Territorial Disputes in the Waters Near China

Territorial Disputes in the Waters Near China

The Chinese soldiers were instructed to be merciless and resorted to a “frenzy of extreme emotions,” according to a former Chinese intelligence officer, Xu Meihong, who immigrated to the United States and whose account appears in a history of the war, “Chinese Military Strategy in the Third Indochina War” by Edward C. O’Dowd.

The Chinese decision to destroy Lang Son left a deep impression on a high school student named Luong Van Lang, who now works as a security guard.

“My heart was full of hatred, all the city was destroyed, everything was rubble,” he said. Two years after the Chinese left, he was selected for sniper training in a local defense militia to counter Chinese hit-and-run attacks that continued for most of the 1980s.

“I would get up at 2 a.m., positioned on a high ridge, and I could see the Chinese digging tunnels,” he said. “Their hill was lower than ours, and sometimes they would move higher. We would wait for that moment when they moved and shoot at them.” He killed six Chinese in 10 days, he said proudly.

For his bravery and accuracy, Mr. Lang won three medals that he keeps in a satin-lined box.

After China and Vietnam normalized relations in 1991, the government erased all official commemorations of the 1979 fighting, a contrast to the copious memorials to Vietnam’s wars against the French and the Americans in which the Chinese gave vital assistance.

Relations between the fraternal Communist parties thawed, cross-border business flourished and memories were eclipsed.

Those memories resurfaced two months ago with the arrival of the Chinese oil rig in waters claimed by both countries off Vietnam’s coast. There were daily skirmishes between Chinese and Vietnamese coast guard vessels, which led to anti-Chinese riots in Vietnam that left four Chinese citizens dead and damaged foreign-owned factories.

Ms. Hien, who now runs a guesthouse and welcomes Chinese clients, says she still lives with the memories of her teenage terror. After her mother was killed, soldiers found an older woman to look after her, and then told the two lost souls to shelter with others in a limestone cave.

“But several hundred people had been killed in there,” she said. “I saw a woman with her legs cut off, lying on the ground. You could tell from her eyes she was still alive and wanted help, but there was nothing we could do. I will never forget it.”

NYT

Kerry Assures China That the U.S. Can Have Many Allies in Asia

BEIJING — Seeking to put the best face on a difficult relationship with Beijing, Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday that the United States and China could find ways to manage their differences and had more in common than not.

Neither side wanted to fall into the “trap of zero sum competition,” Mr. Kerry said at the conclusion of an annual strategic and economic dialogue between top officials of the two countries.

The array of topics with some areas of agreement — climate change, Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan — attested to the viability of the relationship, he said.

Still, Mr. Kerry used fairly blunt language in an effort to persuade President Xi Jinping that the United States did not intend its 60-year system of alliances in Asia to encircle and contain China.

“We mean what we say when we emphasize that there’s no U.S. strategy to try to push back against or be in conflict with China,” he said, as Mr. Xi sat beside him during a farewell session at the Great Hall of the People.

Photo

Secretary of State John Kerry, in Beijing on Thursday, said there was no United States strategy to be in conflict with China. Credit Pool photo by Greg Baker

Mr. Kerry was indirectly replying to charges by Chinese officials that President Obama had reinvigorated America’s network of alliances in Asia with the idea of containing China and its fast modernizing military. In response, Mr. Xi has initiated a campaign that calls for a new security architecture of Asia for the Asians.

New accusations that Chinese hackers had attacked highly sensitive American material were brusquely dismissed by China, even as the American delegation, headed by Mr. Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew, tried to press cyberespionage as an important issue at the conference.

The Foreign Ministry dismissed assertions in an article in The New York Times that Chinese hackers had infiltrated United States government computer systems that house personal information of federal employees.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said the article was part of what he called an irresponsible anti-China smear campaign.

The article, first published Wednesday on the newspaper’s website, said the hackers had gained access to some of the databases of the Office of Personnel Management before authorities in the United States detected the breach and thwarted further access. It remained unclear what kind of information, if any, was compromised in the attack, which was said to have happened in March.

Asked about the article at a regular Foreign Ministry press briefing, a spokesman, Hong Lei, repeated China’s longstanding position that it opposes cyberhacking.

“This is what we say and what we have been doing,” he said. “Recently, some American media and Internet security firms keep playing the card of China Internet Threat and smear China’s image. They cannot produce tenable evidence. Such reports and comments are irresponsible and are not worth refuting.”

Asked about the article at a closing news conference, Mr. Kerry said that he and Mr. Lew had been unaware of the attack described in the article and did not raise it with Chinese officials, although the broader subject of cybersecurity was discussed.

“We were notified about this alleged incident minutes before coming out here,” Mr. Kerry said.

He said the article was about attempted “intrusions” that were still being investigated and it did not appear that sensitive material had been compromised.

A senior American official who participated in sessions with the Chinese on Thursday said the case of the hacking into the Office of Personnel Management was not raised by either side. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to talk about a delicate matter.

The Chinese, angered by the indictment by the Justice Department in May of five members of the People’s Liberation Army on charges of cyberespionage, refused a request at the dialogue by the Americans to restart a joint cyber working group.

China suspended the work of the group that brought together American and Chinese negotiators to discuss cyber issues and has complained that National Security Agency documents made public by Edward J. Snowden showed the United States had used cyberespionage to gain economic advantage.

Mr. Xi, who invited the American and Chinese delegations to meet him Thursday afternoon at a session that was partly open to reporters, called on the two countries to work on building a “new model of major country relationship,” a phrase he frequently uses to imply an equal status between the United States and China.

It is an expression that the Obama administration has been reluctant to endorse for fear that it would confer legitimacy to China’s various territorial claims, including in the East China Sea and South China Sea.

The Obama administration sent senior officials to the dialogue, including Janet L. Yellen, chairwoman of the Federal Reserve; Michael Froman, the United States trade representative; Ernest Moniz, secretary of energy; Penny Pritzker, secretary of commerce, and John D. Podesta, counselor to President Obama, who specializes in climate change.

The Americans appeared pleased about what they called serious discussions on how to reduce carbon emissions. The presence of Mr. Podesta, who the Chinese know is close to Mr. Obama and is committed to climate change policies, added weight, they said.

A joint working group on climate change announced that both countries would develop new greenhouse gas emissions and fuel economy standards.

“This effort has to be mutual and has to be accompanied by commitments which are defined by the actions we will actually take,” Mr. Kerry said. “It’s not about one country making a demand of the other.”

Even so, China’s chief climate official, Xie Zhenhua, said China, which still considers itself a developing country, should not be subject to the same rules for greenhouse gas emissions as the United States, suggesting that Beijing will oppose attempts to impose them at next year’s world climate conference in Paris.