War With China ‘Neither Imminent nor Unavoidable’, Defense Secretary Austin Says

Published on June 2, 2024

A war with China was neither imminent nor unavoidable, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said on Saturday as he fielded questions at a defense forum in Singapore. Mr. Austin’s comments came a day after he had a conversation with Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun. This marks the first in-person meeting between the top defense officials since Beijing shut off the contact between the U.S. and Chinese militaries in retaliation of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) high-profile trip to Taiwan. The meeting in Singapore is also Mr. Dong’s first face-to-face discussion with his American counterpart. Mr. Dong, a former naval commander, was appointed last December to replace Li Shangfu, whose abrupt dismissal after disappearing from the public eye for months came amid what some observers speculated as a political purge at the top of the Chinese military’s rocket force, the custodian of the country’s nuclear and conventional ballistic missiles....

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