasingly bipolar.

The US and China are now both openly competing for diplomatic influence, technology and trade advantage, and strategic and military superiority.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has provided the backdrop, revealing that cracks in the postwar – and in particular postCold War – international order are becoming chasms.

Global military spending reached a new high in 2022, with the US, China and Russia accounting for more than half the US$2.24 trillion spent.

This new era of great-power competition will be on display as 40 countries meet at the ShangriLa Dialogue in Singapore, hosted by the London-based think-tank International Institute for Strategic Studies. The Post will report from the summit as it takes place over the weekend.

The summit is the premier defence forum in the region, where militaries talk shop and chest beat.

Defence Minister Andrew Little will speak at a session on the ‘‘nuclear dimensions of regional security’’, and hold meetings with his UK, Canadian, Ukrainian, Singaporean and Chinese counterparts.

‘‘It’s an opportunity for me on behalf of New Zealand to express the case for our nuclear-free stance, the reason why we adopted it in the 1980s, because it’s relevant now as it ever was,’’ he said in an interview this week. ‘‘While we all have issues of national security, and we have issues of regional major-power competition, actually we’ve got to be talking about what some of the risks are associated with that, which includes those who are nuclear-armed, and there’s some of them in the IndoPacific.’’

But the main drawcard for the event will be the posturing of the US and China. Both US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and new Chinese Defence Minister Li Shangfu will give speeches.

For those with an eye to the

dynamics of the summit, the big question has been: will the pair meet on the sidelines?

Such a meeting could represent a break in the ice. But The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that Chinese officials had informed the US Pentagon there would be no such meeting, in a message said to be ‘‘unusually blunt’’.

Yesterday, the US IndoPacific Command published a video from five days earlier of a Chinese fighter jet flying ‘‘directly in front of the nose’’ of a US reconnaissance plane that was in international airspace over the South China Sea.

It was an ‘‘unnecessarily aggressive manoeuvre’’, the US military said.

Such near-misses, intentional or otherwise, are risky. In 2001, a Chinese jet and a US intelligence plane collided, and 24 crew of the US aircraft were detained for more than a week.

‘‘It would have been useful,’’ Capie, who is also attending Shangri-La, says of the apparently now-ruled-out meeting between Austin and Li.

‘‘Even if there’s not an expectation at these meetings that anything will be solved, it at least allows for a frank exchange of views, and it provides the basis for the kinds of crisis management or communication instruments that can make sure that, if there is a miscalculation . . . that doesn’t end up in a shooting war.’’

Little said it was ‘‘in everybody’s interests’’ for the major powers to have channels of communication. ‘‘Whether this is the right place for it, whether their respective defence ministers, or defence secretary, are the right people for that, I’m not sure.

‘‘But channels for dialogue are important safeguards and safety valves at a time of rising tension.’’

That tension comes at a difficult time for New Zealand, caught between the two centres of gravity at the bottom of the South Pacific.

As the major powers vie for influence in the Pacific with promises to provide development and security, New Zealand’s own Defence Force has been diminished by extraordinary attrition.

Its not only military alliance partner, Australia, has become a more full-throated opponent of China and supporter of US strength.

And as the US and the G7 democracies agreed to ‘‘derisking’’ their relationship with China at a meeting in Hiroshima last month, New Zealand similarly has been talking for a couple of years now of ‘‘diversifying’’ its outsized economic exposure to the Chinese market, talk that’s yet to show evidence of success.

When the Cold War, the last era of greatpower competition, began, New Zealand’s security was more or less guaranteed by the US though a military alliance, Anzus, signed as the West’s fear of the Soviet Union grew, and Britain’s power waned.

That security guarantee was severed when New Zealand broke with the US on nuclear weapons, in the final years of the Cold War. It was the advent of what the Government and its diplomats call a values-based ‘‘independent foreign policy’’.

Capie says the idea of choosing a side now – the US or China – is a ‘‘false proposition’’.

Little said the world was different, with multilateral trade relationships binding more nations together. New Zealand would stand up for democratic values, and its security would come from having many relationships – not banking on US military might.

But there are new choices to face.

‘‘Everything from how we want to spend money on our defence, how to relate to a whole range of partners, how to relate to a whole range of emerging institutions and frameworks that are new,’’ Capie says.

‘‘What New Zealand is going to do is make choices based on its own interests and values.’’

Yet, of late, there have been questions about where New Zealand is placed.

The Government opposed Chinese militarisation in the Pacific when a security deal was done between Beijing and the Solomon Islands.

But an agreement between the US and Papua New Guinea? Seemingly fine.

And a new nuclear pact in the region, Aukus, under which

Australia will acquire nuclearpropelled submarines from the US and UK, was met with mixed reviews in the Pacific and has appeared to grate against New Zealand’s nuclear-free stance.

Yet when US heavyweight Kurt Campbell, the Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific tsar, flew into Wellington and offered to talk about bringing New Zealand into adjacent nonnuclear technology, in a second aspect of the pact, Little seemed interested.

‘‘Obviously, we would explore it,’’ he said, back in March. But such affirmation of interest riled some within the broader Labour Party – notably Helen Clark, who said New Zealand did not need the ‘‘entanglement’’. Then the Government went cold.

‘‘I think the Government has set out some good principles for how New Zealand can try and manage strategic competition, but as we’re seeing on issues like engaging with Aukus or on the militarisation of the South Pacific, ministers aren’t always singing from the same hymn sheet,’’ Capie says.

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta have in recent months been more conservative in their response to Aukus – suggesting any prospect of conversations with the US was ‘‘purely hypothetical’’.

‘‘With all due respect to some people who have engaged with me about it, I’m not sure there’s a lot of good information that people have got access to,’’ Little said this week.

‘‘The Government’s position hasn’t changed. There’s nothing to change because there’s been no particular proposal put to us.’’

The US-PNG security agreement appeared to reveal another inconsistency. Mahuta, who has been insisting Pacific security should be dealt with by Pacific Island Forum (PIF) nations, said the Government’s concern about militarisation of the Pacific was ‘‘country agnostic’’.

The Government had expressed grave concern at China signing the security pact with the Solomon Islands in 2021 that promised to open up territorial access to Chinese troops.

However, the US-PNG deal bore similarities, promising greater access to US troops as part of a broader US package to support PNG security.

Yet, as the ink dried, Hipkins said it wasn’t ‘‘necessarily’’ militarisation – ‘‘They’re different situations’’.

Mahuta last week said Papua New Guinea made the decision as a sovereign nation, ‘‘mindful of our regional commitments and objectives’’.

The difference was that the PNG agreement was ‘‘open and transparent’’.

As Little touches down in Singapore this week, Mahuta is in Seoul for a meeting of the South Korean president and Pacific leaders. The increasing interest of the other powers – Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Korea and India – in the Pacific needs to be aligned, she said.

Mahuta has not been alone in suggesting the PIF as the forum for great-power discussions in the Pacific. Australia has also been pushing for this.

The ‘‘common thread’’, as Mahuta put it, between New

Zealand and many countries weighing in on an increasingly contested Pacific, was a ‘‘want to defend our democratic values and principles’’.

Similarly, Little said New Zealand needed to stand up for, and cherish, the right for liberal democratic values and internationally recognised human rights, set out by the UN Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

He said maintaining New Zealand’s national security, and the security of the Pacific nations it was committed to assisting, required many relationships.

He remained confident New Zealand could ‘‘physically respond’’ to the needs of the Pacific, not just with military capability, but with intelligence and diplomatic assistance.

‘‘We’ve committed ourselves to a US relationship, but likewise, we have with Australia, we have with our Pacific neighbours, we’re increasingly engaging with Asean partners, and particularly Japan and South Korea.

‘‘The US is a significant and important relationship that has been long-standing, and we maintain that.

‘‘I couldn’t envisage a situation where we would diminish the traditional relationships that we’ve got at the moment.

‘‘But I think we’ve also demonstrated we are keen to forge whatever constructive and positive relationships we can. That’s why we, in the 1970s, opened relations with China.’’

The United States’ troubles aside, Little will be maintaining New Zealand’s relationship with China this week, meeting with the Chinese defence minister.

‘‘We have a strong trade relationship with China, obviously . . . notwithstanding concerns we have about some of the conduct on the world stage.

‘‘Nevertheless, it’s important that we do what we can to maintain and strengthen that relationship. Irrespective of the concerns we might have. We’ve got to have those channels of dialogue.’’

News

en-nz

2023-06-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-06-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://stuff.pressreader.com/article/281930252363243

Stuff Limited