BEIJING: China’s government on Wednesday (Apr 10) labelled as “dangerous” comments by a senior US diplomat that the AUKUS submarine project between Australia, Britain and the United States could help deter any Chinese move against Taiwan.
The project, finalised by the three countries last year, involves Australia acquiring nuclear-powered attack submarines as part of the allies’ efforts to push back against China’s growing power in the Indo-Pacific region.
Speaking last week, the US State Department’s number two diplomat, Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, said the new submarine capabilities would enhance peace and stability, including in the strait that separates China and Taiwan.
China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, despite the objections of the government in Taipei, and is regularly angered by what it views as foreign inference in a domestic issue.
“His remarks are very dangerous,” Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, told reporters in Beijing when asked about what Campbell had said.
“The establishment of the so-called trilateral security partnership between the United States, Britain and Australia is essentially to provoke military confrontation in the region through military cooperation in small circles,” she added.
Any attempt to use military cooperation to “intervene in the Taiwan issue is to interfere in China’s internal affairs” and is a threat to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait region, Zhu said.
Source: CNA
