Kerry Expected to Bring Up China’s Sea Claims During Visit

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/16/world/asia/kerry-china-south-sea-dispute.html

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BEIJING — Secretary of State John Kerry arrived here on Saturday amid rising tensions over China’s expansion of shoals and islets in areas of the South China Sea claimed by at least three countries.

A senior Pentagon official said this week that the United States might consider sending ships and aircraft to within 12 nautical miles of built-up reefs near the Philippines, an American ally, to demonstrate its commitment to freedom of navigation in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.

“We are actively assessing the military implications of land reclamation and are committed to taking effective and appropriate action,” David Shear, an assistant secretary of defense, said at a Senate hearing on Tuesday.

State Department officials said Mr. Kerry arrived in Beijing with a similarly tough message: China’s intensified island-building campaign threatens relations as both countries are seeking to cooperate on several issues, including military ties, bilateral investment and climate change.

In a background briefing on Wednesday, a senior State Department official said Mr. Kerry would leave Chinese leaders with “absolutely no doubt” where the United States stood on the issue of China’s territorial claims.

“He is going to reinforce to them the very negative consequences on China’s image, on China’s relationship with its neighbors, on regional stability, and potentially on the U.S.-China relationship,” the official said.

Beijing, under President Xi Jinping’s more muscular approach to diplomacy, has shown no signs of backing down. Cui Tiankai, China’s ambassador to the United States, accused Washington of unnecessarily stirring up trouble.

“Just who is creating tensions in the South China Sea?” the state-run Xinhua news agency quoted Mr. Cui as saying on Wednesday. “In the past few years, the U.S. has intervened in such a high-profile way. Does it stabilize the situation or further mess it up? The facts are out there.”

Global Times, a reliably nationalist newspaper in China, suggested that China would match any American show of force in the Spratlys, the island chain off the Philippines that has been the focus of frenetic dredging work by China in recent months.

“If U.S. warplanes fly over China’s islands, and if its warships enter the waters 12 nautical miles from China’s islands, then we believe the Chinese military would prove that America’s pirate-style actions picked the wrong place and wrong people,” the newspaper said in an editorial on Friday.

The rancor over the South China Sea is mounting at a difficult time for United States-China relations, which are troubled by continuing clashes over cybersecurity, currency policy and human rights. On Friday, Chinese prosecutors said Pu Zhiqiang, one of China’s best-known human rights lawyers, would stand trial on charges of inciting ethnic hatred.

The police detained Mr. Pu just over a year ago, making him one of the most prominent targets of the Communist Party’s vigorous assault on dissent. The State Department, drawing the ire of Chinese officials, recently called for his release.

But there are bright spots in the relationship. President Obama and Mr. Xi have a good working relationship; a meeting between the two in Beijing in November produced a landmark agreement on carbon emissions and a military accord that seeks to avoid clashes between American and Chinese aircraft in the seas off China.

In addition to laying the groundwork for a planned visit by Mr. Xi to Washington in September, Mr. Kerry and his Chinese counterparts are expected to discuss plans for the United States-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, an annual gathering of hundreds of officials that Washington will host next month.

Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing, said threats from Washington were unlikely to persuade the government to halt its land reclamation efforts in the disputed waters of the South China Sea.

“For Xi Jinping, this is a must-complete project,” he said. “I don’t see either side backing down from the standoff, and the conflict could get worse even though both sides are eager to stabilize ties.”