The Chinese embassy in Myanmar yesterday accused the US of “outrageously smearing” the China and driving a wedge with its Southeast Asian neighbors over the contested South China Sea and Hong Kong, as tensions mount between the superpowers.
Responding to US claims Bthat eijing was undermining the sovereignty of its neighbors, the Chinese embassy said that US agencies abroad were doing “disgusting things” to contain China and had showed a “selfish, hypocritical, contemptible and ugly face.”
The US last week hardened its position on the South China Sea, saying it would back countries in the region that challenge Beijing’s claim to about 90 percent of the strategic waterway.
Photo: AFP
In a statement on Saturday, the US embassy in Yangon called China’s actions in the South China Sea and Hong Kong, where Beijing has imposed tough new national security laws, part of a “larger pattern to undermine the sovereignty of its neighbors.”
The embassy statement drew parallels between China’s actions in the South China Sea and Hong Kong with large-scale Chinese investments projects in Myanmar that the US has warned could become debt-traps, along with trafficking of women from Myanmar to China as brides, and the inflow of drugs from China into Myanmar.
“This is how modern sovereignty is often lost — not through dramatic, overt action, but through a cascade of smaller ones that lead to its slow erosion over time,” the embassy said.
China said the statement showed a “sour grapes” attitude by the US toward “flourishing China-Myanmar relations” and was “another farce on a global tour by the US authorities to shift the attention on domestic problems and seek selfish political gains.”
“The US should first look in the mirror to see whether it still looks like a major country now,” it said.
Author and historian Thant Myint-U said in an e-mail that although Myanmar was of negligible economic value to the rivals, its strategic importance as a bridge between China and the Bay of Bengal was hard to ignore.
“Myanmar’s instincts since independence in 1948 are to try to be friends with everyone, but it’s not clear that’s going to remain possible, in this coming period of increasingly febrile superpower rivalry,” he said. “The sheer weight of China’s giant industrial revolution next door is already transforming Myanmar; if multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects are added to the mix, the border between the two countries will become increasingly difficult to see.”
“It’s important to remember that Myanmar was one of the few countries in the world where the last Cold War led to proxy armed fighting which in turn led to military dictatorship and decades of self-imposed isolation,” he said.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion