China and US face ‘tough talks’ on disputed South China Sea islands
Cyber security, human rights and democracy in Hong Kong also to be discussed at dialogue
Senior officials from the world’s two biggest economies – China and the United States – are expected to have tough discussions about the mainland’s deployment plans for its artificial islands in the disputed South China Sea at this week’s bilateral talks, observers said.
The two-day meeting of the US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue – its seventh round since it was initiated in 2009 – will start on Tuesday in Washington. US Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew will hold talks with State Councillor Yang Jiechi and Vice-Premier Wang Yang.
The dialogue, which comes only three months before President Xi Jinping’s first state visit to the US, would focus on the South China Sea, cyber security, human rights, and the issues of democracy in Hong Kong, Daniel Russel, assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, said last week.
The two sides would have “a good deal of tough conversations” about how China intended to use artificial islands it had been building in the South China Sea, said Yun Sun, a China studies expert at the Henry L. Stimson Centre in Washington. “Now the discussion will be focused less on land reclamation itself and more on what facilities China will put on the islands,” she said.
China’s foreign ministry said last week its reclamation projects in the Spratly Islands, which it calls Nansha, would be soon completed “as planned”.
The comments came after a month-long war of words between Beijing and Washington over China’s South China Sea policy following a US spy plane’s flight over the region and Beijing’s release of a white paper on the expansion of its naval power.
“China certainly does not wish to poison the atmosphere of the talks with the land reclamation, so the timing [of the announcement of completion] is quite strategic,” Sun said.