After China's Defense Minister Dong Jun met his US counterpart Lloyd Austin on the sidelines of the Shangri-La security summit in Singapore, the Pentagon welcomed plans for a US-China "crisis communication group," while Beijing called the talks "positive, practical and constructive."

The Shangri-La Dialogue, organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), has become a barometer for US-China tensions in recent years.

The hour-long sitdown on Friday was the first high-level US-China military meeting after US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to reopen military-to-military contacts in November 2023. China had severed contact after then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi angered Beijing by visiting Taiwan in August 2022.

"We at least have a regular set of communications between the two sides to reduce the odds of miscalculation," Amanda Hsiao, a senior China expert at the International Crisis Group (ICG), told DW.

Although opening lines of communication is a sign that the US and China want to manage the risks of confrontation better, individual speeches from Austin and Dong at the summit showed both countries have opposing viewpoints on regional security in Asia.

In a Sunday session titled "China's Approach to Global Security," Defense Minister Dong emphasized the importance of a stable military-to-military relationship between China and the US.

"Even though we have different development paths, we should not pursue confrontation with each other," Dong said, highlighting that it requires "efforts from both sides" to find the right way to get along.

At the same time, Dong blamed "external forces" for stirring tensions in the Asia-Pacific........

© Deutsche Welle