‘Progress on Sea deal’

China wary about THAAD

MANILA, April 4, (RTRS): China and Southeast Asian countries have made progress in talks on a code of conduct for the disputed South China Sea, the Philippine acting foreign minister said on Tuesday.

China claims almost the entire waterway, through which about $5 trillion in sea-borne goods pass every year. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims.

“We have made good progress on coming up with a framework for a code on conduct with China,” Philippine Acting Foreign Minister Enrique Manalo said, adding the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China were more than halfway through identifying the contents.

“From a scale of 1-10, we are at the upper level. Remember, we were starting from zero in January. There have been a number of elements agreed and we would definitely have a framework on which to embark a serious negotiation on a code of conduct.”

Negotiators from China and ASEAN have met in Indonesia and Cambodia in the last two months to try to come up with a final draft, which could be approved ahead of the August meeting by Southeast Asian foreign ministers in Manila.

Manalo also said Manila would hold talks with Beijing next month to tackle “issues of concern regarding the South China Sea”, including China’s militarisation of several manmade islands in the Spratly Islands.

The bilateral mechanism is one of two dialogues held by China with claimant states. The other is with Vietnam.

The United States, the Philippines and Vietnam have protested against China’s militarisation of the Spratlys.

US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to discuss Chinese ambitions in the South China Sea when they meet on Thursday and Friday at Trump’s Mar-aLago resort in Florida.

China is steadfastly opposed to the deployment of advanced US antimissile radars in South Korea because it does not know whether the defences, intended for North Korean missiles, are capable of tracking and countering Beijing’s own nuclear program, experts say.

Beijing’s resistance to the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) anti-missile system put up south of Seoul has become a major thorn in bilateral ties with the United States and is bound to be discussed at this week’s summit meeting between President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump.

While the United States says THAAD is needed to protect Seoul from the threat posed by North Korea’s growing nuclear and missile programs, some Chinese strategists believe it is also a threat to the viability of China’s nuclear deterrent.

“It is clear that there is no one in China who really knows the technical capability of THAAD and that’s part of the problem,” said Zhang Baohui, a Hong Kong-based mainland expert on China’s nuclear deterrent.

“THAAD’s full capabilities are secret so there is a real knowledge gap among Chinese strategists. If they are misplaced, they are at least genuine in their concern - they have to assume a worst case scenario.”

Officially, China says it objects to THAAD because it will destabilise the regional security balance.

Chinese officials have also expressed concern about the reported 2,000 km (1,200 mile) range of THAAD’s powerful X-band radars, which can look deep into the mainland, rather than the system’s shorter range interceptor missiles that can target North Korea’s missiles.

Besides casting a shadow over USChina ties, THAAD has also ruptured the relationship between Seoul and Beijing.

Chinese authorities have closed dozens of Lotte retail stores on the mainland after the South Korean conglomerate agreed to provide land for the missile defence system.

There has been a sharp decline in Chinese tourists going to South Korea, while South Korean singers and actors have been blocked in various ways from reaching a mainland Chinese audience, and dozens of Koreanfocused blogs suspended in China.

THAAD, never tested in a conflict and whose effectiveness is still questioned by some Western experts, is designed to intercept and destroy ballistic missiles late in flight, either just inside or outside the earth’s atmosphere.