Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun attends the opening ceremony of a conference in Beijing last Friday.
It got off to a rough start. Prime Minister Oleksander Chaliy said at the opening of this year’s Xiangshan Forum in Beijing on Thursday that Chinese President Xi Jinping could consider ending the war in Ukraine when he meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “All of us in Ukraine are waiting for direct contact between President Zelensky and President Xi,” the now-retired Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said after visiting China for talks in July. What was the point? Chaliy was a former deputy foreign minister in Kiev. But who knew whether he was actually interested in freezing the war? It seemed obvious. Chaliy would hardly have made such a big statement at the Xiangshan Forum if it was against the interests of the host country, China. Could it be completely out of thin air?
The Beijing Xiangshan Forum is China’s largest global security conference. This is its 11th year. According to the organizers, the event, which opened on Thursday and ends this Saturday, will be attended by more than 500 official representatives from about 100 countries and international organizations, and more than 200 experts and scientists from the People’s Republic of Korea and other countries. More than ever before. The meeting was attended by defense ministers from Vietnam, Singapore, Cambodia, the United Arab Emirates, Belarus, and the Russian deputy defense minister. Organizations such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the International Committee of the Red Cross, NATO, and the European Union are also represented. However, it was reported in Beijing that Western countries sent only low-level delegations.
The fact that the US has sent a delegation has drawn attention. They already did so last year when a US Department of Defense delegation used the event to re-establish contact between the militaries of the two countries that Beijing had severed following Prime Minister Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. Successfully. The Pentagon this year sent Michael Chase, a senior official in charge of China, including Taiwan and Mongolia, as deputy assistant secretary of defense, officially not higher in rank than the head of the delegation last year, but content. A small sheep in Washington who is careful not to send too important a figure to the Chinese meeting. The talks Chase is holding separately from the Xiangshan Forum are considered important because tensions between China and the US in the South China Sea are dangerously high.
Lieutenant General He Lei, former vice chairman of the Academy of Military Science of China, found a clear word on this. He explained, “We hope that the South China Sea will remain a sea of peace.” The People’s Liberation Army of China will not tolerate it, even if the Philippines—or itself—is in conflict. “We will crush any hostile aggression against China’s territory, sovereignty, maritime rights and interests with determination, iron will, powerful capacity, and effective means,” he said. He made it clear that China will not yield to territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
Nevertheless, Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun called for the conflict to be resolved peacefully. To this end, he explained, China is ready to “cooperate with everyone,” including through the signing of “bilateral and multilateral agreements on defense cooperation.” “Promoting peace and negotiation” is the “only way out,” especially in the Ukraine and Gaza conflicts. “There are no winners in war and conflict, and confrontation leads nowhere,” Dong explained. “The more intense the conflict, the less likely it is that dialogue and consultation will be abandoned (…) At the end of every conflict, there is reconciliation.” Lye Liang Fook, an expert at the Beijing Xiangshan Forum and the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, has already said that a mediator is needed. However, China has repeatedly tried to play the mediating role in recent years. Perhaps one can expect the People’s Republic to continue this. Lye did not specifically mention the Ukraine conflict. However, the question of whether the People’s Republic will mediate has continued to be raised implicitly.
