General Liang Guanglie, China’s defence minister, has rejected criticism that his country was acting belligerently in the South China Sea, saying China was pursuing “peaceful development”.“You say our actions do not match our words. I certainly do not agree,” Gen Liang replied to critics at the Shangri-La Dialogue, a high-profile Asia defence forum in Singapore.
He was the first Chinese defence minister to participate in the forum, which was attended by Robert Gates, US defence secretary, and other Asian defence ministers. It was Gen Liang’s first big international speech.
Mr Gates expressed “increasing concerns” about China’s recent maritime behaviour. But when asked if Beijing was undermining its “peaceful rise” claim, he replied: “I don’t think it has risen to that level yet.”
Hundreds of Vietnamese protested at the weekend in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City against perceived Chinese aggression. Hanoi recently said Chinese coast guard vessels had sabotaged an oil exploration ship.
Last week Manila said China had unloaded construction materials on a reef claimed by the Philippines, raising fears over a regional agreement to avoid actions that “complicate or escalate disputes”.
“It is the responsibility of the US to watch over how these incidents are handled postmortem,” Admiral Robert Willard, commander of US forces in the Pacific, told the Financial Times.
Despite the incidents, Mr Gates struck a softer tone on China than at the 2010 forum, reflecting the recent improvement in Sino-US relations. Military ties have improved following a year of little significant contact after the US announced an arms sale to Taiwan.
John McCain, US Republican senator and former presidential candidate, told the FT that Gen Liang was “very conciliatory”, saying the defence minister had been more “hardline” over the South China Sea in a previous meeting in China.
Mr Gates said the US would maintain a strong military presence in the region, including sending a new combat ship to Singapore. He dismissed suggestions that US fiscal woes coupled with rising Chinese military budgets meant the US presence would ebb.
“I will bet you $100 that five years from now the United States’ influence in this region is as strong if not stronger than it is today,” he said.
Notwithstanding the better Sino-US ties, Washington has been urging China to press Pyongyang to act less belligerently, after North Korea last year sank a South Korean warship and shelled a South Korean island, killing several people. But Gen Liang said China was doing “much more than what the outside world may expect” without giving detail.
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Hundreds in anti-China protests in Vietnam
Hundreds of Vietnamese protested on Sunday against perceived Chinese aggression in the South China Sea in rare public demonstrations in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, writes Ben Bland in Hanoi.
The long-running maritime dispute between the communist neighbours flared up again at the end of last month, when Vietnam revealed that a Chinese maritime surveillance vessel had cut an undersea cable deployed by a Vietnamese oil exploration ship.
Stirred up by that incident, and Hanoi’s claims that Chinese ships had fired warning shots at Vietnamese fishing boats, more than a hundred people converged on the Chinese embassy in Hanoi early on Sunday, after word of the planned rally spread through blogs, text messages and Facebook. A similar demonstration took place in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s commercial capital.
The protesters in Hanoi waved banners and maps proclaiming Vietnamese sovereignty over the contested Spratly and Paracel islands, sang patriotic songs and chanted anti-Chinese slogans.
Although such public protests are not usually permitted in authoritarian, one-party Vietnam, riot police stood back for about half an hour before eventually starting to clear the demonstrators, telling them through a loudspeaker that “your actions are making the problem worse”.
The ambivalent response of the police encapsulates the dilemma faced by Vietnam’s leaders, who have come under growing public pressure to stand up to China’s perceived bullying tactics but remain wary of upsetting their economically and militarily powerful northern neighbour.
“We defeated the Mongols and the Americans before and we will defeat the Chinese if we have to,” said Long, a 27-year-old protester draped in the Vietnamese flag, who only gave his first name.
The Vietnamese people must do their duty and fight back against “China’s hooligan actions”, added Nguyen Quoc Hung, a 50-year-old man who was holding a banner that read “the Spratly and Paracel islands belong to Vietnam”.
By Demetri Sevastopulo and Kathrin Hille taken from http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/21c9e72a-8f9b-11e0-954d-00144feab49a.html#axzz1OV9TAajH
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