By Zhang Siyuan
Recently, the US and its allies have made frequent moves in the Asia-Pacific region. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited the US, and the first-ever trilateral summit among the US, Japan and the Philippines was held in Washington. The US-Japan Joint Leaders' Statement and the Joint Vision Statement from the Leaders of Japan, the Philippines, and the US both contain groundless accusations and malicious smears against China. The sinister motives of the US and its allies to contain China with small cliques have surfaced.
The US publicly stated that cooperation with its allies and partners is not aimed at China, but in fact, the various small cliques led by the US have become increasingly confrontational against China, which has become the biggest threat to regional peace and stability. Ignoring the consensus reached under the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea and the reality of regional peace and stability, the US, Japan and the Philippines have frequently threatened China with the US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty and the US-Japan Security Treaty, and slandered the China Coast Guard (CCG)'s professional maritime law enforcement in a calm and restrained manner as "dangerous and aggressive behavior". The US and Japan took advantage of the trilateral summit and the US-Japan-Australia-Philippines joint maritime patrol in the South China Sea to embolden the Philippines' provocative actions in the South China Sea. It is precisely due to the support of major powers outside the region that the Philippines dares to act recklessly, repeatedly sending ships to illegally intrude into the surrounding waters of China's Ren'ai Jiao, and staging a "swoop-and-squat accident" with vessels of the CCG. In addition, the US deliberately exaggerates the "China threat" theory to create anxiety and tension, and turns the originally peaceful Asia-Pacific region into a geopolitical arena to contain China.
Those US-led small cliques seem to be on the rise, but the domineering style of the US and its attempts to fan the flames in the region actually fail to win support from the majority of the international community. The US' behavior in the Ukraine crisis and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has made people around the world realize the hypocrisy of the American-style democracy. The narrative of "democracy versus authoritarianism" peddled by the US is full of loopholes and has only a few followers. In the US, there are many severe problems such as the partisan conflict, high public debt, and immigration crisis. In this context, the American-style democracy has been increasingly questioned and criticized.
Unlike the US, which is eager to form closed and exclusive small cliques in the Asia-Pacific region, China has deepened friendly cooperation with neighboring countries in the principle of amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness and embarked on a new path of building an Asian community of shared future. China and ASEAN have been each other's largest trading partners for four consecutive years. According to The State of Southeast Asia: 2024 Survey Report released on April 2 by the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, a Singapore-based think tank, since 2019, people in South Asian countries have regarded China as the country with the greatest economic and political influence on Southeast Asia, and more than half of the respondents expressed optimism about the prospects of their countries' relations with China. Meanwhile, the proportion of respondents who spoke positively of the US-led "Indo-Pacific Economic Framework" fell from 46.5 percent last year to 40.4 percent.
In fact, Chinese people don't care how the US and its allies and partners interact. However, they have targeted China on a wide range of issues and showed that they wouldn't hesitate to strengthen their alliances and partnerships at the expense of China's interests. China resolutely opposes bloc politics manipulated by a few countries, any practice that provokes and intensifies conflict and harms the strategic security and interests of other countries, and any attempt to form closed and exclusive small cliques in the Asia-Pacific region.
The Asia-Pacific region should become a grand stage for countries to promote cooperation, instead of a gladiatorial arena for confrontation. The US and its allies should discard the Cold War mentality, give up the idea of seeking selfish benefits by creating bloc confrontation, earnestly respect the aspirations of the people of the Asia-Pacific region for peace, development and cooperation, and jointly maintain the hard-won peace and stability and the sound momentum for development in the region.
(The author is an observer on international affairs.)
Editor's note: Originally published on people.com.cn, this article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.
