CHINA: China Daily-Apr 27

The foreign ministers of the G7 must have an ax to grind. They again pointed accusing fingers at China over the South China Sea and East China Sea and criticized the human rights situation in the country in a joint communiqué early this week.

Yet it is not China that is escalating tensions and threatening to undermine stability and the rules-based order in the region. For that, accusing fingers would more justifiably point at the United States and Japan.

It is the US, with its naval operations that convey the threat or use of force in the South China Sea, and Japan, with its unilateral move to nationalize the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, that are the true troublemakers.

Were they not trying to sow discord between China and its neighbors, there is no reason why the foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as the High Representative of the European Union, should criticize China.

If they were really concerned about world peace, they would instead condemn those countries which have circumvented the United Nations to launch military strikes against Syria. Such military actions are blatantly counter to the UN Charter and international laws.

If they were sincere about promoting regional peace and stability and helping solve problems, they would criticize the world’s sole superpower for sending its warships thousands of miles away to conduct so-called freedom of navigation operations in waters where there is no such problem at all.

However, they have chosen to turn a blind eye to these, and to all that China has done to promote the settlement of the territorial disputes it has with some of its neighbors in the South China Sea, as well as China’s emphasis on the importance of completing the ongoing negotiations for an effective code of conduct in the waters.

As to its human rights situation, China has achieved a great deal in improving the lives of its people over the past several decades and continues to do so.

The G7 ministers should stop viewing the region through the prism of the past. It is their Cold War mentality rather than reality that is the benchmark they use to gauge what is happening around the world.

(First published in China Daily – http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201804/26/WS5ae1c1f6a3105cdcf651ab9c.html)