Beijing snubs USA on South China sea row

The annual Apec gathering is meant to forge unity on trade issues among 21 Pacific Rim economies of 3 billion people.

Both countries also warned that they will go against any unilateral actions that can affect the status quo in the South China Sea.

President Barack Obama, who earlier in the week repeated U.S. calls for China to stop the land reclamation, announced Sunday he would host the ASEAN leaders at a meeting in the United States next year.

Washington is deliberately exploiting the issue to drive a wedge between Beijing and its South East Asian neighbors.

Obama has committed to boosting economic growth and improving human rights.

However, just as Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has put it in his five-pronged proposal to uphold and promote peace and stability in the South China Sea region, countries from outside the region should play a positive and constructive role and refrain from taking actions that may cause tension in the region.

The Chinese premier, meanwhile, pointed to the intervention of a few countries outside the region, stating that the issue is in nobody’s interest.

The Kuala Lumpur diplomatic and political meetings follow a trade-related forum in Manila earlier in the week that included numerous same leaders. In September, the P-8 Poseidon, an American surveillance and submarine hunting aircraft, was rebuffed by the Chinese navy when it neared a Chinese-occupied island in the South China Sea. But it can not attack China, a fellow United Nations veto member, enjoying equal rights. Japan, in cooperation with the United States, must support the development of ASEAN as a whole.

The Philippines, China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have overlapping claims in the South China Sea.

“More recently, a PLAN frigate with Bow No. 571 allegedly accosted and challenged another survey ship conducting studies on a contract we awarded, about 30 to 40 nautical miles from Palawan”. But Beijing has rapidly reclaimed land and expanded the islets to build airports, runways and other constructions.

Japan backed the United States to the hilt.

The summit groups the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and its dialogue partners – the USA, Russia, China, India, South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Tokyo is already providing patrol vessels to the Philippines and Vietnam.

This weekend Japan’s foreign and defense ministers reiterated concerns about China’s strengthening position in the South China Sea as they pressed the case, according to Bloomberg, for their Australian counterparts to buy a new generation of submarines made by Japanese defense contractors.

Whether China would behave as a responsible power in the simmering standoff over maritime territory, is the question in this context.

Later on Saturday, while delivering his statement during the ASEAN-China Summit, Jokowi underlined several important factors that may help bolster relations between ASEAN and China, including by stopping all activities that might increase tensions in the South China Sea and respecting the existing worldwide legal framework.

Obama commented after a one-on-one meeting Sunday with Singapore’s Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong (lee shyehn loong), in Malaysia during a summit of Asian nations.

Resentment over Japan’s aggression during World War Two still runs deep in China.

Now an increasingly serious menace to South China Sea stability is interference from the outside. Many fear that China is attempting to bulk up its claims with building projects and is willing to back up those claims with military force.