Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday held his first talks with a foreign official since vanishing from the public eye nearly two weeks ago, telling US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta he wanted to advance ties with the US.
Xi’s disappearance had prompted widespread rumors that he was ill or worse ahead of the Chinese Communist Party’s 18th National Congress, when he is expected to be named party chief.
Asked if he had learned why Xi had been out of view for some time, Panetta referred the question to the Chinese government, but added: “Frankly, my impression was that he was very healthy and very engaged.”
Panetta said their scheduled 45-minute meeting had run over by more than half an hour, in part because the vice president “was very much engaged in the discussion” and wanted to raise a range of bilateral strategic issues facing the two countries.
“I believe that your visit will be very helpful in further advancing the state-to-state and mil-to-mil [military-to-military] relations between our two countries,” Xi told Panetta during a welcoming ceremony at the Great Hall of the People.
Pentagon spokesman George Little called the discussions constructive and candid, covering issues ranging from North Korea to “the importance of the peaceful resolution of maritime territorial disputes.”
Panetta’s visit has come at a fraught time for China, which is in the midst of a row with US ally Japan over who owns a small group of islands in the East China Sea. The dispute has triggered anti-Japanese protests in China in the past few days.
Critics in China believe that a US move to shift its strategic focus to the region has encouraged countries like Japan to be more bold when dealing with Beijing.
However, Panetta, in remarks later to cadets at a Chinese military academy, sought to convince Beijing that the shift in focus was not an attempt to hem in China.
Panetta told students at the Armored Forces Engineering Academy that expanding US missile defenses in Asia were aimed at North Korea, not China, and that deepening US defense ties with allies in the region were to reinforce a security system that had helped China flourish.
“Our rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region is not an attempt to contain China,” he said. “It is an attempt to engage China and expand its role in the Pacific. It is about creating a new model in the relationship of two Pacific powers.”
However, that message is difficult to sell to a skeptical Chinese audience concerned about US missile defenses in Japan, expanding military ties with the Philippines and suspicion that Washington wants military access to Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam.
“The Chinese just don’t buy it. They are not convinced,” said Bonnie Glaser, a China analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
“Moreover they see the US as emboldening nations like Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam who have territorial disputes with China to directly confront Beijing,” she said.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat
RSS