Little keen to meet with China’s defence minister

Defence Minister Andrew Little is set to meet China’s Defence Minister Li Shangfu on the sidelines of a summit in Singapore, at which Li has reportedly refused to meet his United States counterpart.

Little arrived in Singapore yesterday for the Shangri-La Dialogue, a major meeting of defence officials and military leaders in the region that is taking place later this week. Alongside speaking at the summit, he plans to meet with defence ministers from Britain, Canada, Ukraine and Singapore, as well as Li.

‘‘We have a strong trade relationship with China, obviously, and . . . notwithstanding concerns we have about some of the conduct on the world stage, nevertheless it’s important that we do what we can to maintain and strengthen that relationship,’’ Little said earlier this week. ‘‘We’ve got to have those channels of dialogue.’’

Despite rising tensions with China, such meetings between defence leaders are commonplace. In May, the vice chief of the Defence Force, Tony Davies, and the deputy secretary of defence, Richard Schmidt, travelled to Xi’An for a meeting with Chinese defence officials that was called ‘‘cordial’’ by the Defence Force.

However, the prospect of a meeting between US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and Li appears to have been quashed. The Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese officials had informed the Pentagon that there would be no such meeting, in a message said to be ‘‘unusually blunt’’.

Further complicating the picture was an allegation from the US military yesterday that a Chinese jet cut across the nose of one of its reconnaissance planes in international airspace above the South China Sea five days earlier, in an ‘‘unnecessarily aggressive manoeuvre’’.

Little said it was ‘‘in everybody’s interests’’ for the major powers to have channels of communications. ‘‘Whether this is the right place for it, whether their respective defence ministers, or defence secretary, are the right people for that, I’m not sure. But channels for dialogue are important safeguards and safety valves at a time of rising tension.’’

Little will speak at the summit tomorrow, at a session on ‘‘nuclear dimensions of regional security’’. Many of the nucleararmed powers are based in the Asia-Pacific, or have military assets or territorial interests in the region.

‘‘It’s an opportunity for me on behalf of New Zealand to express the case for our nuclear-free stance,’’ Little said.