US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Southeast Asian leaders today that the US is concerned about China's “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea during an annual summit meeting, and pledged that the US would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the vital sea trade route.
He also said the US believed “it is also important to maintain our shared commitment to protect stability across the Taiwan Strait.”
Photo: AFP
The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of violent confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members, the Philippines and Vietnam, which have fueled concerns that China’s increasingly assertive actions in the waterways could spiral into a full-scale conflict.
China, which claims almost the entire sea, has overlapping claims with Taiwan, as well as ASEAN members Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.
“We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who is filling in for US President Joe Biden, in his opening speech at the US-ASEAN summit. “The United States will continue to support freedom of navigation, and freedom of overflight in the Indo-Pacific.”
Chinese and Philippine vessels have clashed repeatedly this year, and Vietnam said last week that Chinese forces assaulted its fishers in the disputed sea. China has also sent patrol vessels to areas that Indonesia and Malaysia claim as exclusive economic zones.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr complained to summit leaders yesterday that his country “continues to be subject to harassment and intimidation” by China.
He said it was “regrettable that the overall situation in the South China Sea remains tense and unchanged” due to China’s actions, which he said violated international law.
He has called for more urgency in ASEAN-China negotiations on a code of conduct to govern the South China Sea.
Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) earlier this week warned of "real risks of an accident spiraling into conflict” if the sea dispute is not addressed.
Malaysia, which takes over the rotating ASEAN chair next year, is expected to push to accelerate talks on the code of conduct.
Officials have agreed to try and complete the code by 2026, but talks have been hampered by sticky issues including disagreements over whether the pact should be binding.
Chinese Premier Li Qiang (李強) was defiant during talks yesterday.
He called the South China Sea a “shared home,” but repeated China’s assertion that it was merely protecting its sovereign rights, officials said.
Li also blamed meddling by “external forces” who sought to “introduce bloc confrontation and geopolitical conflicts into Asia.”
Li did not name the foreign forces, but China has previously warned the US not to meddle in the region’s territorial disputes.
Blinken also attended an 18-nation East Asia Summit, along with the Chinese premier, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov and leaders from Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand.
ASEAN has treaded carefully on the sea dispute with China, which is the bloc's largest trading partner and its third-largest investor.
It has not marred trade relations, with the two sides focusing on expanding a free trade area covering a market of 2 billion people.
Blinken said the annual ASEAN summit talks were a platform to address other shared challenges, including the civil war in Myanmar, North Korea’s “destabilizing behavior” and Russia’s war aggression in Ukraine.
He said the US remained the top foreign investor in the region and aims to strengthen its partnership with ASEAN.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate