It's a showdown at the South China Sea Corral -- or so you might think if you've been listening to China's state-run news media. On July 23, speaking at an ASEAN regional forum in Hanoi, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that her government "supports a collaborative diplomatic process for resolving the various disputes" over the South China Sea. She also made a point of noting that the U.S. would be happy to offer its services as a mediator and that Washington opposes "the use or threat of force by any claimant."
She didn't name names, mind you, but her remarks still triggered a flurry of invective from China. In recent months Beijing has elevated its claims to territory in the South China Sea to the level of a "core national interest" on par with Tibet or Taiwan, and that has sparked considerable anger among the other countries in the region -- including Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam -- that claim ownership of pieces of the sea. A few days after Clinton's sally, China's minister of foreign affairs, Yang Jiechi, issued a harsh statement of his own in which he slapped down any effort to internationalize the dispute and called Clinton's statement "virtually an attack on China." Then, just in case the Americans and the Southeast Asians still didn't get the message, the Chinese navy staged large-scale maneuvers in the sea, deploying ships from all three of its fleets. Admirals watched as the ships fired off volleys of missiles at imaginary enemies -- all of it shown in loving detail by Chinese television. Experts agreed that the whole display was unprecedented.
Read Full Article »