Abe's adviser blasts China in barbed Hong Kong speech

Japan's top foreign policy adviser, in an inflammatory speech delivered at a regional forum in Hong Kong yesterday, accused China of asserting a territorial claim by force and breaching the international order.

Yachi Shotaro's speech, read on his behalf by a former Japanese official, at the third Sino-US Colloquium, was immediately rebuffed by Chinese participants.

Retired People's Liberation Army major general Pan Zhenqiang, now a government adviser, described Yachi's statement as "very rude and arrogant", and warned Tokyo to treat China as an enemy at its peril.

The fiery exchanges came as Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang yesterday expressed "strong discontent" about comments by US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton over the Diaoyu Islands. Clinton said earlier that the United States acknowledged Japan's control of waters near the disputed island although it did not have a stance over who had ultimate sovereignty.

This is the first time that Japan has sent delegates to the annual forum, organised by the China Energy Fund Committee in Hong Kong. Among its speakers were two former US four-star generals, one PLA general and two former Japanese commanders, as well as top thinkers and government advisers from the three countries.

All attention was on the speech by Yachi, widely believed to be the architect of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's foreign policy and who was recently appointed a special foreign adviser. Yachi did not attend the talk in person but wrote the speech read by Takujiro Hamada, a former deputy foreign minister of Japan.

Yachi warned China to be careful of its behaviour or risk being isolated by its neighbours. He said Chinese leaders "made absolutely no claim" over the Diaoyu Islands after the second world war or in 1997, when the countries normalised their ties.