South Korea’s Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se left for Laos late Saturday to join a series of regional meetings led by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), diplomatic sources said.
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China just suffered a lopsided, humiliating, and very public defeat when the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled against its nine-dash line claims in the South China sea.
The platform, adopted on Monday, says China has been asserting “preposterous” claims to the South China Sea to distract its people from economic problems, practices “cultural genocide” in Tibet and Xinjiang, and reaffirms a commitment to sell weapons to self-ruled Taiwan.
While Vietnam now controls part of the islands in the Spratlys along with China and the Philippines, the country lost control of the Paracel to China after a clash in 1974.
China has blamed the United States for stirring up trouble in the South China Sea, a strategic waterway through which more than $5 trillion of trade moves annually. But the end game, if the USA and China can help it, will not be war but a détente similar to that arranged between North and South Korea to end the Korean War. The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) quickly disputed that claim, citing that only eight confirmed their support for China, while the rest were either silent or had issued vague statements.
In Shanghai, Rice will meet with business executives to discuss conditions for US businesses operating in China and meet with private Chinese citizens. At the top of the agenda – the South China Sea. Vietnam also lays claims to the Spratly Islands (known as the Quan đao Truong Sa by the Vietnamese) and the Paracel Islands (known as Xisha by the Chinese and as Hoàng Sa by the Vietnamese).
The Paracel Island area may also contain significant natural gas hydrate resources.
Even as Washington has sought to keep a lid on the situation, Rice – in an interview with Reuters – vowed that the USA military would continue to “sail and fly and operate” in the South China Sea, despite a Chinese warning that such patrols could end “in disaster”. The region remained relatively quiet into the 21st century, but a spike in piracy brought naval forces into action in the Straits of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia.
Chinese officials admit to knowing little about Trump compared with his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, who had extensive dealings with China when she was secretary of state.
The rest of the crude oil passes through the South China Sea to China and Japan, the two largest energy consumers in Asia.
The Philippines brought the global arbitration case against China, while fellow ASEAN members Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei also have competing claims to parts of the sea.
Trump has also proposed a 45 per cent tariff on Chinese imports into the U.S-although many experts question whether the value of China’s currency, which appreciated significantly after 2010, is now a driving factor in the trade deficit which hit a record $370 billion a year ago. On the other hand, the Philippines should try to extract whatever benefits it can out of a détente with China, fully aware that we are dealing with a sly fox – nay, a snake.
The South China Sea is a major transit route for LNG.
The platform also addresses trade issues, saying China can not be allowed to continue currency manipulation, and that a Republican president will “stand ready to implement countervailing duties” against countries that trade unfairly. Nearly 75% of all LNG exports to the region came from Qatar, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Australia.
China’s increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea is a natural effect of its growing economic power and its need to secure its front yard.
Scarborough Shoal has also been a serious concern for the United States because there are reports that China is planning to turn Scarborough into another artificial island and possibly build an airbase similar to the seven artificial islands built in the Spratlys. Doubtless, that decision made China lose face – something that Asians place a lot of importance on – and it gave us, the demonstrators, a great deal of psychic pleasure. More recent data was not available. However, at this point, the situation is not yet one in which China’s relationships with the United States and Japan have broken down.
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Zhu is an expert on Asian security, including the South China Sea issue. The court upheld almost all of the 15 points on which the Philippines approached the Court in 2013.China boycotted the proceedings, questioning the Court’s jurisdiction and publicly claiming historic rights to the South China Sea and its resources.
