China’s Grip on South China Sea, Claim to Taiwan Sure To Dominate Xi’s Summit With Trump

Communist China’s President Xi Jinping is sure to stick to longstanding claims to the South China Sea and the Free China province of Taiwan during his summit with President Trump later this month — if the scene at a South Korean defense forum held Wednesday is any guide.Messrs. Xi and Trump are meeting at the White House on September 24, just four months after their last summit at Beijing. That ended with few outcomes, but increased concerns about America’s commitment to the island republic.“Why are we meeting with Xi Jinping,” a long-time commentator and author, Gordon Chang, rhetorically asked The New York Sun.“Have we not talked with him enough already? He’s made it clear he will not honor any promise to America, so trying to get him to make any more of them is futile.”China’s inflexible view on the South China Sea was evident in a heated exchange at a forum staged at Seoul by South Korea’s defense ministry. An unidentified Chinese official, possibly a defense attaché, handed a note to the Philippines’ defense secretary, Gilberto Teodoro, while he was onstage. Mr. Teodoro read the note aloud, which repeated the longstanding Chinese view that China “neither accepts nor recognizes” a ruling by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea denying China’s claim to most of the South China Sea. The note said the ruling, issued more than 10 years ago, was “illegal, null and void” and had “no standing force.”Those words sparked a vitriolic response from Mr. Teodoro, who accused China of “coercion, bullying, and aggression” and promised to keep the note as “a memento of how desperate China is in inflicting its position in the face of a free audience.”The retort by Mr. Teodoro, who has served as defense minister under two Philippine presidents and ran unsuccessfully for president in 2010, drew applause from the audience but undoubtedly was meaningless in terms of loosening China’s ever-tightening grip over most of the South China Sea. China’s state news agency, Xinhua, accused Mr. Teodoro of “grandstanding and lying” about the contents of the note.In the face of protests by both Washington and Manila, China’s military has been steadily increasing its presence on islets and atolls where Chinese engineers have built two or three airstrips along with naval bases. China has spurned a ruling by the Hague’s Permanent Court of Arbitration charging Beijing with ignoring a previous decision by the Law of the Sea’s international tribunal rejecting its claim to the waterways.China’s position on the South China Sea may be so intractable as to merit only a passing mention by Mr. Trump when he sees Mr. Xi. The difference between China’s claim to the South China Sea and its stand on Taiwan, however, is that Beijing’s Communist regime has never controlled the island province where the defeated Nationalist forces of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek retreated as Mao Zedong’s Red Army was taking over the mainland in 1949.Taiwan’s leaders have repeatedly rejected China’s claim to the land but have avoided declaring independence — a step that might invite attack by Chinese forces that already persistently harass and intimidate the island by sea and in the air.Most recently, Taiwan’s foreign minister, Lin Chia-fung, dismissed Beijing as “a troublemaker” after China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, repeated the claim that the island province belonged to China and would eventually have to rejoin the fold.The talks on Taiwan, though, could be extremely tense for another reason. Mr. Trump has still not signed off on a deal approved by Congress to sell billions of dollars worth of arms to Taiwan, which has long counted on American materiel. United States military advisers are known to be in Taiwan even though President Carter broke off diplomatic relations and recognized Beijing in late 1978.Mr.Trump has indicated military sales could be a bargaining chip in the overarching question of trade and tariffs as he attempts to slash China’s enormous trade surplus. “Stop talking, start imposing costs, and show him we’re no longer afraid of China,” Mr. Chang advised. Mr. Xi’s “country is in distress, so let’s publicly remind him that he’s on the way down.”It’s highly possible that the White House summit will end up as did the last one. A Taiwan official at the time told journalists that Mr. Trump in that meeting “did not allow Xi to negotiate or haggle with him over Taiwan arms sales.”Given the fears that Mr. Trump might betray Taiwan, the basic view of the islanders is that no news is good news. The official assured Taiwanese journalists there was “no change in U.S. policy toward Taiwan.” The priority, said the official, is on “maintaining the status quo” with arms sales “negotiated solely with Taipei.”Alternatively, Mr. Chang suggests taking an entirely different tack. “Decades of American policy toward China have not worked,” he told the Sun. ”It’s time to try something new.”

China’s Grip on South China Sea, Claim to Taiwan Sure To Dominate Xi’s Summit With Trump

China’s Grip on South China Sea, Claim to Taiwan Sure To Dominate Xi’s Summit With Trump

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