Police fend off Chinese officials at summit
Police had to stop Chinese officials trying to change the wording of a joint leaders’ statement as an annual trade summit ended in an row between Beijing and the US and its allies.
The Chinese delegation had barged into the office of the host’s foreign minister demanding changes to the summit statement.
It was later abandoned – the first time in the 30-year history of the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) that no communique has been issued.
The collapse of the summit, staged in impoverished Papua New Guinea at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, much of it covered by China, followed duelling speeches from China’s President Xi Jinping and Mike Pence, the US vice president. They had clashed over security, trade and development.
‘‘History has shown that confron- tation, whether in the form of a cold war, hot war or trade war, will produce no winners,’’ Xi had told the leaders of 21 countries.
‘‘Attempts to erect barriers and cut close economic ties work against the laws of economics and the trends of history. This is a short-sighted approach and it is doomed to failure. We should say no to protectionism and unilateralism.’’
Pence responded that China had imposed subsidies, tariffs and quotas to protect its industries while forcing foreign companies to transfer their technology and had stolen intellectual property.
He said the US was determined to end such practices and he threatened another round of US tariffs.
Australia, the key US ally in the region, is worried about China’s economic leverage over Pacific Island nations in what Canberra has long regarded as its strategic sphere of influence.
Tensions grew when the US said it would join forces with Australia to rebuild and expand Lombrum, a huge naval base the US operated during World War II off Papua New Guinea. It follows concerns that China is moving to establish a permanent military presence in the Pacific state of Vanuatu. It has already fortified disputed areas in the South China Sea.
‘‘We’ve put tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese goods and we could more than double that number. But we hope for better. The United States will not change course until China changes its ways,’’ Pence said.
Attempts by officials and leaders to reach a consensus for the communique then boiled over. Four Chinese officials barged into the office of Papua New Guinea’s foreign minister, Rimbink Pato, after he refused to meet them.
The Chinese officials were shouting and only left after police threatened to arrest them. They were said to be angry that the US insisted that the statement say that China could no longer be treated as a developing nation, curbing its trade concessions under World Trade Organisation terms. China refused to agree to a more level playing field.
Pence did not detail how much the US would spend on the naval base but he made clear it was intended to counter China’s rise in the Pacific where it has offered huge amounts of aid and soft loans to tiny states, which critics have called economic colonialism. ‘‘We will work to protect the sovereignty and maritime rights of the Pacific Islands,’’ he said. – The Times