SINGAPORE -- Although China attempted to strike a more conciliatory tone in this year's Shangri-La Dialogue, a major Asian security forum held here through Sunday, officials' uncompromising comments on Taiwan and the South China Sea only highlighted its rifts with the international community ahead of the key Communist Party meeting in the fall.
For the previous four years, China had sent the deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission, who reemphasized Beijing's various claims at a plenary session. In 2015, Adm. Sun Jianguo stressed that Beijing's island-building activities in the South China Sea were "legitimate, justified and reasonable." China "cannot permit its sovereignty and security rights and interests to be encroached upon," he said in 2016.
