Ukraine war hasn’t changed China’s thinking around possible attack on Taiwan, report says

China remains the “leading long-term challenge” to the existing international order and there is no evidence that Russia’s faltering invasion of Ukraine has changed Beijing’s thinking around “the timescale or methodology” for any potential attack on Taiwan, a top strategic think tank said ahead of a regional security summit in Singapore.

The grinding conflict in Europe may also accelerate trends in the Asia-Pacific region toward increased military spending and efforts to develop military capabilities, said a report released Friday by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which hosts its annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore this weekend.

The war and its reverberations in the Asia-Pacific region – as well as the growing contest between the United States and China – will be overarching themes at the security summit, the sidelines of which have long provided a platform for top security officials to meet face-to-face.

Attendees are expected to include US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov.

US and Chinese defense chiefs are not expected to meet this year – a mark of the depth of the fracture in relations between the two countries.

Austin on Thursday said it was “unfortunate” China declined a US offer to meet at the conference and warned the ongoing lack of communication could result in “an incident that could very, very quickly spiral out of control.”