German Defense Minister Urges China: Respect Arbitral Decision On SCS

Chinese and German defense ministers have exchanged views ahead of the expected sailing of a German frigate through the disputed South China Sea next month, with Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer asking her Chinese counterpart General Wei Fenghe to uphold a 2016 international arbitration decision that limited China’s claims to some sea areas in the South China Sea (SCS).

According to Reuters, she also raised human rights concerns about the Uygur population in China’s Xinjiang region, an issue increasingly raised with Beijing by Western democracies.

General Wei urged Berlin to “properly manage disagreements” through dialogue, the Chinese defense ministry said. “[We] hope Germany will join China in upholding multilateralism, resist politicizing the coronavirus pandemic, rejecting a zero-sum game [in geopolitics] and defending global justice,” Wei was quoted as saying.

“Both sides should strengthen strategic communication, continue with exchanges in existing mechanisms and properly manage disagreements, to push for the stable development of the two armies,” he added, according to the statement, Kinling Lo reported for the South China Morning Post.

The talks come as a German frigate is expected to cross the South China Sea next month – it will be the country’s first warship to make the crossing since 2002.

The defense ministers’ meeting also follows Monday’s video call between Chinese President Xi Jinping, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and French President Emmanuel Macron in which Xi relayed hopes of better cooperation with the two major European Union powers.

Germany and European allies such as Britain and France have vowed to boost their military presence in the region under their respective Indo-Pacific guidelines. The US, which regularly conducts “freedom of navigation” operations in the SCS, has applauded engagement by its NATO allies as it views such patrols as asserting freedom of access to international waterways.

After Berlin announced in March it would send a frigate through the SCS, Beijing said any country could sail in international waterways but warned that this was not “an excuse to undermine the sovereignty and security of littoral countries.”

China claims almost all of the SCS and has established military outposts on the artificial islands it had built. However, China could not produce the coordinates of its so-called Nine-Dash Line in SCS and could hardly argue why underwater reefs could have territorial waters, which Japan says violates the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) that China had signed.

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