By Laurie Chen
BEIJING (Reuters) -Chinese President Xi Jinping could meet his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy next month, a Ukrainian delegate said in Beijing on Thursday as China opened its biggest annual military diplomacy event amid simmering regional tensions.
Oleksandr Chalyi, a former deputy foreign minister of Ukraine, told one of the opening sessions of the three-day Xiangshan Forum that diplomacy had improved in recent months between Beijing and Kyiv, and that a meeting was now possible.
Noting Chinese efforts to help restore European security, Chalyi said “now all of us in Ukraine are waiting for some contacts, direct contacts between President Zelenskiy and President Xi”.
Beijing has cast itself as neutral in Russia’s 30-month-old invasion of Ukraine, but maintains close strategic ties with Moscow and did not join a peace summit organised by Ukraine in June.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister met his Chinese counterpart in Beijing in late July as Zelenskiy plots another possible summit in November, this time with Russian participation.
Cui Hongjian, director of the Department of European Studies at the China Institute of International Studies, said on the sidelines of the forum that China was open to joining a future summit as it did not want its efforts “to go to waste”.
“I think China’s been very clear on this, we are willing to do anything that is conducive for peace,” Cui said when asked about the prospect of a Xi-Zelenskiy meeting.
Ukraine’s small delegation of academics and former officials is among 90 countries and international organisations who have sent representatives to the highly choreographed forum, taking place Sept. 12-14 in Beijing.
Beijing is eager to promote itself as a responsible security player in international conflicts, despite being entangled in several territorial spats in its regional back yard. This year’s forum is themed “Promoting Peace for a Shared Future”.
The Philippines and China have exchanged accusations of intentionally ramming coast guard vessels in the South China Sea in recent months, while China made at least two territorial incursions into Japanese airspace and waters in August.
Beijing continues to send warplanes and ships into areas surrounding democratically governed Taiwan, which China considers its own territory, ignoring the objections of the government in Taipei.
Meanwhile, Western countries have expressed concerns over China’s growing military cooperation with Russia and “dangerous actions” in the South China Sea. In July, China and Belarus held joint military drills just a few kilometres from the border of NATO member Poland.
The U.S. plans to send Michael Chase, the deputy assistant secretary of defence for China, Taiwan and Mongolia, to the forum. Chase is more senior than the U.S. official who attended last year, though his rank is in line with historical norms.
U.S.-China military tensions have somewhat stabilised in recent months because regular communications channels have reopened after an almost two-year hiatus, though nuclear talks were halted by Beijing in July.
There is some hope that Chase’s attendance could signal deeper working-level engagement with China amid regional disputes.
Rick Waters, former U.S. State Department China coordinator and current China managing director at Eurasia Group, said that it was good the militaries were talking again but that questions remained.
“It’s not enough to re-establish them. The question is, are they durable through periods of crisis?,” he said.
Most Western countries are sending small, low-level delegations, preferring to discuss international security issues at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.
Other participants included the defence ministers of Belarus, the UAE, Vietnam, Singapore, Cambodia, Chile and the Maldives as well as a deputy Russian defence minister.
The forum contains several seminars on Asia-Pacific security, U.S.-China relations and peace in the Middle East. The Gaza crisis is likely to dominate talks, the Western attendee said, with China’s efforts to promote peace and advocate for Palestinians likely to find a receptive audience among some Global South delegations.
Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jun is expected to give a keynote speech at the opening ceremony on Friday. Dong, a former naval commander appointed in December after an anti-corruption purge in the army’s top ranks, slammed Taiwan “separatists” at the Shangri-La Dialogue this year.
Responsible for China’s military diplomacy but not part of the Central Military Commission, China’s core military command body, Dong is viewed by Western military officials as a “senior but powerless emissary who is not involved in power politics”, the Western attendee told Reuters.
Last year’s forum was held without a defence minister, as Dong’s predecessor, Li Shangfu, had been removed from his role and was undergoing a corruption probe. Li and his predecessor Wei Fenghe were both expelled from the Communist Party in June over corruption, and the offences they are accused of include bribery.
(Reporting by Laurie Chen; Additional reporting by Andrew Gray in Brussels and Beijing newsroom; Writing by Greg Torode; Editing by Gerry Doyle)
