BEIJING?? The United States and China clashed Wednesday over two of the most contentious issues riling their relationship, the violence in Syria and growing tensions over territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
After hours of meetings with other top leaders that began Tuesday night and continued Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton failed to narrow the gaps over international crises involving Iran and North Korea and the competition for dominance in the Asia-Pacific region.
China also rebuffed Clinton's appeals to soften its support for the government of President Bashar Assad of Syria. Adding to the bumps on what is likely to be Clinton's last visit to China as secretary of state, one of her most important appointments, a session with Vice President Xi Jinping, the likely next leader of China, was canceled.
Most important, the Chinese leadership showed no signs of buckling after months of efforts by Clinton and her senior aides to persuade the country to be more flexible on maritime disputes in the South China Sea.
"China has sovereignty over the islands of the South China Sea and the adjacent waters," said the foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, during an appearance with Clinton in the Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square. "There is plentiful historical and jurisprudential evidence for that."
When asked about the deepening of U.S. military engagement in Australia and the Philippines, Yang added that the United States should reconsider its own strategy in Asia in light of "the trends of our current era and the general wish of countries in the region."
Clinton and her senior aides did not come to Beijing with high expectations of resolving major differences, given China's once-in-a-decade leadership transition beginning this fall. The highly scripted transition has been roiled by a political scandal that led to the downfall of a major party official, Bo Xilai, that revealed some of the maneuvering among the political elite.
As Clinton was wrapping up her trip, a central figure in the scandal, Wang Lijun, was charged with "bending the law for selfish ends, defection, abuse of power and bribe- taking," according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
At the news conference with Yang, there was little effort to paper over the two countries' differences on Syria and the territorial disputes in the South China Sea. In July, China established a military garrison and a legislative assembly on the tiny Paracel Islands, which Vietnam also claims, exacerbating the tensions there.
Clinton, who is in the middle of a 10-day trip through Asia, has repeatedly called on China to discuss with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations a code of conduct to address disputes in the region. The Chinese have resisted that idea, with Yang insisting on direct negotiations with individual countries.
On the conflict in Syria, Clinton reiterated U.S. criticism of China's veto, with Russia, of three U.N. Security Council resolutions intended to press Assad to end the violent crackdown in his country, which has claimed an estimated 20,000 lives and created a rising flood of more than 240,000 refugees, 100,000 in the past month.
"We believe that the situation in Syria is a threat to peace and stability in the entire region," Clinton said. "And the longer the conflict goes on, the greater the risk that it spills over borders and destabilizes neighboring countries."
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