Acting Defense Secretary Shanahan warns against Chinese aggression in first major speech

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan's first major speech since taking over the role in January was a doozy.

Shanahan addressed an audience at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore — Asia's biggest security gathering, per Reuters — on Saturday. His speech focused heavily on China, a country with which he says he hopes to foster a military relationship. However, he did not tread lightly regarding some of China's more aggressive actions in the region.

"We're not going to ignore Chinese behavior and I think in the past people have kind of tiptoed around that," Shanahan said. Shanahan, without specifically naming China, warned against "actors who seek to undermine, rather than uphold, the rules-based international order," threatening regional stability in the process. He mentioned that "artificial features in the global commons" could become "tollbooths," which Reuters reports was a reference to islands built by Beijing in the South China Sea.

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A senior Chinese military official responded to Shanahan's comments, arguing that Shanahan's speech was hypocritical and that the U.S.'s actions regarding Taiwan and the South China Sea were threatening to de-stabilize the region, as well. U.S. lawmakers, on the other hand, reacted with bipartistan positivity toward Shanahan's speech.