The Washington-led ambush of China over the disputed South China Sea at the region's top security forum on Friday marks a landmark shift in Sino-US ties and exposes deepening strategic fault lines in Asia.
Even as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton figuratively waded into the South China Sea in Hanoi, US and South Korean naval vessels prepared to stage large-scale exercises in the Sea of Japan, or East Sea, close to China's northeast - adding to the tensions of the new landscape.
HANOI, Vietnam -- The Obama administration on Friday waded into thorny territorial disputes over islands in the South China Sea declaring their resolution to be a U.S. "national interest" in a move likely to irritate China.
At a regional security forum in Vietnam, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Washington was concerned that conflicting claims on the Spratly and Paracel island chains interfere with maritime commerce, hamper access to international waters in the area and undermine the U.N. law of the sea.
What happened to China's much vaunted "soft power" and "good neighborly" diplomacy about which we have heard so much in recent years? China's supposed "soft power," always overstated, has passed from the scene in short order.
Over the past few months, the Chinese have not-so-softly declined to invite Secretary of Defense Gates to visit Beijing; called the South China Sea a "core interest" (akin to claiming that the sea is China's territorial water); threatened to retaliate if the United States proceeds with the sale of additional F-16s to Taiwan; and refused to so much as condemn the North Koreans for killing 46 South Koreans sailors in cold blood.
22 July 2010
10:50
The Wall Street Journal (Online and Print)
WSJO
World News
English
Copyright 2010 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
HANOI—Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hailed the advancement of U.S.-Vietnam relations as a model for reconciliation among former wartime foes during her first visit to Hanoi as Washington's chief diplomat.
But the former First Lady was blunt Thursday in pressing the Southeast Asian country to improve its respect for human rights amid signs its communist leaders are intensifying a crackdown on democracy advocates, Internet bloggers and religious leaders.
In a famous maxim, China's late leader Deng Xiaoping urged his countrymen to "hide your brightness, bide your time". That was more than 20 years ago. It now seems China's leaders have finished biding their time.
In an assertive redefinition of its place in the world, China has put the South China Sea into its "core national interest" category of non-negotiable territorial claims - in the same league as Taiwan and Tibet. China has drawn a red line down the map of Asia and defies anyone to cross it.
On October 8, 2009, a woman from Hanoi named Tran Khai Thanh Thuy was on her way to Hai Phong, a city on Vietnam’s coast, to witness the trial of six pro-democracy activists. But she would never reach the courthouse. Instead, she was met by a police roadblock and ordered to return to her house until further notice. That night, two intruders entered her home and beat her with bricks in front of her husband and daughter, as police officers looked on from outside. The police then arrested Tran Khai Thanh Thuy and charged her with assault.
Tran Khai Thanh Thuy’s trial took place in February of this year and lasted one day. A key piece of prosecution evidence was a photo of one supposed victim with a bandaged head, which Vietnamese bloggers later showed had been crudely altered. “It’s a fabrication and total slander,” Tran Khai Thanh Thuy said of the charges. “I protest this trial, and I did not come here to suffer this.” The court sentenced her to three and a half years in prison, but she did not hear the verdict because the judge had thrown her out of court for talking out of turn. Human Rights Watch issued a statement calling the trial “Kafkaesque.”
Exposing a growing rift in Vietnam’s one-party regime, the communist-controlled National Assembly has rejected the government's US$56 billion plan to develop a high speed north-south railway. The project, set to cost 60% of gross domestic product (GDP) and based on Japan's cutting-edge Shinkansen technology, would have cut overland travel time from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City (1,760 kilometers) from about two days to around six hours.
The government has recently initiated several mega-projects, but this one was surprisingly voted down by the assembly by a 178-157 vote on June 19. The unprecedented result does not mean that Vietnam's legislature, traditionally a rubber stamp for Communist Party decisions, is evolving into an independent branch of government.
Hanoi - An employee at Ho Chi Minh City's international airport and his partner have been charged with smuggling millions of dollars of consumer electronics and cash into Vietnam over eight years, an official said Tuesday.
Nguyen Duc Vu, 35, a staff member at the Tan Son Nhat Airport Operations Control Centre, and Nguyen Minh Hoang, 47, are accused of receiving smuggled goods and cash from Vietnam Airlines staff, airline spokesman Le Hoang Dung said.The two men were arrested June 16 after Australian police detained and questioned the crew of an outbound Vietnam Airlines flight in Sydney.
HANOI — Blogger Nguyen Hue Chi is locked in an electronic game of cat and mouse with a mystery cyberattacker -- widely believed to be the government.
Chi and his colleagues have set up a series of websites and blogs questioning government policy in the past year, only to see them attacked and blocked.
A medical aid group says if G8 leaders want to improve mother and child health, they must first solve the malnutrition problem.
Doctors Without Borders, also known as MSF, is calling for “fundamental changes” in addressing malnutrition, as well as “new sustainable funding resources.” The group says malnutrition affects 195 million people worldwide – most in sub-Saharan Africa - and is the “underlying cause of at least one-third of the 8 million annual deaths of children under age 5.”
Washington, D.C. – Today, Freedom Now released Opinion No. 12/2010 from the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. The judgment from this international tribunal unequivocally reestablishes that the ongoing detention of Burmese democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is illegal and in violation of international law.
When huge protests broke out in Iran over last year's rigged reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, U.S. President Barack Obama had some cool, calm answers. The brutality of Iran's regime he saw as a domestic matter, in which he preferred not to meddle. To the bloodied protesters he offered his assurance that America, as part of the "international community," was "bearing witness." Quoting Martin Luther King, he further assured them of his belief that the long arc of the moral universe "bends toward justice."
Around the June 4 anniversary this year, I visited several Western European countries. I noticed that both the Chinese and non-Chinese there have not reduced their interest in democracy in China. It really was not as bad as some people have predicted. Many friends said that it is partially because the ongoing situation in China has lit the fire of hope again. Indeed, the development inside China could be far from the expectations of many. The recent rising of the tide of workers' movements in China is one of the examples that people have been waiting for years, yet were gradually losing their confidence in.
The distance between the president and the people is beginning to be revealed.
By DOROTHY RABINOWITZbiendong
The deepening notes of disenchantment with Barack Obama now issuing from commentators across the political spectrum were predictable. So, too, were the charges from some of the president's earliest enthusiasts about his failure to reflect a powerful sense of urgency about the oil spill.
There should have been nothing puzzling about his response to anyone who has paid even modest critical attention to Mr. Obama's pronouncements. For it was clear from the first that this president—single-minded, ever-visible, confident in his program for a reformed America saved from darkness by his arrival—was wanting in certain qualities citizens have until now taken for granted in their presidents. Namely, a tone and presence that said: This is the Americans' leader, a man of them, for them, the nation's voice and champion. Mr. Obama wasn't lacking in concern about the oil spill. What he lacked was that voice—and for good reason.
Irked by arms sales to Taiwan; general complains of being treated like 'enemy'
By Al Santoli, SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
8:11 p.m., Thursday, June 10, 2010
The Pentagon's military-exchange program with China for 2010 was canceled earlier this year because of Beijing's anger at arms sales to Taiwan, and military ties remain in deep freeze after the unusually combative exchange in Singapore last week between a Chinese general and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.
In remarks to a security conference June 4, Mr. Gates defended U.S. arms sales to Taiwan as legal under U.S. law and carried out carefully by successive administrations.
By John Pomfret
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 8, 2010; A10
BEIJING
On May 24 in a vast meeting room inside the grounds of the state guesthouse at Diaoyutai in Beijing, Rear Adm. Guan Youfei of the People's Liberation Army rose to speak.
Known among U.S. officials as a senior "barbarian handler," which means that his job is to deal with foreigners, not lead troops, Guan faced about 65 American officials, part of the biggest delegation the U.S. government has ever sent to China.
June 6, 2010
After Suicides, Scrutiny of China’s Grim Factories
By DAVID BARBOZA
SHENZHEN, China
The body of a 19-year-old worker named Ma Xiangqian was found in front of his high-rise dormitory at 4:30 a.m. Police investigators concluded that he had leapt from a high floor, and they ruled it a suicide.
His family, including his 22-year-old sister who worked at the same company, Foxconn Technology, said he hated the job he had held only since November — an 11-hour overnight shift, seven nights a week, forging plastic and metal into electronics parts amid fumes and dust. Or at least that was Mr. Ma’s job until, after a run-in with his supervisor, he was demoted in December to cleaning toilets.
THE Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions is considering whether federal police have sufficient evidence to lay criminal charges against executives of two Reserve Bank of Australia subsidiaries for bribery.
The revelation that the DPP has been asked to review aspects of the case - involving the RBA banknote companies Securency and Note Printing Australia - is the strongest indication yet that the probe could lead to Australia's first-ever prosecution for bribery of an overseas official.
Office of the Prime Minister
Royal Thai Government
Pitsanolok Road
Dusit, Bangkok
Thailand
Via facsimile: +662 629 8213
Dear Prime Minister Abhisit:
The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns recent violence against journalists in Thailand, including the shooting deaths of two foreign reporters killed while covering news events. We call on your government to launch independent probes into recent attacks and bring the perpetrators to justice.
The Diplomat
Choppy Sino-Viet Ties Waters
By Jason Miks
June 7, 2010
Image credit:Maurice Koop
As well as his combativeness over Taiwan and Beijing's refusal to extend an invitation to him during his trip to Asia, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates also broached the subject of disputes in the South China Sea during the just-concluded Shangri-la Dialogue.
Home > RFD News
