By Ali Karbalaei

China condemns US, S. Korea, Japan summit 

August 20, 2023 - 22:56
U.S. attempts to turn East Asia into Europe doomed to fail 

TEHRAN- U.S. President Joe Biden has wrapped up a summit with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at Camp David, where they announced an agreement to enhance military ties.

The leaders of the three countries also made their strongest joint condemnation yet of alleged "dangerous and aggressive behavior" by China in the South China Sea.

The Biden administration held the summit in a bid to show unity in the face of China's growing influence and the U.S. decline. 

In a joint summit statement, the three countries committed to consult promptly with each other and coordinate responses to regional challenges, provocations, and threats affecting their common interests.

At a trilateral press conference of the leaders following the meeting, Biden strongly praised the summit, saying, "If I seem like I'm happy, it's because I am. This has been a great, great meeting."

Biden said the meeting "was not about China", but that "China obviously came up."

He added, "Not to say we don't share concerns about the economic coercion or heightened tensions caused by China." 

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol told the press conference that "Korea, the U.S. and Japan, in their pursuit of Indo-Pacific strategies, oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force."

Also, at the podium, Prime Minister Kishida said, "To make the trilateral strategic and collaboration a plus and blue is only logical and almost inevitable and is required in this era."

The three nations also agreed to hold trilateral military training exercises annually and to share real-time information on North Korean missile launches by the end of 2023.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has denounced the move to deepen the three-way security cooperation, saying Beijing is opposed to "attempts to cobble together various exclusionary groupings and bring bloc confrontation and military blocs into the Asia-Pacific are not going to get support and will only be met with vigilance and opposition from regional countries."

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said regional countries should be working together instead to bring regional security. 

"In a world of change and disorder on the security front, all parties should act on the vision of a community of shared security for mankind, practice true multilateralism, and jointly address various security challenges. No country should seek its own security at the expense of other countries’ security interests and regional peace and stability."

He added that the "international community has its fair judgment on who is stoking conflicts and exacerbating tensions. The Asia-Pacific is an anchor for peace and development and a promising land for cooperation and growth, and should never be turned into a wrestling ground for geopolitical competition again."

Critics say the summit was an attempt by the U.S. to repeat the bloc politics it committed disastrously in Europe that ended up with the Ukraine war and extend that same policy to East Asia. 

Experts say this approach won't work as most countries in the region have seen how the crisis in Europe unfolded and won't go ahead with this same American policy. 

Over the past four decades, there has been peace in East and South Asia, whilst at the same time, there has been the most economic prosperity in the world. 

This is a stark difference to Europe, where there is now economic stagnation and the biggest war since World War Two as a result of the U.S.-led NATO military alliance’s expansion toward Russian borders. 

It appears that the United States wants to change that status quo in East Asia and is influencing Japan and South Korea, where American forces have maintained their military presence for many decades now.

Like West Asia, across East Asia, there are different political systems such as socialism, communism, different types of republics and monarchies, yet the region has seen peace since the Vietnam War. 

The only change has been economic prosperity and sitting on top of that is China, which is perhaps the biggest economic superpower in the world. 

Analysts say being the number one economic power in the world makes nations around the world shift toward China. 

So the goal of the Camp David summit is clearly aimed at China, with America losing allies as a result of its hegemonic policy, something China has not conducted. 

Anti-war advocates accuse the U.S. of trying to provoke China as well as North Korea (the second party discussed at the Camp David Summit) with its military adventurism in the region. 

When it comes to China, the U.S. has been provoking Beijing in many ways, but mostly by being the biggest international military supporter to separatist forces in Taiwan. 

Only 13 nations even recognize Taiwan, which is in violation of the One-China principle and the U.S. has been pumping weapons into the self-ruled Chinese Island to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, including the transfer of American warplanes. 

Hawkish U.S. officials have also been meeting with those top Taiwanese officials who are strongly opposed to joining the mainland. 

On Saturday, China launched military drills around Taiwan as a "serious warning" to separatist forces in response to their Vice President, Lai Ching-te, visiting the United States last week. 

In a statement, the People's Liberation Army's Eastern Theatre Command, which has responsibility for the area around Taiwan, said it was carrying out joint naval and air combat readiness patrols around the island. 

Officials in Taiwan say they had detected 42 Chinese aircraft and eight ships involved in drills around the island from Saturday morning and that the separatist forces had deployed ships and warplanes in response.

The PLA's Eastern Theatre Command said it was holding joint exercises and training of naval and air forces, focusing on ship-aircraft coordination, seizing control and anti-submarine drills to the north and southwest of Taiwan to test the forces' "actual combat capabilities".

"This is a serious warning against Taiwan independence separatist forces colluding with external forces to provoke," it said.

Equipment deployed included destroyers, frigates and fast attack missile boats as well as fighters, early warning and jamming aircraft that "assembled in a predetermined area", it said, without giving details.

China conducted large-scale military drills in August 2022 after Nancy Pelosi, then-speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives visited Taiwan.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has accused the U.S. of "insisting on arranging two stopovers for Lai Ching-te. This has seriously violated the one-China principle and undermined China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and sent a gravely wrong signal to ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces. China firmly opposes and strongly condemns this."

Beijing says that any attempt of holding back China’s reunification is doomed to fail and that China will take strong measures to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

According to analysts, the U.S. perceives China as a threat because Beijing advocates a multilateral world order and defends peace. And the U.S. is afraid of international peace. This is something that will erode America's own economy.
 

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