China wary of U.S. military moves in Asia-Pacific

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is likely to face sharp questions when he arrives in Beijing for talks with China’s defense minister.

As Defense Secretary Leon Panetta visits Beijing this week, the U.S. is forging closer defense ties to countries near China and renewing its focus in the South Pacific.

September 16, 2012

Los Angeles Times (USA)

WASHINGTON — When a senior U.S. general met in Beijing recently with Lt. Gen. Cai Yingting, the deputy chief of China's armed forces, Cai forcefully objected to America's expanding military presence in Asia and the Pacific, describing it as an effort to encircle his country.

"Why are you containing us?" Cai demanded, according to a U.S. official who was present and described the incident in return for anonymity.

The U.S. general denied seeking to contain China, but it's easy to see why officials in Beijing might get that impression.

The Obama administration is forging closer defense ties to countries near China, including India, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and Singapore; repositioning troops, planes and ships; and stepping up aid in the South Pacific to offset attention from Beijing.

What now for ASEAN amid China-U.S. rivalry?

Thursday, July 26, 2012
By MARK VALENCIA
Special to The Japan Times

The South China Sea disputes were supposed to be and could have been an opportunity for China to diplomatically solve problems and build confidence with its neighbors, as well as a chance for ASEAN to demonstrate its ability to work together on security issues. Both opportunities were lost — as was the hope for stabilization of the region.

KANEOHE, Hawaii — In mid-July, the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations convened its scheduled meetings in Phnom Penh — the ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting (AMM) and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF).

For the first time in its 45-year history, ASEAN failed to agree on even a joint communiqué at the end of the AMM. This did not bode well for a bloc that is trying to create a security community let alone a regional economic community by 2015.

The meetings foundered on South China Sea issues, reflecting deep divisions among ASEAN members. The deal-breaker was Manila's insistence on including a reference to its recent confrontation with China at Scarborough Shoal, and the 2012 ASEAN Chair Cambodia's decision to not issue a statement rather than include such a reference. Vietnam also wanted a statement of "respect for EEZs (exclusive economic zones)" — also unacceptable to Cambodia.

Philippines Foreign Minister Albert Del Rosario said the impasse on the statement was due to "pressure, duplicity and intimidation" by China. But Cambodia insisted it was not influenced by any nation and that it had "taken a position of principle." It argued that the Philippines and Vietnam had tried to turn their disputes with China into a dispute between China and ASEAN as a whole.

Respect our Interests in Asia-Pacific, China Tells US

Beijing, Jul 13 (IANS): The Chinese government hopes the US will respect its interests and concerns along with other nations in the Asia-Pacific region.

According to China Daily, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi expressed these views Thursday when he met US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Cambodia.

The region is where the interests of China and the US are the most intertwined and where the two countries most frequently interact, Yang said.

The minister also said that China and the US should set up a pattern of interaction in the Asia-Pacific that features win-win cooperation.

The Chinese leader and Clinton met on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Cambodia's capital city Phnom Penh.

Clinton Visit Amid Ongoing Improved US Relations

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9DPvniGLh0

Wednesday, 04 July 2012
Men Kimseng, VOA Khmer | Washington, DC

As the rotating chair of Asean this year, Cambodia says forging stronger ties with the US benefits both the region and Cambodia."

The visit of Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong to Washington last month marked a significant moment in improved relations between the US and Cambodia.

Now, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is scheduled to attend an Asean security forum this month, as well.

“We have many issues to discuss that are of importance to our two nations and regional and global interest as well,” Clinton told journalists in Washington recently.

China’s war drums

July 02, 2012
Rafael M. Alunan III
BusinessWorld (The Philippines)

Sooner or later they will collide because as Deng Xiao Ping once said, “There can’t be two tigers [China and the US] on the same hill.”

There is a serious advocacy in China by influential persons, institutions and publications to wage war against the Philippines. China resents our standing up to it in defense of our South China Sea (SCS) claims, which it says it owns, as this emboldens other claimants to follow suit. The tension stems from its “nine-dash line map” that violates the 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zones (EEZ) of claimant countries.

In September 2011, the Communist Party’s newspaper, Global Times, headlined “The Time to Use Force Has Arrived in the South China Sea; Let’s Wage Wars on the Philippines and Vietnam to Prevent More Wars.”

It was a call to arms against Vietnam and Philippines for loudly protesting China’s sweeping maritime sovereignty claims over the SCS. In a follow-up op-ed in the Global Times, Liu Rui, a strategic analyst of the China Energy Fund Committee, echoed Long Tao’s “use of force.”

The State of the World: Assessing China's Strategy

March 6, 2012
By George Friedman
Right Side News (USA)

There is a perception that China is a rising regional and even global power. It may be rising but it is still far from solving its fundamental strategic problems and further yet from challenging the United States. The tensions within China's strategy are certainly debilitating, if not fatal. All of its options have serious weaknesses. China's real strategy must be to avoid having to make risky strategic choices. China has been fortunate for the past 30 years being able to avoid such decisions, but Beijing utterly lacks the tools required to reshape that environment. Considering how much of China's world is in play right now -- Sudanese energy disputes and Myanmar's political experimentation leap to mind -- this is essentially a policy of blind hope.

Simply put, China has three core strategic interests.

Paramount among them is the maintenance of domestic security. Historically, when China involves itself in global trade, as it did in the 19th and early 20th century, the coastal region prospers, while the interior of China -- which begins about 100 miles from the coast and runs about 1,000 miles to the west -- languishes. Roughly 80 percent of all Chinese citizens currently have household incomes lower than the average household income in Bolivia. Most of China's poor are located west of the richer coastal region; this disparity of wealth time and again has exposed tensions between the interests of the coast and those of the interior. After a failed rising in Shanghai in 1927, Mao Zedong exploited these tensions by undertaking the Long March into the interior, raising a peasant army and ultimately conquering the coastal region. He shut China off from the international trading system, leaving China more united and equal, but extremely poor.

The current government has sought a more wealth-friendly means of achieving stability: buying popular loyalty with mass employment. Plans for industrial expansion are implemented with little thought to markets or margins; instead, maximum employment is the driving goal. Private savings are harnessed to finance the industrial effort, leaving little domestic capital to purchase the output. China must export accordingly.

China's second strategic concern derives from the first. China's industrial base by design produces more than its domestic economy can consume, so China must export goods to the rest of the world while importing raw materials. The Chinese therefore must do everything possible to ensure international demand for their exports. This includes a range of activities, from investing money in the economies of consumer countries to establishing unfettered access to global sea-lanes.

Mekong Unquiet Over Contain China Moves

Analysis by Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Jan 31, 2012 (IPS) - Six countries that share the Mekong River are being drawn into a development turf war, exposing initiatives by the United States government and its Asian allies – Japan and South Korea – to contain China’s growing influence in the region.

Unquiet looms up as the Asian Development Bank (AsDB) celebrates the 20th anniversary of its flagship Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) development programme, which, since its launch in 1992 has attracted close to 14 billion dollars in investments.

The Manila-based international financial institution hopes that its new ‘Strategic Framework for 2012-2022’ will broaden the sub-regional benefits under the GMS for Burma (or Myanmar), Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, China’s Yunnan province and the Guangxi autonomous region.

"The Chinese government values the GMS programme. It is another way for the central government to strengthen its multilateral engagement in the region," Yushu Feng, senior economist for regional cooperation at the AsDB, said at a recent media workshop for journalists from the region. "China will be hosting the GMS ministerial meeting this year."

China To Become New Economic Powerhouse in 2016?

Back to the Future by Copying China’s Economic ‘Blueprint’- The only Solution for the West’s Future Socio-economic Existence of any real merit

When China set out in earnest to dominate world trade some 30 years ago, it did not ask its politicians to determine the nation’s economic ‘blueprint’, but its engineers and specifically His Excellency Jian Song, former vice-premier of China for 13-years and an Honorary Member of our Foundation.

This is a little known fact in the West as Song is the true ‘master’ of the basis of China’s economic dynamism today. There were five broad-brush critical phases within this world-leading strategy thought out by Song and his eminent colleagues under his control.

1. Human Capacity Building and Technical Educational Development – low cost/high human value Strategy

2. National Economic Stimulation and Internal Market Development – Mass Internal trade growth and National Savings Strategy

3. Strategy for Global Manufacturing Dominance, Global Minerals Supply and National Innovation Strategy

4. Strategy for the Acquisition of Global Assets

5. Enabling Strategy to Control World Markets

Under Song’s guidance China started the long applied process to dominate world economics over his 13-year tenure as vice-premier.

China paper calls U.S. a "troublemaker" for defence strategy

January 6, 2012

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's state media stepped up its criticism on Saturday of the United States' planned strategic shift into Asia, accusing Washington of being a "troublemaker" responsible for mounting tensions in the region.

The commentary in the overseas edition of the People's Daily echoed the angry comments by the Global Times newspaper on Friday following U.S. President Barack Obama's announcement that Washington will expand its military presence in Asia.

The U.S. defense strategy was flagged late last year and is a clear sign of U.S. commitment to the region. U.S. allies and analysts said, however, that China had nothing to fear from the new policy.

In the commentary, Rear-Admiral Yang Yi wrote "it was clear that the new defense strategy was targeting China and Iran."

US official says military pacts not aimed at China

Thursday, December 08, 2011
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, Associated Press

BEIJING (AP) — The strengthening of U.S. military alliances in Asia is not aimed at containing China, a top Pentagon official said Thursday after annual defense talks that reflected Chinese misgivings about America's regional agenda but also offered the possibility of more robust ties between the two militaries.

China has been concerned by a renewed focus on the Asia Pacific by the U.S. military as it winds down operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, including plans to rotate 2,500 Marines to Australia for training and strengthened military ties with allies Japan and the Philippines as well as former enemy Vietnam.

Defense Undersecretary Michele Flournoy said she told her Chinese counterparts, including Gen. Ma Xiaotian, that the moves were aimed at reassuring countries in the region of the continuing U.S. presence and boosting defense interoperability with Australia.

Australia insists China 'measured' on US Marines

Plan to post up to 2,500 Marines in N.Australia by 2016-17 was unveiled by US President Barack Obama last week (AFP/File, Jim Watson)

Sunday, November 20, 2011
By Amy Coopes (AFP)

SYDNEY — Australia dismissed suggestions that China had been angered by plans for a US troop build-up in Darwin, saying its response had been moderate and talks on the issue were "cordial".

The plan to post up to 2,500 Marines in northern Australia by 2016-17 was unveiled by US President Barack Obama during a visit to Canberra last week and immediately labelled inappropriate by Beijing.

But Prime Minister Julia Gillard met with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Indonesia over the weekend and said they had constructive discussions on the issue.

US, China face off over sea dispute

20 Nov, 2011
Reuters

NUSA DUA: The United States and China faced off on Saturday over the thorny issue of how to resolve competing claims by Asian countries to sovereignty of the South China Sea, the latest point of friction between the two powers.

President Barack Obama told Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who indirectly warned Washington on Friday to stay out of the dispute, that the United States wanted to ensure the sea lanes were kept open and peaceful. Tensions flared earlier this year with often tense maritime stand-offs between claimants, including China, to a sea that carries some $5 trillion a year in world trade. An Australian thinktank warned in June the tensions could spark a conflict that could draw in the United States and other powers.

The two leaders met on the resort island of Bali, Indonesia, on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit, a gathering of 18 countries with diverse political and cultural backgrounds but which seeks to boost political and security cooperation.

Southeast Asia caught between US and China

Benetton billboard of a photo montage with President Barack Obama kissing China's President Hu Jintao

Charles Platiau/Reuters

Friday, November 18, 2011
By Anwar Faruqi (AFP)

NUSA DUA, Indonesia — Indonesia has warned deploying US Marines in Australia could cause regional tensions, highlighting the balancing act nations face as Washington and Beijing jostle for influence in Asia.

China's regional neighbours welcome the United States' diplomatic campaign to assert itself as a Pacific power, and create a counterbalance to the Asian superpower's growing might, but can ill afford to alienate Beijing.

President Barack Obama announced in Canberra on Wednesday that the US would deploy up to 2,500 Marines in the northern city of Darwin, rankling China which termed it "not quite appropriate".

Southeast Asia: U.s. Completing Asian NATO To Confront China

November 6, 2011
By Rick Rozoff
opednews.com

Since the North Atlantic Treaty Organization adopted its first Strategic Concept for the 21st century a year ago this month in Portugal, and in the process all but formalized the bloc as a global military intervention force, discussion has been rife concerning a collective partnership with the 54-nation African Union, a "mini-NATO" in the Persian Gulf and another in the Arctic Ocean and the Baltic Sea, the culmination of the transformation of the Mediterranean into a NATO sea and the effective "NATOization" of the ten-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). [1-5]

The U.S.-dominated military alliance, whose current American ambassador, Ivo Daalder, for years has advocated becoming a full-fledged global NATO (in one instance in an article with that precise title), expanded from 16 to 28 full members in the decade beginning in 1999 and has over forty partners in four continents outside the Euro-Atlantic zone under the auspices of programs like the Partnership for Peace in Europe and Asia, the Mediterranean Dialogue in Africa and the Middle East, the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative in the Persian Gulf, the Contact Country format in the Asia-Pacific region (Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea), Annual National Programs with Georgia and Ukraine, the Afghanistan-Pakistan-International Security Assistance Force Tripartite Commission, the NATO-Russia Council, the NATO Training Mission-Iraq and NATO-Training Mission -- Afghanistan (with a Libyan version to follow), a bilateral agreement with the Transitional

Federal Government in Somalia where NATO has airlifted thousands of Ugandan and Burundian troops for the war there and other arrangements.

China's overreach is discomforting

Aug. 10, 2011
A. Gaffar Peang-Meth
PACIFIC DAILY NEWS

China's activities in Cambodia appear to impede Cambodian democrats' struggle against autocracy.

China's rising power is a fact, but the "Chinese Century" is still a matter open for debate. An examination of Chinese courses of action should tell us of China's foreign policy goals and national interests as defined by her leaders.

Interestingly, whereas American Thomas Jefferson's self-evident truths -- that "all men are created equal ... with certain unalienable rights" -- are ideals envied by the world's peoples, many of whom hope to see them emulated in their own nations, the billions of U.S. dollars spent and the thousands of U.S. soldiers lost have not made Americans popular in Afghanistan or Iraq.

However, Chinese businessmen and engineers are doing well in business there, and Chinese oil companies have acquired bigger stakes in the oil industry in those countries than have U.S. companies.

Headlines about China's rising influence and quiet power grab, and of Asian countries facing an increasingly intimidating China are numerous: China's navy is second only to the U.S.; China in dispute with neighboring Southeast Asian nations over the Spratlys; China seeking domination over the South China Sea.

U.S. Anxiety Over Rising China Aired in Cambodia WikiLeaks

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, left, waves next to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen after the two countries signed agreements in Phnom Penh in April 2006 (Tang Chhin Sothy / AFP / Getty Images)

Thursday, Jul. 21, 2011
By Douglas Gillison / Phnom Penh
Time Magazine (USA)

For the world's small cadre of Cambodia scholars and journalists, the WikiLeaks disclosures offered rare dish. As they had in other countries, American diplomats had privately recorded downright catty descriptions of public figures, describing the foreign minister as "sclerotic" and labeling the businessman Kith Meng, a ranking member of the Khmer oligarchy, as a "ruthless gangster," while saying Beijing's relations with King Father Norodom Sihanouk, the father Cambodian independence, were "more or less the 'property of China' and will revert to the PRC upon Sihanouk's death," just like the residence China's leaders had built for the former King in Beijing.

Like a roving picaresque novel, the WikiLeaks diplomatic cables have been released since November in chapters, focusing on specific countries and distinct themes. When the anti-secrecy organization turned its focus to Cambodia last week — dumping nearly 800 missives from the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh online in 24 hours — the public was at last treated to a candid record of U.S. efforts to grapple with the rising influence of China here — and by extension in Southeast Asia as a whole.

When the Obama Administration took office in 2008, it was keen not to present itself as China's direct strategic adversary. Instead, officials said they were reviving American diplomacy in Asia while maintaining an aversion to "competition and rivalry" which could thwart cooperation with Beijing thirty years after it normalized relations with the U.S. But if it isn't competition and rivalry on display in the cables disclosed last week, it is something very near to it. Though the picture offered by the WikiLeaks archive is incomplete, with the bulk of material generated since 2006, the dispatches show a growing anxiety among U.S. officials about the inroads that Beijing is making in Cambodia. (Watch a video of WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange on China.)

US-China ties all at sea

Wednesday, 20 July 2011
Michael Martina and Raju Gopalakrishnan
The Phnom Penh Post

Relations between the United States and China could hit another rough patch this week at Asia’s biggest security forum, where some participants will seek US help to thwart what they see as Beijing’s expansionism in the South China Sea.

US-China ties are already being tested. Beijing has reacted angrily to President Barack Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama at the weekend, calling it a violat-ion of its internal affairs, but stopped short of threatening retaliation.

That row comes only days before US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton heads to the Indonesian resort island of Bali for the annual Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum. The meeting will focus on disputed atolls and islands in the oil-rich South China Sea, and China’s perceived muscle-flexing there.

US navy ships visit Vietnam amid heightened China tensions

Cartoon by Sacrava (on the web at http://sacrava.blogspot.com)

Vietnam's Colonel Nguyen Van Lam greets U.S. Rear Adm. Tom Carney, right, in a welcoming ceremony at Tien Sa port, in Vietnam, on Friday. (Photo: Reuters)

Beijing criticizes port call as Washington strengthens ties with its neighbors

7/15/2011
The Associated Press

DANANG, Vietnam — Three U.S. Navy ships were welcomed Friday by former foe Vietnam for joint training, despite China's irritation following weeks of fiery exchanges between the communist neighbors over disputed areas of the South China Sea.

U.S. and Vietnamese officials have stressed that the seven-day ship visit and naval training are part of routine exchanges planned long before tensions began flaring between China and Vietnam in late May. China has criticized the port call as inappropriate, saying it should have been rescheduled due to the ongoing squabble.

The U.S. visit, however, did send a message that the Navy remains a formidable maritime force in the region and is determined to build stronger military ties with smaller Southeast Asian countries.

"We've had a presence in the Western Pacific and the South China Sea for 50 to 60 years, even going back before World War II," Rear Adm. Tom Carney, who's leading the naval exchange, told reporters. "We will maintain a presence in the Western Pacific and the South China Sea as we have for decades, and we have no intention of departing from that kind of activity."

China, US balancing​​ act

Thursday, 14 July 2011
Thomas Miller
The Phnom Penh Post

During her first meeting with Prime Minister Hun Sen in January, 2009, after becoming the US ambassador to Cambodia, Carol Rodley recounted the premier “gushingly stating that he spends more of his time with the American ambassador than with any other members of the diplomatic community”.

But just weeks earlier, Rodley signed off on a confidential diplomatic cable that labelled 2008 Cambodia’s “Year of China”, which she said “looks to become its ‘Century of China’”.

Cables from the US embassy in Phnom Penh made public on Tuesday by anti-secrecy organisation WikiLeaks provide an inside view into US concerns that China’s growing influence in the Kingdom would fuel corruption, inhibit progress on human rights and challenge the ability of other donors to sway the government on difficult issues. “China has spared no effort this year in celebrating the 50th anniversary of bilateral relations with Cambodia,” Rodley wrote in the cable. “The list of Chinese visitors is so long that the Chinese embassy’s political and economic officers have complained to [embassy officials] that they never get any rest."

Cambodia's Bumpy Development Road: Implications for US Interests

March 15, 2011
ANALYSIS
By Donald Jameson
Asia Pacific Bulletin Number 100
East-West Center

Donald Jameson, a former US diplomat who served in Phnom Penh, discusses Cambodia's current economic development that "has attracted the interest of international investors who see Cambodia as a potential new 'Asian Tiger.'"

When US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Cambodia in late 2010, she told senior Cambodian government officials "this does not look like the country I have been reading about in the press." Most first-time visitors to Phnom Penh would likely react similarly. The city hosts a vibrant society, with traffic-clogged streets, a proliferation of stylish restaurants and boutiques, and buildings under construction everywhere, many of them high-rise apartments and office blocks. If the visitor were to venture outside the capital, large-scale investment in infrastructure, especially roads and bridges, with construction underway on additional projects are what greet the eye. In addition, there are extensive land clearing projects underway for new plantations to grow rubber, palm oil, cashews and other tropical products, as well as new industrial sites springing up along main transportation arteries. In short, Cambodia is clearly a country on the move economically.

Having prepared for the visit by reading recent media coverage of Cambodia, much of it carrying headlines such as "The Beleaguered Cambodians," "Cambodia's Curse," and "Country for Sale," the majority of people would probably find themselves, like Mrs. Clinton, a bit confused. Many media reports revolve around how Cambodia is plagued by rampant corruption benefiting a wealthy ruling oligarchy and their crony capitalist friends, while much of the population lives in abject poverty. There is also much coverage about widespread human rights abuses, including the confiscation of land from small landholders for investment projects, often without adequate compensation. As a result, visitors are led to anticipate a culture of impunity that protects the rich and powerful while victimizing the poor and powerless. In addition, they would expect to hear about strict limits on freedom of expression and assembly, as well as frequent intimidation of politicians, journalists, labor leaders, human rights advocates and other critics of Prime Minister Hun Sen and his ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP).