A hosepipe fight between US and Chinese sailors in the South China Sea has put a temporary dampener on the feel-good glow created by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent Beijing visit. China’s foreign ministry angrily accused the Pentagon on Tuesday of breaking maritime law, distorting the truth and engaging in “totally unacceptable” behavior.
Chinese military officials went further, hinting that the Impeccable, an unarmed US ocean surveillance vessel intercepted last Sunday off Hainan island by five Chinese ships, was on a spying mission. If so, this would be unsurprising. Among other facilities, Hainan houses a base for China’s ballistic missile submarine fleet. It is an obvious target for US military intelligence gatherers.
In April 2001, a US spy plane was forced down over the island after a mid-air collision with a Chinese fighter. It was then-US president George W. Bush’s first international crisis and he was obliged to write and say sorry. In 2002, another supposedly innocent US survey ship, the Bowditch, got into a similar scrape in the Yellow Sea.
Beijing has repeatedly protested against US naval incursions into its “exclusive economic zones” — 320km nautical no-go areas such as that around Hainan.
Washington has not ratified the UN’s 1982 law of the sea treaty that created the zones and maintains its ships operate in international waters.
Although world oil prices rose briefly in reaction, the Impeccable incident was hardly on a par with the confrontation between waterborne Western imperialists and fanatical Yangtze River nationalists depicted in The Sand Pebbles, the 1966 movie drama starring Steve McQueen.
Regional analysts have played down its importance, arguing both countries have bigger fish to fry.
Clinton certainly devoted considerable energy in Beijing to stressing the need for joint efforts to fight global recession, climate change and nuclear proliferation.
With an uncanny choice of metaphor given recent events, the secretary of state declared: “We are truly going to rise or fall together. We are in the same boat and thankfully, we are rowing in the same direction.”
All the same, this latest spat could serve as a timely reminder of the many fault lines that run through China-US relations, which even a post-Bush policy of closer bilateral engagement and cooperation cannot wholly hide.
If the administration of US President Barack Obama was in danger of glossing over these points of friction, the Impeccable provided a reality check.
Accelerating military competition in the Asia-Pacific region is one major area of concern. China’s latest 14.9 percent annual increase in military spending, its recently confirmed plans to build aircraft carriers and its evident intention to project “blue water” naval power eastward into the Pacific foretell a significant challenge to US dominance by mid-century or earlier.
The two sides recently agreed to resume regular military contacts, broken off last year after Bush agreed to sell US$6.5 billion in arms to Taiwan.
But the agreement did not prevent the Impeccable incident. Speaking recently, Admiral Timothy Keating, head of the US Pacific Command, complained of a continuing lack of transparency and candor on the Chinese side.
“It’s our desire to have more exchanges with the Chinese. We want to do more with them,” Keating said.
But Beijing had shown no interest, for example, in a US offer to host military-to-military talks with Taiwan. Despite Clinton’s assertion that a strong China could help boost global security, concerns persisted about its military expansion and its development of “area-denial” weapons and anti-satellite and cyber-warfare capabilities, Keating said.
This week’s Chinese crackdown in Tibet, Beijing’s snarling rejection of state department criticism of its human rights record and its ongoing obduracy on trade and currency issues present additional tripwires for advocates of unconditional engagement.
China’s blocking last week of a US move in the UN security council to condemn Sudan’s expulsion of aid workers from Darfur showed how, on some key issues, China, far from rowing together with the US in the same boat, is not even on board. Next month’s G20 summit in London, when Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) will discuss coordinated action to beat the recession, will be the biggest test yet of a relationship holed below the waterline. It could be sink or swim.
The central bank and the US Department of the Treasury on Friday issued a joint statement that both sides agreed to avoid currency manipulation and the use of exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, and would only intervene in foreign-exchange markets to combat excess volatility and disorderly movements. The central bank also agreed to disclose its foreign-exchange intervention amounts quarterly rather than every six months, starting from next month. It emphasized that the joint statement is unrelated to tariff negotiations between Taipei and Washington, and that the US never requested the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar during the
Since leaving office last year, former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has been journeying across continents. Her ability to connect with international audiences and foster goodwill toward her country continues to enhance understanding of Taiwan. It is possible because she can now walk through doors in Europe that are closed to President William Lai (賴清德). Tsai last week gave a speech at the Berlin Freedom Conference, where, standing in front of civil society leaders, human rights advocates and political and business figures, she highlighted Taiwan’s indispensable global role and shared its experience as a model for democratic resilience against cognitive warfare and
The diplomatic dispute between China and Japan over Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comments in the Japanese Diet continues to escalate. In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, China’s UN Ambassador Fu Cong (傅聰) wrote that, “if Japan dares to attempt an armed intervention in the cross-Strait situation, it would be an act of aggression.” There was no indication that Fu was aware of the irony implicit in the complaint. Until this point, Beijing had limited its remonstrations to diplomatic summonses and weaponization of economic levers, such as banning Japanese seafood imports, discouraging Chinese from traveling to Japan or issuing
The diplomatic spat between China and Japan over comments Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made on Nov. 7 continues to worsen. Beijing is angry about Takaichi’s remarks that military force used against Taiwan by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” necessitating the involvement of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces. Rather than trying to reduce tensions, Beijing is looking to leverage the situation to its advantage in action and rhetoric. On Saturday last week, four armed China Coast Guard vessels sailed around the Japanese-controlled Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), known to Japan as the Senkakus. On Friday, in what
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