U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin on Tuesday emphasized the need to improve crisis communications during a meeting with his Chinese counterpart while raising concern about "increasingly dangerous" behavior by Chinese military aircraft, APA reports citing Reuters.
In his second face-to-face meeting with Chinese Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe this year, Austin also discussed the importance of "substantive dialogue on reducing strategic risk and enhancing operational safety," Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder said in a statement after the meeting.
The roughly 90-minute meeting in Cambodia was the pair's first since a visit to Taiwan by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in August enraged China, which regards the island as its territory.
"He (Austin) raised concerns about the increasingly dangerous behavior demonstrated by PLA (China's People's Liberation Army) aircraft in the Indo-Pacific region that increases the risk of an accident," Ryder said.
In June, a Chinese fighter aircraft dangerously intercepted an Australian military surveillance plane in the South China Sea region in May, Australia's defence department said.
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