20110308 Stop arms sales to Taiwan: China

Stop arms sales to Taiwan: China

NEW PROSPECTS:An upbeat assessment of US-China relations by the foreign minister was a big improvement on last year when Beijing suspended military exchanges

Reuters and AP, BEIJING

The US will put improved relations with Beijing at risk if it does not stop selling arms to Taiwan, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi (楊潔篪) said yesterday.

The world’s two biggest economies have sought to steady ties after a year that exposed strains over human rights, Taiwan, Tibet and the gaping US trade deficit with China. Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) visited the White House in January.

“The atmosphere at the moment in Sino-US relations is good,” Yang told a news conference on the sidelines of the ongoing meeting of China’s National People’s Congress.

US Vice President Joe Biden will visit China in the middle of this year, after which Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (習近平) will go the US at “an appropriate time,” Yang said.

“Of course, it is an objective reality that China and the United States have some differences or even friction over some issues,” he added. “What’s important is that we properly handle these differences on the basis of mutual respect.”

Early last year, Beijing reacted with fury to the Obama administration plans for a new round of weapons sales to Taiwan, threatening to sanction the US companies involved.

“We urge the United States to ... stop selling arms to Taiwan and take concrete actions to support the peaceful development of cross-strait relations. This is very important in upholding the overall interests of China-US relations,” Yang said.

The US is obliged under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act to help Taiwan defend itself.

However, Beijing’s relations with the US should improve this year after a rocky year.

“We have a full agenda in developing China-US relations in the coming months,” he said.

Relations have been on the upswing since Hu’s state visit to the US that was widely hailed as a success. While it yielded little of substance, Hu received a much-coveted state banquet and formal White House welcome and the two sides managed to avoid the missteps that plagued Hu’s last visit in 2005.

Heated disputes remain over China’s massive trade surplus with the US and accusations that it keeps its currency artificially low to boost exports and Yang acknowledged lingering friction. He reiterated China’s strong opposition to arms sales to Taiwan and urged the US to lend more support to a warming trend in relations between Beijing and Taipei.

“What we need to do now is to seize on the momentum, build on the progress, earnestly implement the agreement reached by the leaders of the two countries and take solid steps in building the China-US cooperative partnership,” Yang said.

The positive climate couldn’t be more different than this time last year when China suspended military-to-military exchanges and bitterly criticized Washington over a US$6.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own territory.

Further disputes followed over a visit to the White House by Tibet’s exiled Buddhist leader the Dalai Lama, regarded by China as a separatist intent on overthrowing Chinese rule over the Himalayan region.

Google’s decision to stop censoring its search results inside China and US criticism of China’s Internet controls also heightened the tensions. Beijing has lashed out at US involvement in South China Sea territorial disputes and joint war games with South Korea in the Yellow Sea.

China’s relations with neighbors Japan, South Korea, and the Southeast Asian nations also have suffered in recent months, partly as a result of Beijing’s more aggressive assertions of its territorial claims and support for North Korea.

Yang said China would devote greater attention to those relationships in the coming months, although he said Japan was responsible for tensions over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea that Tokyo controls but Beijing claims.