No compromise on dispute — China

From the Daily Tribune (Mar 9): No compromise on dispute — China

Wang rejects 'unreasonable demands from small countries'

China will never accept “unreasonable demands from smaller countries” nor will it make any compromise on territorial and historical issues, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said yesterday apparently referring to President Aquino’s insistence for China to recognize United Nations (UN) mediation in the simmering territorial dispute between both countries.

A recent incident in which a Chinese Coast Guard ship sprayed water on Filipino fishermen to drive them off a fishing ground near Scarborough Shoal had sparked new diplomatic friction between both countries.

“On the two issues of principle, history and territory, there’s no room for compromise,” Wang said at a press conference in Beijing.

Wang said his country would vigorously defend its sovereignty, declaring there was “no room for compromise” with Japan over territory or history.

“We will never bully smaller countries yet we will never accept unreasonable demands from smaller countries,” Wang Yi told reporters.

“On issues of territory and sovereignty, China’s position is firm and clear: We will not take anything that isn’t ours, but we will defend every inch of territory that belongs to us.”

China is embroiled in disputes with several of its neighbors including the Philippines and Japan, with tensions centred on rival claims in the South China Sea and East China Sea.

Beijing asserts that almost all the South China Sea is its territory but the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have overlapping claims.

The dispute with Tokyo is particularly tense given historical animosities between the two countries over Japan’s invasion of China in the 1930s and 40s.

Beijing and Tokyo both claim a small uninhabited archipelago in the East China Sea, administered by Japan as the Senkaku Islands, but which China calls the Diaoyu Islands.

Chinese officials and state media have this year demanded that Japan reflect on its historical aggression and atrocities, in much the same manner as postwar Germany has with its Nazi past.

Wang talked to reporters on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress, China’s communist-controlled legislature.

“If some people in Japan insist on overturning the verdict on its past aggression I don’t believe the international community and all peace loving people in the world will ever tolerate or condone that,” he said.

Tensions between the two have risen markedly since 2012 when Tokyo purchased islands in the chain it did not already own from their private Japanese owners. Beijing has taken an increasingly hard line on the issue ever since.

Ships and aircraft from both countries regularly patrol waters around the contested territory and have on occasion come perilously close to armed clashes.

Some, including Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, have mentioned the dispute within the context of World War I, when European powers Germany and Britain went to war.

Wang, a career diplomat who has served at China’s embassy in Tokyo and speaks Japanese, discounted such a comparison at the press conference.

“I wish to emphasise that 2014 is not 1914, still less 1894,” he said. The latter year marks the start of the First Sino-Japanese War, which ended in victory by Japan in 1895, marking that country’s rise as a regional power after more than two centuries of isolation.

“Instead of using Germany before the First World War as an object lesson, why not use Germany after the Second World War as a role model?” Wang added.

The United States, China and Japan are the world’s three biggest economies, while Tokyo has a security pact with Washington, which is treaty-bound to come to its defence if it is attacked.

 

Wang became foreign minister in March last year as China completed a once-a-decade leadership transition that saw Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping become state president.

He reiterated Beijing’s calls for dialogue to resolve the issue of the nuclear programme of North Korea, which receives most of its trade and aid from China.

“All along, we have a red line, that is we will never allow war or instability on the Korean peninsula,” he said, adding that “mutual mistrust”, particularly between Pyongyang and Washington, was preventing a resolution.

Wang also stressed the need for discussions in Ukraine, where forces of China’s ally Russia are in effective control of Crimea.

“The priority now is to exercise calm and restraint and to prevent further escalation of the situation,” he said. “The parties should carry out dialogue and consultation to put the issue on the track of a political settlement.”

Despite tensions with the US over issues including mutual suspicions related to defence and cyber security, Wang gave an overall upbeat assessment of ties.

“The Asia-Pacific should be the testing ground of our commitment to build a new model of relations rather than a competitive arena,” he said.

Aquino had demanded an explanation from China over the Scarborough Shoal incident.

Aquino said the foreign department had been asked to file a “diplomatic message”, a day after the incident at the shoal was reported.

“The first step would be a diplomatic message... directed at the People’s Republic of China to ask them to explain what this incident was all about, what their intentions are,” Aquino told reporters, when asked whether a formal protest would be lodged.

Scarborough Shoal is a rocky outcrop, considered a traditional fishing ground by Filipinos, which lies just 220km off the main Philippine island of Luzon. It is about 650km from Hainan island, the nearest major Chinese land mass.

 

The South China Sea is one of the world’s most important waterways, home to vital shipping lanes and believed to sit atop lucrative mineral deposits.

Both sides engaged in a tense standoff in the area in April 2012, which ended with the Philippines retreating from the shoal.

Aquino acknowledged that Philippine security officials were “not sure at this point in time” whether spraying water cannon at Filipino fishermen was a standard operating procedure by Chinese vessels in the area. “We don’t want to react to a one-off incident,” Aquino said.

Aquino said that as of yesterday there were Filipino fishermen at the shoal “who were not being harassed or intimidated by any entity”.

Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) chief General Emmanuel Bautista said the incident occurred on January 27, although he did not divulge further details and it was not clear whether any Filipinos were hurt.

China refused to directly respond to the allegations, insisting only that it had “indisputable sovereignty” over the area.

China claims most of the South China Sea on historical grounds, including waters near the coasts of its neighbours.

Last year, the Aquino administration asked a United Nations arbitration tribunal to rule on the validity of China’s claim to most of the sea, but Beijing has rejected the process.   

http://www.tribune.net.ph/headlines/no-compromise-on-dispute-china