Are US sanctions on China’s new defence chief the real barrier to dialogue?
- Washington shows no sign of lifting long-standing sanctions on China’s new defence minister, observers say
- ‘Political sensitivities’ – not sanctions – are likely reason for stalled dialogue, one analyst says
The chances for high-level military discussions between the United States and China in the near future appeared unlikely as Washington showed no indication it would remove China’s new defence minister from a sanctions list, analysts said.
Lifting the sanctions on General Li Shangfu is considered a necessary step by Beijing for such talks to resume between the Pentagon and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), but that appeared doubtful, according to Zhou Bo, a senior fellow from the Centre for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University.
Li was appointed as China’s defence minister and state councillor – China’s equivalent of a cabinet member- at the annual National People’s Congress in Beijing on Sunday. He was targeted by Washington in 2018 for violating US sanctions by allegedly helping to transfer Su-35 fighter jets and S-400 air-defence missile systems to China from Russia.
But Drew Thompson, a visiting senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, said the sanctions themselves were not the main legal barrier precluding engagement between the two militaries.
“Of course the US can lift sanctions … [but] it is more an issue of political sensitivities, rather than a legal barrier to engagement,” he said.
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PLA scrambles fighter jets after detecting foreign warplanes over South China Sea
“The [Chinese] defence minister can engage the US defence secretary if desired, but [China’s ] ministry of national defence has declined proposals to engage at various levels over the past several months, including with [Li’s predecessor] General Wei Fenghe, so sanctions alone do not appear to be the barrier to dialogue.”
