Asia summits under way amid U.S.-China friction

HANOI, September 10 ------ Southeast Asian foreign ministers kicked off a series of regional summits on Wednesday expected to seek collaboration to fight global threats and to try to de-escalate a tit-for-tat U.S.-China rivalry as the world’s two biggest economies vie for influence. Russia, Japan, Australia, South Korea and India were among other countries remotely joining an event hosted by Vietnam that will include a 27-nation security forum, as concern grows about rhetoric and accidental conflict, and about other countries being caught up in the fray.

“The regional geopolitical and geoeconomic landscape, including the South China Sea, are witnessing growing volatilities that are detrimental to peace and stability,” Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said in opening the summit. Vietnam’s foreign minister, Pham Binh Minh, said the role of international law and multilateral institutions was being “greatly challenged”. The U.S. State Department said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo joined several countries from the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and “many other partners” in raising concerns about China’s “aggressive actions” in the South China Sea.

Pompeo and several countries voiced concern about China’s imposition of a new national security law on Hong Kong, the arrests of pro-democracy students, postponement of the territory’s elections and disqualification of pro-democracy electoral candidates, department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said. Pompeo and other ministers also called for a cessation of violence and a negotiated solution to escalating violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine State and for North Korea to abandon its weapons of mass destruction, she said.

China’s top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, accused the United States of intervening directly in disputes among claimants in the South China Sea and of being the biggest driver of its militarisation. “Peace and stability is China’s greatest strategic interest in the South China Sea,” he told the meeting, according to China’s foreign ministry’s website. Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi in an interview with Reuters cautioned the United States and China against entangling Southeast Asian nations in their geopolitical battle. “We don’t want to get trapped by this rivalry,” she said on Tuesday, describing militarisation of the waterway as “worrying”.

Source: reuters.com