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進入《TAIPEI TIMES 焦點》 US hits China over sea reclamation
Sandy Cay is pictured in the South China Sea in a photograph provided by CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative/DigitalGlobe. Photo: Reuters
/ AFP, SINGAPORE
The US yesterday called for an immediate end to China’s intensifying reclamation works in the South China Sea and vowed to continue sending military aircraft and ships to the tense region.
US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter told a high-level security conference in Singapore that Beijing was behaving “out of step” with international norms.
China says it has sovereignty over nearly all of the South China Sea, a major global shipping route thought to contain oil and gas reserves.
“First, we want a peaceful resolution of all disputes. To that end, there should be an immediate and lasting halt to land reclamation by all claimants,” Carter said at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue on security, with a high-level Chinese military delegation in the audience.
“We also oppose any further militarization of disputed features,” Carter said.
He acknowledged that other claimants have developed outposts of differing scope and degree, including Taiwan with one, Vietnam with 48, the Philippines with eight and Malaysia with five.
“Yet, one country has gone much farther and much faster than any other. China has reclaimed over 2,000 acres [809 hectares], more than all other claimants combined and more than in the entire history of the region, and China did so in only the last 18 months,” Carter said.
Chinese delegation head Admiral Sun Jianguo （孫建國）, deputy chief of the general staff department at the People’s Liberation Army, is scheduled to address the forum today.
Sun and Carter spoke cordially on the sidelines before a luncheon at the forum, an Agence France-Presse photographer said.
However, in the highest-level rebuke to Carter’s comments so far, Chinese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Liu Zhenmin （劉振民） said China’s sovereignty over the South China Sea was firmly established, and that it had showed great restraint, despite provocation and “muscle flexing” from other countries.
There was “no need to have [China’s claims] strengthened through construction activities on relevant islands and reefs,” as China’s historical and legal claims to those areas were so strong, he was cited as saying by Xinhua news agency.
Meanwhile, China “remained committed to settling territorial disputes and overlapping maritime claims” Liu said.
In an interview published over the weekend by the Wall Street Journal, Chinese Ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai （崔天凱） said US actions and rhetoric could make the region “less stable.”
The Chinese military this month ordered a US Navy P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft to leave an area above the heavily disputed Spratly Islands （Nansha Islands, 南沙群島）, also claimed by Taiwan, but the US plane ignored the demand.
This was “clearly an attempt to provoke and escalate the situation,” Cui said.
Liu described “close-in manoeuvers” as “a crude act of muscle flexing that threatens to heighten militarisation of the South China Sea,” without directly referring to the US.
Cui and Liu both stressed current Chinese construction activities were mainly for civilian rather than military purposes.
In his speech, Carter urged China and the 10-member ASEAN to adopt a “code of conduct” in the disputed waters this year.
Washington on Friday accused China of deploying two artillery pieces on one of its artificial islands in the South China Sea.
新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES
