BFF-53 US calls China the new East India Company at sea

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US-CHINA-INDIA-CONFLICT

US calls China the new East India Company at sea

WASHINGTON, July 14, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – A senior US official on
Tuesday likened China’s state enterprises to Britain’s colonizing East
India Company as Washington takes a tougher stance against Beijing in
the dispute-rife South China Sea.

A day after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo branded most of
Beijing’s claims in the sea illegal, his top aide for East Asia
denounced a proliferation of rigs, survey ships and fishing boats sent
by Chinese state-run companies.

Assistant Secretary of State David Stilwell said that oil major
CNOOC and other firms were serving as “battering rams” to intimidate
other nations.

“In all our societies, citizens deserve to know the differences
between commercial enterprises and instruments of foreign state
power,” Stilwell said at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies.

“These state enterprises are modern-day equivalents of the East
India Company,” he said.

The British East India Company seized control of most of the Indian
subcontinent in the guise of trading in tea, cotton, spices and other
goods before Britain formally took charge in the mid-19th century.

The reference is especially loaded due to the East India Company’s
role in smuggling opium into China, culminating in Britain’s 1843
colonization of Hong Kong — the start of what Beijing calls a century
of humiliation.

China has recently triggered international outrage by clamping down
on freedoms promised to Hong Kong before Britain handed back the
financial hub in 1997.

In the latest rift between the United States and China, Pompeo on
Monday sided with the Philippines, Vietnam and other Southeast Asian
nations in rejecting China’s vast claims in the South China Sea.

The United States had previously said that China’s claims were
unlawful but had taken no explicit position on individual disputes in
the resource-rich and strategic sea.

Stilwell renewed US concerns on China’s long-running talks with the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations on a South China Sea code of
conduct, whose target date of next year has been pushed back due to
the coronavirus pandemic.

“Beijing may have backed off its arbitrary 2021 deadline for
concluding the talks, but its hegemonic goals remain,” Stilwell said.

While the United States has no claims in the sea, he warned that US
interests were “clearly at stake” in the code of conduct.

“A code of conduct that in any way legitimates Beijing’s
reclamation, militarization or unlawful maritime claims would be
severely damaging, and unacceptable for many nations,” he said.

BSS/AFP/MRU/2257hrs