US pledges Japan support over islands
CHINA reacted with strong displeasure on Saturday to a promise by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis that the United States would defend two uninhabited islands in the East China Sea that Japan controls but China also claims as its own.
Mattis, the first member of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet to visit East Asia, had told Japanese officials earlier Saturday that US defence obligations to Japan extended to the disputed rocky outposts, known in China as the Diaoyu and in Japan as the Senkaku.
The chief spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, Lu Kang, accused Mattis of putting regional stability at risk and urged him to forgo what he called a Cold War mentality.
“We urge the US side to take a responsible attitude, stop making wrong remarks on the issue involving the Diaoyu islands’ sovereignty, and avoid making the issue more complicated and bringing instability to the regional situation,” Lu said in a statement posted on the ministry’s website.
He described the 1960 defense treaty between the United States and Japan, which Mattis cited in pledging to defend the islands, as a “product of the Cold War, which should not impair China’s territorial sovereignty and legitimate rights”.
Mattis was not staking out a new position; while in office, President Barack Obama said the United States would defend the islands.
But the defence secretary’s words were reassuring to Japanese officials, who had been unnerved by Trump’s remarks as a presidential candidate suggesting that he might reduce US military commitments to its Asian allies.
The disputed islands have been among a number of potential points of contention as China builds up its presence in the East and South China seas.
Chinese and Japanese vessels regularly manoeuvre at close quarters in the waters as China tries to challenge Japan’s control of the islands.
Last year, China sent a warship to within 38 kilometres of the islands. President Xi Jinping of China declared much of the East China Sea to be a Chinese air defence zone in 2013, and since then China has regularly sent fighter jets to patrol the area.
At a news conference in Tokyo, Mattis cited Article 5 of the US-Japan treaty, which commits the United States to defend Japan or territories that it administers against attack.
“I made clear that our longstanding policy on the Senkaku Islands stands – the US will continue to recognise Japanese administration of the islands,” Mattis said. “And as such, Article 5 of the US-Japan security treaty applies.”
Before going to Japan, Mattis went to South Korea to offer assurances to that ally about defense commitments, and China’s reaction was similar.
Lu struck a strident tone on Friday in expressing China’s opposition to US plans to deploy a missile defence system in South Korea, one that Mattis said was intended to protect the country from North Korea’s nuclear threat.
“We firmly oppose” the deployment, Lu said at a regular news briefing. “This will not change and has not changed.” The system, which China says is a US attempt to interfere with China’s nuclear deterrent, “will undermine the strategic balance”, he said.
China has threatened South Korea with economic consequences if it agrees to the deployment of the system, known as THAAD, which stands for Terminal High Altitude Area Defense.
With the South Korean government in disarray and a presidential election coming there, the Chinese government has been wooing the opposition Minjoo Party, which opposes the THAAD deployment.
Officials of that left-leaning party have visited Beijing twice in recent months, offering reassurances that they oppose the system.
While Mattis was in Tokyo on Friday, China’s top foreign policy official, Yang Jiechi, spoke by telephone with Trump’s national security adviser, Michael T Flynn, the Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.
The conversation, which the ministry said was initiated by the White House, appeared to be a preparatory step for a call between Xi and Trump.
The ministry’s account of the conversation was upbeat. Flynn said the United States was committed to “developing strong and powerful US-China relations” and “properly managing the sensitive issues”, the ministry said. For his part, Yang emphasised the two countries’ “broad common interests and great cooperation potential”, according to the ministry.
Trump criticised China on a variety of fronts during the presidential transition, but the White House has had little to say about the country during the president’s first two weeks in office.
And although Trump has held phone conversations from the Oval Office, several of them stormy, with a variety of world leaders, Xi has not been among them. There has been speculation among diplomats in Beijing and among US business groups in Washington that the two leaders would talk by phone in the coming days.
Yang and Flynn last spoke in New York, a month after the presidential election, and from Yang’s point of view the meeting was not helpful.
Just two days later, Trump astounded the Chinese government by asserting the One China policy, under which the United States recognises the government of Beijing and not Taiwan, was far from sacrosanct.
“I don’t know why we have to be bound by a One China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade,” Trump said on Fox News.
Although there was no indication that Trump was reacting to anything Yang had said to Flynn, the episode was embarrassing for the Chinese official so soon after their meeting.
Earlier in December, Trump upended decades of US diplomatic practice by speaking with Taiwan’s president by telephone. The Chinese have since stressed on several occasions that the One China policy is not negotiable.