South China Sea spat fresh threat to Sino-US ties

[mike r]

Source: Reuters

(Reuters) - China's angry response to a U.S.-led confrontation over the disputed South China Sea raises the specter of a fresh rift between Beijing and Washington just as wounds from a combative start to the year are healing. China was furious after it was ambushed at Asia's top security forum by a discussion of sensitive territorial claims in the South China Sea, an area rich in energy and key for shipping.

Beijing had kept the South China Sea off the agenda of the ASEAN Regional Forum for a decade and a half. But last week in a meeting in Hanoi, 12 of the 27 members -- including some with no direct stake in the territorial disputes -- raised maritime issues. An angry summary of the meeting was posted on the Foreign Ministry's website on Sunday, eschewing usually opaque diplomatic language to accuse U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of a barely disguised assault on Chinese interests. The statement was repeated the next day in English, ensuring maximum overseas readership for the broadside, and angry editorials in state-run media have also followed. Experts say the fury is not just for show, and threatens already tense ties...

Clinton's speech marked the public demise of Washington's old hands-off approach to the South China Sea, though it was foreshadowed in speeches by the U.S. military officials and diplomats who have long feared U.S. strategic interests in the area were being eroded. China has decades-old disputes with Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Vietnam over boundaries in the South China Sea, an area key for shipping and possibly rich in oil and gas. Beijing has for years insisted on handling the disputes -- which are serious enough to have sparked sometimes deadly naval clashes -- on a one-on-one basis rather than multilaterally, a strategy some have described as "divide and conquer"... "Some of (the Southeast Asian claimants) mention that the Chinese have gotten much tougher on them in recent months on the issue," said David Shambaugh, director of the China Policy Program at George Washington University. "I was told by a high-level Singaporean official in May that China has warned them all not to discuss the disputed island even among each other," he added...

The multilateral discussion of the South China Sea was seen first and foremost as a victory for hard-lobbying Vietnamese diplomats, who are more interested in looking for allies than Asian solidarity. They often complain of Chinese harassment of Vietnamese fishermen in disputed waters and recently put in an order for six submarines...


Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE66Q2GW20100727

[Joe Chi Minh]

1. Interesting topic we don't read much about..

[lib2DaBone]

2. Wasn't this how we got into Viet Nam?

Chevron Oil wanted to do (or did do) oil well soundings in the search for oil in the South China Sea.

China was not happy with that.. so the boys in Washington decided to cook up the Gulf of Tonkin Incident in 1964 and give us a reason to be in Vietnam, and continue to expore for oil in the South China Sea.

Among other reasons for VietNam.. I remember reading some opinions to this effect...

So what is it this time? Exxon-Mobil or BP want to go back into those Oil wells? How did our oil get under their seas? Here we go again....