Australia, Japan and the US raised alarm over China’s “bullying” in the Taiwan Strait following US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the self-governing island in August this year.
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin held a Trilateral Defence Ministers Meeting (TDMM) with Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and Japanese Minister of Defence Hamada Yasukazu in Hawaii on Saturday and called out China’s aggressive behaviour in the Indo-Pacific region. Read a US Department of Defense press release.
“We are deeply concerned by China’s increasingly aggressive and bullying behaviour in the Taiwan Strait and elsewhere in the region,” Austin told reporters before his meeting with Japanese Defence Minister Hamada and Australia’s Marles. The trio “discussed deepening trilateral defence cooperation” and “committed to taking concrete, practical steps together in order to anchor stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region.”
