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PRC’s actions belie Xi’s friendliness pledge

FORUM Staff

Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s recent vow to avoid “hegemonism and power politics” in Southeast Asia faces a skeptical audience among neighbors, who say China’s continued bullying makes the promise ring hollow.

Xi, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, delivered a virtual speech in late November 2021 to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in which he rebuked the idea of larger countries taking advantage of the less powerful.

“China resolutely opposes hegemonism and power politics, wishes to maintain friendly relations with its neighbors and jointly nurture lasting peace in the region, and absolutely will not seek hegemony or even less, bully the small,” Xi said, according to Newsweek. (Pictured: Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping delivers a speech at the 17th China-Association of Southeast Asian Nations Expo.)

Less than a week before, Chinese coast guard ships fired water cannons to force back Philippine supply boats trying to reach a grounded Philippine warship on a disputed shoal in the South China Sea. Philippine National Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said the Ayungin Shoal lies within the nation’s exclusive economic zone and that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has no legal right to request the warship’s removal, The Associated Press (AP) reported.

“We can do whatever we want there, and it is they who are actually trespassing,” Lorenzana said, according to the AP.

The ship has been grounded since 1999 and is used by the Philippine military as an outpost. Chinese coast guard ships have surrounded the shoal and at times have tried to block supply boats.

Following the November 16, 2021, clash involving water cannons, the United States said it would view any armed attack on Philippine public vessels in the South China Sea as triggering the mutual defense commitments of a 1951 treaty between the allies, the AP reported.

The attack also drew a rebuke from Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. “We abhor the recent event in the Ayungin Shoal,” he said, according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper. “This does not speak well of the relations between our nations and our partnership.”

Xi’s pledges of harmony might also surprise some in India, where Soldiers are locked in a standoff with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) along the nations’ de facto boundary in eastern Ladakh.

The PLA deployed troops to the area more than a year ago, eventually triggering a clash on June 15, 2020, in which 20 Indian and four PLA soldiers were killed. The Galwan Valley conflict was the worst violence between the countries since 1967, according to The Hindu newspaper.

India’s former foreign secretary and ambassador to China, Nirupama Rao, told The Hindu that de-escalating territorial tensions is more difficult now than in past skirmishes with the PLA. “Today, we are dealing with a much more assertive, much more militarily powerful China, and a very, very hyper nationalistic China,” Rao told the newspaper.

Also on the receiving end of Chinese aggression is neighboring Taiwan. China’s air force has flown repeated missions near the self-ruled island, which Beijing claims as its own.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said December 4, 2021, that PLA military activity near Taiwan resembled preparation for a military operation. “I don’t want to speculate, but certainly … it looks a lot like rehearsals,” Austin said, according to Reuters.

 

IMAGE CREDIT: AFP/GETTY IMAGES

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