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SINGAPORE — At a major conference billed as a “dialogue,” the top defense officials of the United States and China found themselves locked in a standoff. Flash points had flared across the region: In the skies above the South China Sea just days earlier, a Chinese fighter jet performed what U.S. officials described as “an unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” when intercepting a U.S. aircraft. Over the weekend, as Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin urged his Chinese counterparts to open channels of communication with the United States, a Chinese ship nearly collided with a U.S. destroyer transiting through the Taiwan Strait.
