Posted: 09 February 2012 0632 hrs
WASHINGTON: Singapore on Wednesday urged the United
States to be careful in comments on China, warning that suggestions
of a strategy to contain the rising power could cause strife in
Asia.
On a visit to Washington, Foreign Minister K. Shanmugam voiced
confidence that the State Department accepted the need for
cooperation with China but said that US commentary too often cast
Asian politics in "win/lose sporting terms."
"Domestic pressures in the US and the demands of elections have
resulted in some anti-China rhetoric in domestic debates,"
Shanmugam told a conference on Singapore at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies.
"We in Singapore understand that some of this is inevitable in an
election year. But Americans should not underestimate the extent to
which such rhetoric can spark reaction which can create a new and
unintended reality for the region," he said.
Singapore is a close partner of Washington and home to a key US
military logistical base. But the city-state is highly dependent on
trade and has sought smooth commercial relations with Asia's major
economic powers such as China, Japan and India.
"It's quite untenable -- quite absurd -- to speak in terms of
containment of China. That's a country with 1.3 billion people,"
Shanmugam said.
"It is determined to progress in all fields and take its rightful
place in the community of nations. It will succeed in that
venture," he said.
The United States, while looking to trim spending on its giant
military to tame a soaring debt, has set a priority on Asia as
rapid economic growth and the rise of China look set to reshape the
region.
The US military has sought closer cooperation with the Philippines
and Vietnam, which have accused China of increasingly bellicose
actions to assert control over disputed territories in the South
China Sea.
Shanmugan said that the United States should also look at other
ways of engagement in Asia such as pressing ahead with the
Trans-Pacific Partnership, an emerging trade pact that involves at
least nine countries.
It is "a mistake to focus only on the US military presence in the
region, to the exclusion of other dimensions of US policy," he
said.
President Barack Obama's administration has repeatedly said that it
welcomes the rise of China and will try to find areas for
cooperation. Vice President Joe Biden, ahead of a US visit by his
counterpart Xi Jinping, called in a statement Wednesday for the two
powers to work together on "practical issues."
Shanmugan did not cite examples of "anti-China" comments in the
United States, but a number of US lawmakers have raised fears about
Beijing's rise.
At a congressional hearing Tuesday, Representative Dana Rohrabacher
called for the United States to ramp up support for the Philippines
to help the democratic US ally assert its claims in maritime
disputes with China.
"We need to stand as aggressively and as solidly with the Filipino
government in their confronting an aggressive, arrogant China --
expansionist China -- as we have stood with them against radical
Islam," said Rohrabacher, a Republican from California.
Economic disputes with China have also come to the forefront.
In a recent television commercial that outraged Asian American
groups, Representative Pete Hoekstra -- a Republican seeking a
Senate seat in Michigan -- attacked his opponent with an
advertisement criticizing US debt to China.
In the advertisement, a young Asian woman -- in a setting that
looked more like Vietnam than China -- said in broken English,
"Your economy get very weak; ours get very good."
- AFP
