Did China Take a Back Seat by Not Having Its Defence Minister Attend the Meeting?

Almost everyone was talking about China at the Shangri-La Dialogue this weekend. The main question: Why did Beijing opt not to send its defence minister?

- Yew Lun Tian

For the large part of the three-day security forum held at the Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore, China was not around to push back against the criticisms levied against it. But it appears that this was a calculated loss that Beijing is prepared to accept.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth mentioned China about 20 times in his speech on May 31, as he urged other countries in the Indo-Pacific to increase their defence expenditure, buy more American arms and buffer themselves against the "threat" posed by China.

French President Emmanuel Macron on May 30 invited the security policymakers and military chiefs attending the forum to think of Russia's aggression in Ukraine as what China might do to Taiwan or the Philippines.

The role of the Chinese defence minister is to conduct defence diplomacy and explain China's security positions to other countries. Had he been at this weekend's top security gathering in Singapore, Beijing would have had the podium for over an hour to respond to Washington and address the concerns raised by other delegates.

Not this year. For the first time since 2019, China's defence minister did not attend. This meant the platform set aside for China had to be downsized accordingly.

Its delegation chief - a military scholar with the rank of a one-star general - spoke in a smaller room to a smaller audience for a shorter time than the minister would have had. He was one of five panellists at one of the three concurrent sessions at the end of the day on May 31.

As the vice-president of the People's Liberation Army National Defence University, Rear-Admiral Hu Gangfeng is not involved in combat operations or policymaking.