By Liz Lee and Shi Bu
BEIJING (Reuters) -China has protested to the United States against “vilifying” remarks made by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the foreign ministry said on Sunday, while accusing it of deliberately ignoring calls for peace from regional nations.
China has objected to Hegseth calling it a threat in the Indo-Pacific, the ministry added, describing his comments at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Saturday as “deplorable”.
“Hegseth deliberately ignored the call for peace and development by countries in the region and instead touted the Cold War mentality for bloc confrontation, vilified China with defamatory allegations, and falsely called China a ‘threat’,” the ministry said on its website.
“The United States has deployed offensive weaponry in the South China Sea and kept stoking flames and creating tensions in the Asia-Pacific, which are turning the region into a powder keg,” it added in the statement.
China’s defence ministry also weighed in, saying the U.S. is “accustomed to using” the forum to “stoke disputes, sow discord and seek selfish interests”.
“China’s armed forces will work with other countries in the region to oppose hegemonism harming the Asia-Pacific region,” ministry spokesperson Zhang Xiaogang said in a statement posted on the ministry’s WeChat account.
Hegseth had urged allies in the Indo-Pacific region, including key security partner Australia, to spend more on defence after warning of the “real and potentially imminent” threat from China.
Asked about the call to boost defence spending, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his government had pledged an extra A$10 billion ($6 billion) to defence.
“What we’ll do is we’ll determine our defence policy,” he told reporters on Sunday, a transcript of his remarks showed.
As part of Washington’s longstanding defence ties with the Philippines, the U.S. military this year deployed Typhon launchers that can fire missiles to hit targets in both China and Russia from the island of Luzon.
China and the Philippines contest sovereignty over some islands and atolls in the South China Sea, with growing maritime run-ins between their coast guards as both vie to patrol the waters.
China’s delegation at the forum said “external intervention” was the biggest risk for stability in the South China Sea, saying the country had shown “goodwill and restraint” through talks on the issue.
“Some foreign powers have sent warplanes and warships to the South China Sea for so-called ‘freedom of navigation,'” the state-backed Global Times newspaper cited Senior Colonel Zhang Chi from the PLA National Defence University as saying.
Such actions infringed China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, he added.
The United States, Australia, Japan and the Philippines have conducted joint maritime operations in the busy waterway.
China claims nearly all the South China Sea, including parts of the exclusive economic zones of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.
In 2016, an international arbitration tribunal ruled Beijing’s expansive claim had no basis in international law, however.
China’s foreign ministry also told the United States not to “play with fire” on the question of Taiwan.
Any attempt by China to conquer Taiwan “would result in devastating consequences”, Hegseth said in his speech to Asia’s premier forum for defence leaders, military officials and diplomats.
China has vowed to “reunify” with the separately governed island, by force if necessary. Taiwan’s government rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims, saying only the island’s people can decide their future.
($1=1.5550 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Liz Lee and Bu Shi; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
