Rebuffed By Pacific Island Nations, China Claims U.S. Hijacking Support In Asia

On Sunday, China's defense minister accused the US of attempting to "hijack" the support of Asia-Pacific countries in order to turn them against Beijing, claiming that Washington is seeking to advance its own interests "under the guise of multilateralism," Syawalludin Zain, Favid Rising, and Zen Soo reported for the Associated Press (AP).

Photo Insert: Defense Minister Gen. Wei Fenghe slammed US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, rejecting his "smearing accusation" at the Shangri-La Dialogue the day before that China was causing instability with its claim to the self-governing island of Taiwan and increased military activity in the region.

Defense Minister Gen. Wei Fenghe slammed US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, rejecting his "smearing accusation" at the Shangri-La Dialogue the day before that China was causing instability with its claim to the self-governing island of Taiwan and increased military activity in the region.

Austin had emphasized the importance of multilateral partnerships with Indo-Pacific nations, which Wei interpreted as an attempt to corner China.

With its claims to Taiwan and efforts to dominate the strategic South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last month that China posed the "most serious long-term challenge to the international order" for the US.

“No country should impose its will on others or bully others under the guise of multilateralism,” he said.

“The strategy is an attempt to build an exclusive small group in the name of a free and open Indo-Pacific to hijack countries in our region and target one specific country — it is a strategy to create conflict and confrontation to contain and encircle others.”

China has been slammed by Southeast Asian nations for claiming up to 90% of the SCS without any documentary proof of historical right and support from the approved text of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) that Beijing had signed. It has also rejected the plea for debt relief by Sri Lanka.

China has been rapidly modernizing its military and seeking to expand its influence and ambitions in the region, recently signing a security agreement with the Solomon Islands that many fear will lead to the establishment of a Chinese naval base in the Pacific, and breaking ground this week on a naval port expansion project in Cambodia that could give Beijing a foothold in the Gulf of Thailand.

Last year, US officials accused China of testing a hypersonic missile, a weapon that is more difficult to counter with missile defense systems, but China insisted it was a "routine test of a spacecraft."

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