United States Defence Secretary Charles Hagel on Monday was given an unexpected tour around China’s first aircraft carrier soon after arriving here on a three-day visit aimed at building trust between the two countries amid rising regional tensions.
Mr. Hagel, who arrived in the northeastern port city of Qingdao from Japan, was escorted around ‘Liaoning’, China’s first aircraft carrier, which is close to becoming fully operational, by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
U.S. officials said they saw the two-hour tour — the first ever granted to a senior foreign official — as an effort by the PLA to build trust.
“We didn’t see every space aboard the ship. But, yes, we felt this was an honest, genuine effort to be open about this brand new capability that they’re trying to develop,” a U.S. official told Reuters. Before landing here, Mr. Hagel had called on China as a “great power” to wield its influence responsibly and refrain from “intimidating” neighbours.
China is embroiled in a dispute with Japan over the claim to the East China Sea islands — Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China — and over questions of wartime history. Beijing is one among more than 10 claimants to the islands and waters of the South China Sea.
Mr. Hagel told Japan’s Nikkei newspaper that China was wrong to have recently established an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the East China Sea, including disputed islands. His comments evoked an angry response within the Chinese media, which said he needed “to be informed of some basic facts.”
“The establishment of ADIZ is a normal move, which conforms to the U.N. Charter and is aimed [at ensuring] stability while the escalating tension, in the first place, was ignited by Tokyo’s illegal ‘nationalisation’ of China’s Diaoyu Islands in 2012,” Xinhua said in a commentary on Monday.
