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China’s defence minister is not expected to attend the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore next week, in what would be an unusual absence after years of Beijing’s head of the department attending the Asian defence meeting.
China has signalled to Singapore that Admiral Dong Jun would not attend the annual defence forum run by IISS, a think-tank, according to five people familiar with the matter.
The IISS Shangri-La Dialogue is the premier defence gathering in Asia and has become the main forum for US and Chinese defence ministers to meet, particularly since neither side has sent their top defence official to the other country in more than a decade.
The people familiar with the matter said it was unclear why Dong would not attend. French President Emmanuel Macron will address the event on May 30.
One person cautioned it was still possible that Beijing could change its mind but said this was highly unlikely just two weeks before the forum.
In recent years, the Chinese delegation to the Shangri-La Dialogue has come under heavy pressure, with US and other Indo-Pacific officials criticising the increasingly assertive activity by the People’s Liberation Army around Taiwan and other parts of the South China Sea.
“The Shangri-La Dialogue is always uncomfortable for the PLA because nearly everyone there is experiencing China’s assertive and coercive behaviour in one fashion or another,” said Ely Ratner, who served as the top Pentagon official for Indo-Pacific affairs during the Biden administration.
“No matter how hard Beijing tries to distract from that, most defence leaders in the region are clear-eyed about their biggest threat,” said Ratner, who is now a principal the Marathon Initiative think-tank.
A US official said the Pentagon had not been told that Dong would not attend. US defence secretary Pete Hegseth is expected to speak at the event. The Chinese embassy in the US did not respond to a request for comment.
Dong’s possible absence comes as President Xi Jinping has continued to purge high-level officers in the six-member Central Military Commission that runs the PLA.
The Financial Times reported last month that Xi had removed General He Weidong, the number two PLA general, six months after he had suspended Admiral Miao Hua, another CMC member.
The FT reported last year that Dong had also been investigated, but he has remained in the role. Two people familiar with his case said Dong had undergone an initial investigation but appeared to have been cleared.
A decision not to send Dong to Singapore comes as Beijing tries to take advantage of President Donald Trump’s global trade war by arguing that China is a more reliable partner for countries in the Indo-Pacific. Beijing has run a social media campaign portraying China as the defender of those facing bullying by the US.
Zack Cooper, an Asia security expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said that even before the US president’s trade war, China used the forum in Singapore to portray itself as a more dependable partner for south-east Asian nations.
“With questions swirling around whether Hegseth would attend, the potential for US disengagement could have become the dominant narrative at this year’s meeting. But now Hegseth is attending and Dong is not,” said Cooper. “China seems to have missed an opportunity here to portray itself as the more reliable and engaged great power in the region.”
The PLA is expected to send a delegation to the forum led by a lower-level defence official.
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