SINGAPORE — Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III warned China on Saturday against what he called “provocative and destabilizing” activity near the disputed island of Taiwan, following talks with China’s defense minister, Gen. Wei Fenghe, that focused on preventing regional tensions from escalating into crises.
Taiwan — a self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own — was one of the topics of the talks between Mr. Austin and General Wei in Singapore on Friday, along with disputes in seas around China and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Mr. Austin amplified his warnings in a speech to the Shangri-La Dialogue, a security meeting in Singapore, while asserting that Washington did not support an independent Taiwan.
“Our policy hasn’t changed, but unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be true for the P.R.C.,” Mr. Austin said on Saturday, referring to the People’s Republic of China. “We see growing coercion from Beijing. We’ve witnessed a steady increase in provocative and destabilizing military activity near Taiwan.”
Mr. Austin said that increasing People’s Liberation Army flights near Taiwan reflected a pattern of increasing Chinese pressure on neighbors, including India, Japan and Southeast Asian countries that dispute China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea. But he suggested that the most volatile issue was the future of Taiwan, the island of 24 million inhabitants just off the Chinese coast.
Since 1949, when Nationalist forces fled China for Taiwan, the status and future of the island has been disputed. Beijing claims it as its sovereign territory; most people on Taiwan reject that claim and want to stay separate — in fact, if not in law — from the People’s Republic of China. Washington has long maintained that neither side should unilaterally try to change the status of Taiwan, but U.S. legislation also allows for supporting the island’s defenses and possibly intervening if war breaks out.
Mr. Austin indicated that U.S. policy on Taiwan remained unchanged, notwithstanding speculation about recent comments by President Biden.
“We categorically oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side. We do not support Taiwan independence,” Mr. Austin said, adding that the United States would maintain its “capacity to resist any use of force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security or the social or economic system of the people of Taiwan.”
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On Friday, General Wei put responsibility on the United States for worsening tensions over Taiwan, telling Mr. Austin that U.S. weapons sales to the island “gravely damage China’s sovereignty and security interests,” the Chinese Ministry of National Defense said in its summary of their talks.
“Using Taiwan to contain China will never succeed,” General Wei said, according to China’s official summary.
General Wei is scheduled to address the forum on Sunday, giving him an opportunity to respond to Mr. Austin’s speech.
The meeting between Mr. Austin and General Wei on Friday was only their second bilateral encounter, following a phone call in April, despite the increasing rivalry between the two countries and worries that miscalculation might spiral into crisis.
Mr. Austin “underscored the importance of the People’s Liberation Army engaging in substantive dialogue on improving crisis communications and reducing strategic risk,” the Pentagon said in a statement after the meeting.
Despite the public sparring over Taiwan, both sides also indicated that Mr. Austin and General Wei had made some progress during their meeting, which lasted about an hour. Senior Col. Wu Qian, a spokesman for the Chinese defense ministry, told reporters in Singapore that the talks had also covered the South China Sea — where China’s wide territorial claims are contested by Southeast Asian countries — as well as the war in Ukraine.
“China has always believed that it’s better to meet than not meet, and better to talk than not,” Colonel Wu said. He added that the talks marked a “very good start” for improved contacts between the U.S. and Chinese militaries.
China has been flexing its military might in Asia in ways that have raised alarms in the region and in Washington. In recent days, American allies have complained about Chinese military jets harassing their planes, flying so close that the pilots could see each other, or making provocative, risky maneuvers, such as releasing metallic chaff in the path of an Australian aircraft.
These “dangerous intercepts,” Mr. Austin said, “should worry us all.” “Mistakes are especially stark in the Taiwan Strait,” he said.
Last month, China and Russia held a joint military exercise, sending bombers over the seas in northeast Asia as Mr. Biden was visiting the region.
“It’s possible that the Chinese are testing U.S. allies to see if they’ll back down,” said Zack Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies U.S. policy in Asia and was attending the Singapore dialogue. “They may be more likely to test these other countries to see if they are less risk tolerant.”
But Taiwan is perhaps the greatest source of tensions between the United States and China. American officials and military commanders worry that China’s leader, Xi Jinping, may be willing to go to war over Taiwan in the coming years. Mr. Biden has indicated several times that the United States would step in with military support to defend Taiwan if Beijing launched an invasion. China has escalated its military activity near Taiwan in recent years, sending jets to enter its air defense zone.
“In the short to medium term a Taiwan conflict is far more likely to occur by accident than design,” said a report issued at the Singapore forum by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a British think tank. “Indeed, as Chinese coercion of Taiwan intensifies, the risk of inadvertent escalation is rising.”
China has responded angrily to Washington’s support of Taiwan, including its plans to strengthen trade ties with the island, accusing it of fueling tensions in the region. Chinese officials have also pushed back against the Biden administration’s broader effort to build alliances to counter China. The Chinese government denounced a security agreement between Australia, Britain and the United States last year that would help Australia deploy nuclear-powered submarines, raising expectations that it would join any military conflict with Beijing.
The risk of conflict has grown as China’s military has expanded into the world’s second largest, with a navy rivaling America’s in size, and as Beijing has become increasingly impatient with the U.S. military presence across Asia.
But Covid restrictions and disagreements over meeting arrangements, such as who Mr. Austin’s counterpart would be, have stood in the way of high-level talks between Chinese and American military leaders.
Despite their similar titles, Mr. Austin and General Wei occupy very different ranks. Mr. Austin is the most senior American civilian in the Pentagon; the Chinese defense minister is a relatively junior position whose main job is contacts abroad. Mr. Austin has yet to meet Mr. Xi, the Chinese leader, who is also chairman of the Central Military Commission, or other high-ranking commanders on the commission.
Even so, experts attending the forum in Singapore saw value in the meeting between the two men. Over the last few decades, China and the United States have built a patchwork of agreements and communications lines intended to avoid misunderstandings as well as collisions at sea or in the air that might spin into broader confrontation. But Beijing and Washington do not see eye to eye on how to reduce those risks.
“We will fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows,” Mr. Austin said in his speech, “and we’ll do this right alongside our partners.”
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.
