- Beijing has to reconcile the competing needs to appear tough to the Chinese public and conciliatory to an international audience
- China feels US has long had the advantage in shaping global opinion but it now needs to make itself heard
Zhao said this was an unprecedented challenge for Chinese cadres, who must also satisfy the expectations of the leadership.
“Our task was about diplomacy and making friends. But [with the tough position] you may not be able to make friends, and might even exacerbate the tension,” he said.
The pressure was immense when Chinese Defence Minister General Wei Fenghe took to the stage on Sunday in a rare appearance at the forum. Concerned about how Wei’s performance would be received at home, Beijing ordered Chinese media to minimise their coverage of acting US defence secretary Patrick Shanahan’s address in case it made China appear weak, according to a source familiar with the arrangements for Chinese media.
In his speech, Wei struck a defiant tone, vowing that the PLA would “fight at all costs” for “reunification” with Taiwan and that China was ready to fight the US to the end on the trade front.
Major General Jin Yinan, from the PLA’s National Defence University, a member of the Chinese delegation to the Singapore summit, said Wei’s speech defied expectations that China would show restraint with the US, and demonstrated China’s confidence on the world stage.
The public response at home was immediate and positive. Tens of thousands of Chinese internet users flooded social media platforms such as the Twitter-like Weibo service to express their approval for Wei’s hard line.
“This is the attitude that the Chinese military should show to the world,” one commenter said.
“I am proud of my country for being so strong and powerful,” another said.
Over the past year, Beijing’s propaganda apparatus has tightly controlled the domestic media narrative on the trade war, barring independent reporting on the tensions. But since the breakdown of trade talks in early May, the authorities have gone one step further by escalating nationalistic rhetoric in newspapers and on television.
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China has also tried to make its case to the world with an official statement. On the same day that Wei addressed the gathering in Singapore, the State Council, China’s cabinet, put China’s side of the dispute in a white paper, saying the US should bear responsibility for the breakdown of the trade talks.
A Chinese delegate at the forum said Beijing felt Washington had long had the advantage in shaping global opinion and there was an urgent need for China to make itself heard.
“We should get more used to voicing our position through Western platforms. The US has been criticising us on many issues. But why should the Americans dominate all the platforms and have the final say over everything?” the delegate said.
Before Wei’s appearance at the dialogue, China had not sent such a high-ranking official for eight years. It had long sought to play down the importance of the forum, seeing it as a platform wielded by the US and its Western allies to attack China.
In 2002, China set up the Beijing Xiangshan Forum to rival the Singapore gathering and amplify its voice on security issues.
But Chinese officials are well aware that Xiangshan does not have the same impact and profile as the Shangri-La Dialogue, according to Collin Koh, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
“[At the same time, the long absence of high-level Chinese representation to the Shangri-La Dialogue also] raises the question of whether it might be sustainable in the long run for [the dialogue] if they continue to not have such ministerial representation [from China],” Koh said.
Zhao, who is also the director of the Xiangshan forum’s secretariat office, agreed that China lagged the US in promoting the image of the military and in winning public opinion.
“China has not fought a war in 30 years. We have only built some islands in the South China Sea and yet have received so much criticism from the international media. The US has engaged in many wars but they are seldom criticised. This reflects that China is in a disadvantaged position in international discourse,” he said.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 
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