US Secretary of State John Kerry and US Department of State officials yesterday met Chinese leaders, vowing a tough line over Beijing’s island-building in disputed waters.
The US is weighing sending warships and surveillance aircraft within 12 nautical miles (22.2km) — the normal territorial zone around natural land — of artificial islands that Beijing is building in the South China Sea.
Such a move could lead to a standoff in an area home to vital global shipping lanes and believed to be rich in oil and gas deposits.
Photo: AFP
The world’s top two economies have significant commercial ties and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is due to pay a state visit to the US in September.
However, China’s ambitions for a place on the world’s political stage commensurate with its economic role have seen it cross the US in multiple fields, and the two have long-running disputes over issues ranging from trade to cyberespionage to human rights.
Kerry’s first meeting was with Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅), and he met senior political and military leaders later.
Pentagon officials last week revealed that China is building artificial islands on South China Sea coral reefs — which are also claimed by Taiwan — at an unprecedented pace, in a land reclamation effort dubbed a “great wall of sand” by one US commander.
The rapid construction amounts to 800 hectares, with 75 percent of the total created in the past five months alone.
Department officials said ahead of the talks in Beijing that Kerry would “reinforce ... the very negative consequences on China’s image, on China’s relationship with its neighbors, on regional stability, and potentially on the US-China relationship” of Beijing’s activities in the sea.
Beijing claims nearly all of the South China Sea, even waters close to the coasts of other littoral states, on the basis of a segmented line dating back to Chinese maps of the 1940s, known as the “nine-dash line.”
One official said Kerry would “leave his Chinese interlocutors in absolutely no doubt that the United States remains committed to maintain freedom of navigation.”
“That’s a principle that we are determined to uphold,” the official added.
US officials say Washington needs to send a clear signal about China’s dredging activities around the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島) and other disputed territories, although they want to calibrate any military operation to avoid triggering a crisis.
They also stress that according to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, only natural land masses create a territorial claim, not artificial islands.
“You can’t build sovereignty,” an official said.
However, the US has never ratified the convention itself.
The US is China’s second-biggest trading partner after the EU, with trade between the two worth US$555 billion last year, according to Chinese customs figures.
Beijing is the heavily-indebted US government’s biggest foreign creditor, figures from Washington showed on Friday, reclaiming top spot from Japan with more than US$1.26 trillion in Treasury bonds.
China defends the island-building as taking place within its own territory and intended to enhance its ability to carry out international obligations such as search and rescue.
In a commentary ahead of yesterday’s talks, China’s Xinhua news agency said the US is guilty of “thinly veiled hypocrisy.”
“The United States is not a party in the South China Sea disputes, which are between China and other claimants and should be handled by those directly involved,” it said.
“Washington has no valid grounds whatsoever to point an accusing finger at Beijing over the South China Sea. Instead, it needs to look at itself in the mirror,” it said, accusing the US of seeking “a pretext to maintain its hegemonic presence in the region.”
The US is in the process of a foreign policy “pivot” toward Asia.
‘CHARM OFFENSIVE’: Beijing has been sending senior Chinese officials to Okinawa as part of efforts to influence public opinion against the US, the ‘Telegraph’ reported Beijing is believed to be sowing divisions in Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture to better facilitate an invasion of Taiwan, British newspaper the Telegraph reported on Saturday. Less than 750km from Taiwan, Okinawa hosts nearly 30,000 US troops who would likely “play a pivotal role should Beijing order the invasion of Taiwan,” it wrote. To prevent US intervention in an invasion, China is carrying out a “silent invasion” of Okinawa by stoking the flames of discontent among locals toward the US presence in the prefecture, it said. Beijing is also allegedly funding separatists in the region, including Chosuke Yara, the head of the Ryukyu Independence
UNITED: The premier said Trump’s tariff comments provided a great opportunity for the private and public sectors to come together to maintain the nation’s chip advantage The government is considering ways to assist the nation’s semiconductor industry or hosting collaborative projects with the private sector after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on chips exported to the US, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. Trump on Monday told Republican members of the US Congress about plans to impose sweeping tariffs on semiconductors, steel, aluminum, copper and pharmaceuticals “in the very near future.” “It’s time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before,” Trump said at the Republican Issues Conference in Miami, Florida. “They
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
‘VERY SHALLOW’: The center of Saturday’s quake in Tainan’s Dongshan District hit at a depth of 7.7km, while yesterday’s in Nansai was at a depth of 8.1km, the CWA said Two magnitude 5.7 earthquakes that struck on Saturday night and yesterday morning were aftershocks triggered by a magnitude 6.4 quake on Tuesday last week, a seismologist said, adding that the epicenters of the aftershocks are moving westward. Saturday and yesterday’s earthquakes occurred as people were preparing for the Lunar New Year holiday this week. As of 10am yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) recorded 110 aftershocks from last week’s main earthquake, including six magnitude 5 to 6 quakes and 32 magnitude 4 to 5 tremors. Seventy-one of the earthquakes were smaller than magnitude 4. Thirty-one of the aftershocks were felt nationwide, while 79
RSS