U.S., China grapple over island group

Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan leads U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in a review of an honor guard Tuesday at a welcoming ceremony at the Defense Ministry in Beijing.

Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan leads U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in a review of an honor guard Tuesday at a welcoming ceremony at the Defense Ministry in Beijing.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

BEIJING - The United States and China clashed over Japan on Tuesday as the Chinese defense minister asserted that Beijing had “indisputable sovereignty” over a group of islands in the East China Sea and that his country’s military stood ready to protect its interests in territorial disputes.

photo

AP

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel stands with Chinese counterpart Chang Wanquan for “The Star Spangled Banner” on Tuesday.

The minister, Gen. Chang Wanquan, affirmed that China would not be first to launch an attack over the territorial dispute. But he accused Japan of “confusing the right with the wrong” in its assertion of control over the disputed islands, which are known as the Senkaku in Japan and as the Diaoyu in China.

“China has indisputable sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands,” Chang said. He added that on the issue of what he called “territorial sovereignty,” China would “make no compromise, no concession, no treaty.”

He continued, “The Chinese military can assemble as soon as summoned, fight any battle and win.”

Chang made his comments at a news conference with the U.S. defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, after a morning of meetings at the Ministry of National Defense. It is Hagel’s first trip to China as defense secretary.

While both men sought to present their meetings as constructive, they espoused divergent views on a number of issues, particularly the territorial dispute in the East China Sea and a similar dispute between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea.

“The United States takes no position on individual claims” in the island dispute, Hagel said. But he repeated that it had treaty obligations to defend Japan and the Philippines.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations is seeking a code of conduct for the oil and gas-rich waters, through which some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes run. China is prepared to hold bilateral talks over territory but rejected a Philippine move for international arbitration on their claims to the Scarborough Shoal and other parts of the South China Sea that China claims, Chang said.

He told Hagel, “We will make no compromise, no concession, no trading, not even a tiny … violation is allowed.”

At one point, Hagel appeared impatient, wagging his finger. “The Philippines and Japan are longtime allies of the United States,” he said. “We have mutual self-defense treaties with each of those countries” he continued, adding that the United States was “fully committed to those treaty obligations.”

Hagel accused China of adding to tensions in the region by unilaterally declaring an air defense zone in the East China Sea with “no collaboration, no consultation.” Such moves, he warned, could “eventually get to dangerous conflict.”

The exchange punctuated a visit that U.S. defense officials had sought to present as a long-awaited deepening of military relations between the two countries. On Monday, Hagel became the first foreign military dignitary allowed on board a Chinese aircraft carrier.

The U.S. seeks military ties with China “to deepen practical cooperation in areas of common interest and to manage competition and differences through openness and communication,” Hagel said a briefing Tuesday in Beijing. This year China will for the first time join the U.S. in the Rim of the Pacific exercise, the Pacific Ocean military simulation held every other year.

But there appeared to be no closing of the gaps on more contentious issues between the countries Tuesday.

Hagel, for instance, called on China to be more open about its cyber warfare capabilities, which U.S. officials have said Beijing uses for commercial espionage.

Hagel portrayed the United States as transparent about its own capabilities in telecommunications security, pointing to a recent briefing that the Defense Department gave to Chinese officials on the Pentagon’s doctrine for defending against cyber attacks.

“More transparency will strengthen China-U.S. relations,” Hagel said. “Greater openness about cyber reduces the risk that misunderstanding and misperception could lead to miscalculation.”

Chang stood impassively next to Hagel during his call Tuesday for more openness on cyber security. When it was his turn to talk, he said, “the defense activity of the People’s Liberation Army in cyberspace abides” by Chinese law. “It will not pose a threat to others,” he added.

The disagreement with China over digital security issues puts Hagel in the difficult position of splitting hairs with Beijing over what is acceptable to spy on and what is not.

U.S. officials have maintained that a barrage of attacks that originated in China were aimed at stealing technology and other intellectual property from Silicon Valley and from military contractors and energy firms in the United States. Many of those attacks have been linked to cyber warfare units of the People’s Liberation Army, acting on behalf of state-owned, or state-affiliated, Chinese companies.

But the United States has not always been transparent about cyber espionage, either. Last month The New York Times and the German magazine Der Spiegel reported that the United States had infiltrated the networks of Huawei, China’s networking and telecommunications giant.

Additional disclosures about U.S. spying were revealed in National Security Agency documents leaked by Edward Snowden, a former contractor at the agency.

After his meetings at the Defense Ministry, Hagel went to the National Defense University in Beijing to give a speech and hold a question-and-answer session with a group of about 120 Chinese military officers. Many of the questions from the audience centered on the Senkaku-Diaoyu dispute, as Chinese officers repeatedly complained that U.S. policy in the region favored Japan.

The Pentagon chief also pressed China on North Korea, saying during his speech at the university that Washington and Beijing have a shared interest “in achieving a verifiable, irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

Continuing to support the Pyongyang regime, Hagel said Tuesday, “will only hurt China’s international standing” and its position in the region.

While the disagreements between the U.S. and China were evident during the day’s events, there also was an underlying current of slowly growing cooperation.

The two countries interests outweigh their differences, said Chang, adding that “The Pacific is huge enough to hold both China and the U.S.”

Information for this article was contributed by Helene Cooper of The New York Times; by Gopal Ratnam of Bloomberg News; and by Lolita C. Baldor of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/09/2014