Chinese defence minister General Chang Wanquan on Wednesday met his American counterpart Ashton Carter on the sidelines of ASEAN defence ministers’ Meeting Plus to discuss steps to scale down tensions in the South China Sea (SCS).
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His visit comes a week after a US Navy destroyer sailed inside the 12 nautical mile radius that China claims as its territorial waters around one of its recently reclaimed islands.
China’s claims in the South China Sea are disputed by several countries in the region, including Malaysia, which is hosting the meeting.
Tensions are rising in the dispute involving claimant countries Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam, Philippines, Taiwan and China.
“There is a lot of concern about Chinese behavior out there”, the USA defense secretary said during his three-hour stopover at the aircraft carrier.
China’s Defense Ministry has expressed regret with the results.
He said apart from discussions on China’s claims on the South China Sea islands, other issues of importance, such as countering terrorism and maritime security, were shared in the meeting between Asean defence ministers and their counterparts from Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Russian Federation and the United States. This was objected to by China, which is in principle opposed to the mention of the discord on maritime boundaries in these waters in multilateral fora, insisting, instead, on a bilateral resolution of the differences.
Addressing the third ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM-plus) at Kuala Lumpur, defence minister Manohar Parrikar said the situation in the South China Sea and recent developments there have attracted interest and concern.
The USA has called on China to stop building in the South China Sea, characterizing the activity as destabilizing for the region.
The United States had lobbied for inclusion of a reference, while China had argued it had no place in the statement.
Chinese officials rebuked Harris over the action, with the People’s Liberation Army chief of general staff Fang Fenghui telling him it had “created a disharmonious atmosphere for our meeting and this is very regretful”.
All eyes will now be on the Asean summit in two weeks, with US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping attending. Malaysia is negotiating hard to get an agreement acceptable to both the United States and China, a senior Malaysian official said on Tuesday evening.
Carter was traveling with his Malaysian counterpart, Hishammuddin Hussein. “If you dig into this carefully enough, you will find, I think, extreme caution in how the U.S.is going about the freedom of navigation assertions”.
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The nuclear-powered super carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt has been conducting routine operations in the strategic seaway and is not part of the “freedom of navigation” push.
