Trump signs hours later an executive order to blame Beijing "for the oppression of the people of Hong Kong".
The deterioration of the relationship between China and the United States increases almost daily. On Tuesday, Beijing has announced the imposition of sanctions against the Maryland-based arms company Lockheed Martin for its role in the latest arms sale that Washington has agreed with Taiwan. Hours before, the government of President Donald Trump gave the one of Xi Jinping in one of the points where it hurts the most: the South China Sea, which Beijing considers one of its key interests . Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a change in the American position to reject most of China's sovereignty claims in those waters.
So far, Beijing has not specified the nature of the sanctions it will adopt against the aeronautical giant, although this in itself is not new. In other cases of US arms sales to Taiwan, he announced retaliation against the supplying companies, although it has never been clear what kind of exact measures he ended up taking.
In this case, Lockheed Martin is one of the main companies benefiting from the sale that Washington approved last week, by which the United States will modernize the Taiwanese Patriot surface-to-air missiles, in an operation for the amount of 620 million dollars.
At the daily Foreign Press Conference in Beijing, in which he announced the retaliation, ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian called on the United States to “avoid further harm to both Sino-US ties and peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. " "To safeguard national interests, China has decided to take the necessary steps and impose sanctions on the main supplier," he said.
Donald Trump responded with a double attack. On the one hand, the US president signed an executive order to "hold China responsible for its oppressive actions against the people of Hong Kong," reports Antonia Laborde. Congress unanimously approved regulations supporting protesters who have participated in mass marches since last year against Beijing. The Republican also reported that he had officially withdrawn preferential treatment for the former British colony, as he had announced in late May. From now on, Washington will treat the enclave "without special privileges or the export of strategic technology", which will be a blow to the international financial market and to the Asian giant.
The Republican assured that he does not plan to speak with Xi Jinping. Hours earlier, the president said in an interview with CBS that he was not interested in talking to China about another agreement. “We made a great commercial agreement. But as soon as it closed, the ink had not even dried and they hit us with the plague, ”said the president, referring to the coronavirus.
China considers Taiwan an inalienable part of its territory and does not renounce unification by force. From his point of view, the US arms sales to the island of the democratic regime represent an intolerable interference in its internal affairs. The United States does not maintain official diplomatic relations with Taipei, although it is the island's main supporter in the military field, and its legislation obliges it to provide the island with means to defend itself from a hypothetical invasion.
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who won re-election in January with a promise to distance herself from an increasingly assertive China in foreign policy, promised in her investiture speech in May to strengthen the local army. "As we increase our defensive capabilities, the development of future combat capabilities will also place an emphasis on mobility, countermeasures and non-traditional asymmetric capabilities."
The People's Liberation Army (EPL, the Chinese armed forces) is the third in the world, while that of Taiwan is in position 26, according to the specialized website GlobalFirePower.com . Taiwanese forces this week carry out their annual maneuvers called Han Kuang, in which they rehearse how to repel a possible invasion from China.
The PLA troops, for their part, have carried out several rounds of maneuvers near the Taiwanese waters and have flown over their planes in the proximity of the island. According to the Kyodo agency, the EPL planned for no later than August large-scale military exercises near the island of Hainan, in the South China Sea, to simulate the seizure of the islet of Pratas, controlled by Taiwan. The islet is halfway along the route between Hainan - where Chinese nuclear submarines are based - and the exit to the Pacific.
Maneuvers in the South China Sea
The South China Sea, where Beijing claims sovereignty over 80% of the waters, has become another major reason for friction between Beijing and Washington, especially in the past two weeks. China is maneuvering near the Paracel Islands, whose ownership is also claimed by Vietnam, while the United States last week dispatched two aircraft carriers to the area, the Nimitz and Ronald Reagan, ostensibly to defend freedom of navigation in international waters.
The atmosphere has become even more charged after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Monday night the change in Washington's official position on Chinese sovereignty claims in that sea, which clash with those of Five other countries in the region: Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei. For Beijing, this area - strategic for the crossing of the Indian Ocean to North Asia, and rich in natural resources - is one of its primary interests, along with Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang.
Until now, the United States, which does not maintain territorial disputes in these waters, has limited itself to ensuring its neutrality while defending freedom of navigation in strategic waters, whose maritime passages annually cross close to five billion euros in commercial products. . Now it joins the claims of Vietnam and the Philippines. Thus, it declares that the Mischief Reef and the Second Thomas sandbar in the Spratly Islands "are completely under the sovereign rights and jurisdiction of the Philippines."
In line with this, it is in line with a decision of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, following the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos) in 2016, which rejected the vast majority of claims Chinese in the region. Beijing, which has built a chain of artificial islands to shore up its claims, has never accepted that decision. It also denounces China's claims on the Spratly, where Beijing has established two administrative districts this year with which it wants to consolidate its sovereignty claims.
The United States rejects, according to the statement, the Chinese claims in the waters surrounding the Vanguard Bank against Vietnam; the Lucania sandbanks off Malaysia; waters considered in the exclusive economic zone of Brunei, and Natuna Besar off the coast of Indonesia. "We want to make it clear: Beijing's claims on resources in non-coastal waters along most of the South China Sea are completely illegal, as is its coercion campaign to control them," Pompeo said. "The world will not allow Beijing to treat the South China Sea as its maritime empire."
In his press conference, Chinese Foreign Spokesperson Zhao Lijian has denied that Beijing has any intention of turning those waters into his "maritime empire," and has demanded that Washington stop trying to create divisions between China and its neighboring countries. "China treats its neighbors as equals and exercises the greatest possible containment," said Zhao.
JAPAN ACCUSES CHINA OF "RELENTLESS" FORAYS INTO THE ISLANDS THEY ARE FIGHTING FOR
Japan has also lashed out at China. In its annual Defense review, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government has expressed "great concern" over Beijing's sovereignty claims in the South Sea and East China Sea. There, Tokyo has a dispute with its neighbor for ownership of the Senkaku (in Japanese) or Diaoyu (in Mandarin) islands, an uninhabited micro-archipelago under the effective control of Japan and whose seabed can host large natural resources.
China "relentlessly continues its unilateral actions to impose a change in the Senkaku status quo," the white paper said. "Despite protests in our country, Chinese official ships have repeatedly ventured into our territorial waters around the islands," she adds.
A clash between the two countries that would get out of control could drag the United States. In 2014, President Barack Obama declared that, although Washington does not take sides with either of the two countries in the territorial dispute, the Senkaku are included in the US-Japan Security Treaty, by which the first world power is obliged to defend your Asian ally.
Last month, the Japanese Defense Ministry reported sighting a Chinese submarine near the islands. At the end of last month, Tokyo claimed to have detected the presence of Chinese ships for more than 70 days in a row. It is the largest number since the two countries clashed hard over the islands in 2012, causing a deterioration in bilateral relations that lasted for years.
Japan, the white paper asserts, is carefully monitoring Beijing's actions in the South Sea, where it denounces the creation of the two administrative districts in the Paracel and the Spratly as part of attempts to change the status quo there as well. China "has been taking advantage" in addition to its assistance to other countries during the pandemic to advance its political and economic interests, considers Tokyo.
https://elpais.com/internacional/2020-07-14/china-sanciona-a-la-empresa-de-armas-estadounidense-lockheed-martin-por-ventas-a-taiwan.html
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