The foreign ministers of G7 nations on Friday last week issued a joint statement that expressed a tougher stance on China and did not contain the usual references to the “one China” policy, showing a shift from traditional appeasement to growing international dissatisfaction with Beijing’s increasing aggression in the Asia-Pacific region.
The statement said that the ministers “reiterated the importance of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait” and are “opposed to any unilateral attempt to change the status quo through force of coercion.”
It expressed “deep concerns about China’s military buildup and the continued, rapid increase in China’s nuclear weapons arsenal.”
In a Declaration on Maritime Security and Prosperity, the G7 ministers emphasized their concerns over China’s “unjustifiable efforts to restrict freedom [of navigation] and to expand its jurisdiction through use of force and other forms of coercion, including across the Taiwan Strait, in the South China Sea, the Red Sea and the Black Sea.”
They condemned “China’s illicit, provocative, coercive and dangerous actions that seek unilaterally to alter the status quo in such a way to risk undermining the stability of regions.”
In addition to a significant growth in defense expenditure to enhance the world’s second-largest military to pursue its ambitious “rejuvenation of China,” Beijing strikingly increased its military drills to assert its territorial claims and to intimidate other nation in the Asia-Pacific region.
The Japanese Ministry of Defense said that China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy last year passed by Japan’s Nansel Island 68 times while sailing between the East China Sea and the Pacific Ocean, a number three times higher than that recorded in 2021 and including an aircraft carrier’s first visit to Japan’s contiguous waters.
Japanese Minister of Defense Gen Nakatani has warned of the danger of the rapid increase in incidents.
“We are facing strategic challenges of an unprecedented size,” he said.
The PLA Navy last month conducted live-fire drills in the Tasman Sea without providing customary notification to Australia or New Zealand and causing more than 49 civilian flights to be diverted. China’s intrusive move sparked protests from the two nations and raised concerns about regional security.
Besides its increasing maritime confrontations with the Philippines, China also launched four days of live-fire exercises without warning in the Gulf of Tonkin, fueling concerns in Vietnam and neighboring nations.
Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro said that China’s increasing aggression is “the greatest threat” to the security of the region and to the international order.
China’s military maneuvers are a deliberate demonstration of its naval capability to break through the first and second island chains, and to project its power in places far beyond.
China’s reckless moves have also accentuated the strategic role of Taiwan, which has long been the first target of China’s territorial expansionism and intensive military coercion.
The G7 statement said that “peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait is indispensable to international security and prosperity.”
The US Department of State on Wednesday also reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to deterring threats against Taiwan’s security and criticized China’s drills near Taiwan on Tuesday as “brazen and irresponsible.” Even Switzerland, with its policy of neutrality, issued a rare rebuke to Beijing over its naval drills in the waters off Taiwan.
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