By SAMMY JULIAN
Manila News Bureau Chief
MANILA – China “will not give an inch” with regards to its territorial dispute with several Southeast Asian countries, including the Philippines, over the South China Sea and with Japan over islands in East China Sea.
To those who doubt the Chinese government’s resolve, the top Chinese military general only issued this stern warning: Beijing has the means to back up its words with actions.
However, with respect to the dispute over the Chinese oil rig near the Paracel Islands, China has a relatively softer stand.
According to General Fang Fenghui, chief of the General Staff of the People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese government is willing to discuss the issue with Vietnam.
Still, Fang stressed that China “will make sure this well is successfully drilled” without interference from outside.
The general issued these declarations in a webcast of a joint press briefing with United States Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey at the Pentagon on Thursday last week (Friday Manila time).
The press conference saw an outburst of fiery rhetoric about who is to blame for stirring up tensions in the region.
But on the part of General Dempsey, he only went only as far as to declare that the US “acknowledges that there are disputes, territorial disputes, that are in play” in the region and that he had discussed with Fang the tensions in the South China Sea, and “how provocative actions can lead to confrontation.”
“These issues need to be resolved through dialogue and international law,” said Dempsey.
Fang was more direct when he partly blamed the US “rebalance to Asia” for an increase of tensions.
Although he implied that this was unintentional on the part of Washington, still, the Chinese general warned that tensions over the South China Sea could have an impact on the US-China military relationship.
He said, without directly naming the Philippines and Japan, “some of our neighboring countries did try to use this opportunity of the rebalancing strategy of United States, did something that we believe were not supposed to do and stir up some of the problems which actually make the South China Sea and East China Sea not so calm as before.”
Fang cited the BRP Sierra Madre, a commissioned Philippine naval vessel, that was placed in Ayungin Shoal in 1999 to serve as a permanent installation in response to China’s illegal occupation of the Mischief Reef.
He said the Philippines assured China in 2002 that it will tow away the military ship as soon as possible.
“But (the Philippines) did not fulfill that commitment and left that ship on the Ren’ai reef for 15 years,” Feng noted. “And now the Philippines is trying to reinforce that ship and make it a permanent facility, and we see the purpose of that behavior as an attempt to take the reef.”
The Chinese general said this behavior “makes the South China Sea not calm as it was before.”
“I don’t believe the responsibility lie on the Chinese side,” he said. “We always propose to adopt a policy of putting aside disputes…we hope that related nations can share the resources of the South China Sea.”
“But certain countries believe that China would now focus on our economic developments and are trying to maintain the window of strategic opportunity, therefore, they believe it is an opportunity for them to make the provocation, but we are not afraid of that,” Feng added./PN
