China says it will never send military to oil rig spat with Vietnam

From the Manila Bulletin (Jun 15): China says it will never send military to oil rig spat with Vietnam

A Chinese official said on Friday that China will never send military forces to the scene of an increasingly ugly spat with Vietnam over an oil rig in the South China Sea and accused Hanoi of trying to force an international lawsuit.

But a senior US official in Washington dismissed the Chinese statement as “patently ridiculous” and said Beijing had been using air force and navy as well as coastguard assets “to intimidate others.”

Scores of Vietnamese and Chinese ships, including coastguard vessels, have squared off around the rig despite a series of collisions after the Chinese platform was towed into disputed waters in early May.

Vietnam has accused China of sending six warships, but Yi Xianliang, deputy director-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs, said that Beijing had never sent military forces.

“I can tell you very clearly that from May 2 to today, including when the (drilling) operations are complete, we have never, are not, and will never send military forces. Because we are carrying out normal, civilian, commercial activities,” he told a news conference.

“What I can tell you is that this is on a maritime route and at some periods there have been certain Chinese military ships coming back from the south but these have been far away” from where the standoff round the rig has been taking place, Yi added.

China claims about 90 percent of the South China Sea, but parts of the potentially energy-rich waters are also subject to claims by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.

Beijing stations military forces on some of the numerous islands it occupies in the Spratly and Paracel Island groups in the South China Sea.

The Haiyang Shiyou 981 rig is drilling between the Paracel Islands and the Vietnamese coast. Vietnam has said the rig is in its 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone and on its continental shelf, while China says it is operating within its waters.

The United States has not taken sides in the territorial disputes but has been strongly critical of China’s behavior in pressing its claims and called for negotiated solutions.

‘WEAK ATTEMPT TO OBSCURE’

The US official called Yi Xianliang’s statement “a weak attempt to obscure what China is really doing.”

“China has maintained a robust and consistent military presence near the oil rig since its placement on May 2, including flying helicopters and planes over and around the rig. There are currently multiple military vessels in the vicinity of the rig,” he said.

The official said that on any given day, there were also Chinese navy warships in waters disputed with the Philippines.

Reiterating US criticism of how China has handled maritime disputes with its neighbors, he said China’s actions were “creating serious frictions” in relations with Washington.

Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung told Reuters last month his government was considering various “defense options” against China, including legal action, a move the United States has said it would support.

Yi Xianliang denied China was blocking any proposals by Hanoi for high-level dialogue or for a special envoy to travel to Beijing.

“I know that certain people in Vietnam, perhaps because they are trying to find another way to resolve the problem, are creating certain conditions. The so-called other route is the so-called lawsuit way,” he said.

“…If this spreading of rumors or distorting of facts is to achieve the aim of lodging a lawsuit, then I have to say that this is a miscalculation.”

The rig’s deployment triggered anti-Chinese riots in Vietnam last month that killed at least four workers.

NEW CODE PRESSED

With the Philippine government’s filing of diplomatic protest against China’s reclamation on Kennan (Hughes) Reef in the West Philippine Sea, Filipino lawmakers have sought the signing of a new regional code of conduct (COC) between China and the member nations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to address the conflicting and overlapping claims in the disputed South China Sea.

Akbayan party-list Rep. Walden Bello, chairman of the House Committee on Overseas Workers Affairs, said the tense situation in the South China Sea among the claimant countries should prod the ASEAN to expedite the forging of a rules-based and binding COC in the region.

“The ASEAN should pursue a special ministerial-level meeting where ASEAN unites behind and demand for binding code of conduct with China,” he said in an interview.
The Philippines, which was part of the drafting of the new regional conduct on the West Philippine Sea, insisted that a “zone of peace, friendship, freedom, and cooperation (ZoPFFC)” will be established in the disputed islands.

Magdalo party-list Rep. Francisco Ashley Acedillo said China’s supposed growing assertiveness over the resources-rich South China Sea should be addressed by the ASEAN as a regional bloc, even as he noted that China has taken for granted the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) which it signed with ASEAN in Phnom Penh in 2002.

“The pace of China’s actions in the West Philippine Sea requires that ASEAN claimants define their clear positions already – seeing that the DOC in the South China Sea (to which China is a party to) is apparently a worthless piece of paper for China,” he said in a separate interview.

AKO Bicol party-list Rep. Rodel Batocabe said the ASEAN should stick to its one-for-all, all-for-one principle in handling the South China Sea issue.

“I think more than ever ASEAN should come up with a consensus on how to deal with the China problem. ASEAN should come out united on the problem without any discordant position from countries like Cambodia,” he said.

Cambodia is an ally of China and it was during its ASEAN chairmanship in 2012 when the calls for ASEAN to sign a regional code of conduct intensified, with the Philippines as the lead advocate of COC.

Marikina Rep. Marcelino Teodoro asked the ASEAN to pursue the proposed special ministers meeting to come up with a consensus on how to address China’s territorial bullying in the region.

http://www.mb.com.ph/china-says-it-will-never-send-military-to-oil-rig-spat-with-vietnam/