SINGAPORE CITY, Singapore
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue meeting on security, former ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai said that although the two militaries still had channels of communication, he questioned whether there was enough political will to prevent conflicts.
"Some people are talking
about our ships, our planes getting too close to their ships and their planes.
But the real question is, why are they coming all the way across the ocean to
our doorsteps?" Cui said of U.S. naval and air force deployments close to
China. "They are getting too close to our territories, to our territorial
waters before anything else. This is not a good way of showing respect to
others. It is certainly a disrespect of other countries' sovereignty and
territorial integrity."
He added: "If people have
such goodwill and if people act in good faith, they could always find effective
ways of communication."
U.S. deployments near China,
Cui said, were "certainly disrespect of other countries' sovereignty and
territorial integrity and to be more specific, they always prefer unilateral
sanctions."
"We have a very small
number of nuclear weapons, warheads, whatsoever. So the capabilities of the two
countries are very different. There's a huge gap. So how can they (the U.S.)
expect us to engage in negotiation with them, when they have so many, we have
so few. Are they ready to cut down their level to our level, then we can start
negotiation on equal footing? Or are they asking us to raise our level to their
level so that we can negotiate on equal footing?" Cui said. "So I
think we have to answer these two questions first."
He said that he nonetheless
remained optimistic about relations between the two countries.
"I hope things will
improve in the coming months and years," he said. "As a matter of
principle, we are always ready for more dialogue with others, including with
the United States."
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