At an annual Shangri-La security dialogue last weekend in Singapore, China has reacted to criticism it received from Japan and the US about its territorial claims, Bloomberg reported. Following comments from US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe about the mainland's actions in the South China Sea, Chinese Lieutenant General Wang Guanzhong decided to adlib a few choice words apart from a prepared speech and called the leaders' speeches "unimaginable."
"The Chinese delegation and Chinese outside this conference room and many foreign friends have this feeling that the speeches of Mr. Abe and Mr. Hagel are a provocative action against China. If we look at the actions they have taken, we have to ask, who is actually making provocation and creating troubles, disputes?" Wang posed.
Wang, who is the deputy chief of general staff of the People's Liberation Army, added that while Hagel's speech was full of words of threat and intimidation, the mainland had noted Abe's speech had targeted the country.
Director of the International Security Program Rory Medcalf at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney said about China's latest retort, "China will seek to spin both Hagel's and Abe's remarks in a negative, provocative way. The public diplomacy of all the key stakeholders in Asian security has become starker in the past two years. In some instances, it is descending to the level of a propaganda war."
On the other hand, senior researcher Zhou Qi at the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who is part of the Chinese delegation to the dialogue, saw Hagel's and Abe's speeches in a different way. She said, "Americans may want to use this forum to reassure its allies and win more support. But that doesn't mean it's all rhetoric; the U.S. has indeed remarkably ratcheted up its toughness against China in the South China Sea issues."
Bloomberg said Hagel had since been calling for an establishment of a new model of relations to guide involved countries in the hopes of building cooperation, managing competition and avoidance of rivalry. However, Wang said in response to Hagel's speech that the ongoing disputes and debates are part of the process of building such model.
