China came under pressure from the United States and Asian powers to rein in its actions in the South China Sea, with the USA defense secretary urging Beijing to join in on regional cooperation or risk erecting a “Great Wall of self-isolation”.
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Amid the festering South China Sea issue between China and the United States, Beijing has agreed to join the US-led naval drills in the Pacific later this month along with other Asian countries. The country has accused the USA of enflaming regional tensions surrounding its construction on the Spratly, Woody and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, primarily through the freedom of navigation sails and surveillance flights the US has made within the area China claims as its sovereign territory.
Rear Admiral Guan Youfei, the director of the Chinese office of global military cooperation, said that “China would like to join the United States safeguard regional security, but the USA should first stop its arms sale to Taiwan and reduce highly frequent close-in reconnaissance against China”.
The outlet said that on Monday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will be joining China’s State Councilor Yang Jiechi in the eighth round of dialogues in the country’s capital.
Speaking Saturday at this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue – Asia’s premier defense summit – U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter delivered an important address outlining what he called the “principled security network” – a growing set of bilateral, trilateral and multilateral mechanisms in the region focused on preserving key values and promoting greater burden-sharing among all nations. “By contrast, China’s actions have increasingly isolated it”.
“Our two militaries can also work together, bilaterally or as part of the principled security network, to meet a number of challenges-like terrorism and piracy-in the Asia-Pacific and around the world”.
The South China Sea has become a crossroad between the United States and China, which is showing ever greater economic, political and military power in the region. China reached a four-point consensus with Brunei, Cambodia and Laos on the South China Sea issue in April, in a development analysts say exposes fault lines in the 10-nation bloc. It demands that other nations treat the waters and airspace around them as Chinese.
Carter said that for decades some critics had been predicting an impending US withdrawal from the region, but this would not happen.
Concern at China’s assertiveness over the vital trade route was deepening, several envoys said on the sidelines of the summit, particularly given the prospect of Chinese military facilities on new artificial islands built on reefs in the South China Sea.
The conference in Singapore comes just ahead of an worldwide arbitration ruling on the Philippines’ claims against China’s maritime claims.
“We do not make trouble but we have no fear of trouble”, Admiral Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of China’s Central Military Commission, said on Sunday.
China claims virtually the entire South China Sea as its own, overlapping with territory claimed by other Southeast Asian governments.
“We want to cooperate with China in all domains as much as possible … but we have to confront them if we must”, said commander of U.S. Pacific Command, Adm. Harry Harris, including that the U.S. has “to operate from a position of strength against all outcomes”.
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In his speech, Carter also repeated his earlier description of China’s rapid reclamation as an act of “self isolation”.
