Exxon Mobil CEO and US President Elect Donald Trump’s pick for his ‘Secretary of State’, Rex Tillerson, has told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee that China will be prohibited to build more islands in the South China Sea. Neither will they be allowed to access the islands it has already built.
Tillerson said in his confirmation hearing that, ‘he is going to have to send China a clear signal that, first, the island-building stops and, second, your access to those islands also is not going to be allowed’, a Reuters report said.
Comparing the Chinese acts of developing island in the South China Sea to the Russian aggression in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, Tillerson cleared that, ‘he is going to have to send China a clear signal that, first, the island-building stops and, second, your access to those islands also is not going to be allowed’, a Reuters report said.
As per Reuters reports which quoted the ‘Secretary of State’ if Beijing were able to dictate access to the waterway, it is a threat to the ‘global economy’.
The spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Lu Kong, has dismissed Tillerson’s words ‘as hypothetical’ in his initial response to his statement clearly asserting the Chinese supremacy over the South China Sea. Lu Kong said that the situation in the South China Sea has cooled down as countries in the region have come in terms with the agreements made. We hope that countries outside the region will respect such an agreement that serves the common interests of the region and beyond.
However Chinese experts have alarmed that China is going to seriously retaliate to any US attempt of blocking China’s access to the South China Sea. Territorial dispute in the South China Sea involves seven countries, i.e., China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. A busy trade route passes through it and all other countries except China are in favour of keeping its status as free, international waters. China wants to control it as it imports most of its oil through this trade route. Doing so would enable China to establish hegemony in East and Southeast Asia that no other country involved in the dispute is capable of.
Analysts judge this to be Tillerson’s personal opinion and his inexperience in taking over diplomatic affairs. Though if we look into what Donald Trump has been saying about China, Tillerson’s words well may be the indication of the things to come.
Trump has been specifically targeting China pre or post his election, especially on trade imbalances and the loss of US jobs to China. He quotes Russia and China when he makes pitch for military and nuclear expansion of the US. He became the first US President-Elect in decades to defy the US policy of following One China norm and called the Taiwanese President angering Beijing. China considers Taiwan as its renegade province.
South China Morning Post wrote ‘what’s been built has been built’, quoting Wu Xinbo, head of American Studies at Shanghai’s Fudan University. It quoted another expert as saying China is not Cuba, and the South China Sea is not the Caribbean. The South China Sea is not under the US sphere of influence, its China’s territorial waters. And as a matter of fact, nothing appears in the Chinese media, especially on international policy matters like this, without the state approval. Hence the retaliation is assumed to be taken seriously.
