China
has accused Donald Trump's administration of putting regional stability
in East Asia at risk following remarks by the President's defense
secretary that a U.S. commitment to defend Japanese territory applies to
an island group that China claims.
Foreign
Ministry spokesman Lu Kang has called on Trump's administration to
avoid discussion of the issue and reasserted China's claim of
sovereignty over the tiny uninhabited islands, known in Japanese as the
Senkaku and Chinese as Diaoyu.
The
1960 US-Japan treaty is "a product of the Cold War, which should not
impair China's territorial sovereignty and legitimate rights," Lu was
quoted as saying in a statement posted on the ministry's website.
"We
urge the U.S. side to take a responsible attitude, stop making wrong
remarks on the issue involving the Diaoyu islands' sovereignty, and
avoid making the issue more complicated and bringing instability to the
regional situation," he added.
Widespread alarm over how the region could shape geopolitical tensions was raised following the revelation that Steve Bannon, the chief strategist in Trump's White House, said he believed the US would go to war with China within five to 10 years during a radio broadcast in 2016.
While the prospect remains relatively remote, experts have told The Independent
they believe such a conflict would be catastrophic, throwing the entire
globe into turmoil and potentially ending "life as we know it on
Earth".
The United States would likely win because sending China's
untested forces against the might of America's military would be like
pitching farmers against Achilles and his warriors, said one, but even a
conventional military victory would be a strategic disaster. It would
set off a global economic crisis and create a potential power vacuum
inside defeated China "the like of which we can't imagine".
Mr Bannon
said war would erupt in the South China Sea in "five to 10 years". He
said: "They’re taking their sandbars and making basically stationary
aircraft carriers and putting missiles on those. They come here to the
United States in front of our face—and you understand how important face
is—and say it’s an ancient territorial sea."
The
US and China have been engaged in a back-and-forth dispute over
military build-up and territorial claims in the region for some years.
In December the US said it would base its deadliest fighter jets in Australia, and days later China seized an unmanned US Navy drone.
It
followed a diplomatic spat around then-President-elect Trump's
congratulatory phone call with Taiwan's Prime Minister Tsai Ing-wen,
which broke with decades of US policy. Mr Trump has been forthright
about China's influence, blaming it for the loss of American jobs.
The war of words recently heated up when a Chinese military official was quoted as saying talk of war with the US under Mr Trump "are not just slogans, they are becoming a practical reality".
Trevor
McCrisken, associate professor of politics and international studies at
the University of Warwick, said that if war broke out "we would be
looking, I would imagine, at World War Three".
He said: "I really do think that would be the end of life as we know it on Earth.
"From
a global strategic risk level I would say the last thing you want is
war between the United States and any of the major powers because of the
risks of escalation, obviously the potential for nuclear weapons to be
used. The likelihood of nuclear exchange between the two principals
involved is high."
But,
he added, the "overwhelming view of most policy-makers in Washington
since at least the late 1970s" favours a form of "cooperative, if
competitive" relationship with China.
Dr
Peter Roberts, director of military sciences at the Royal United
Services Institute, said: "America would take military losses. They
would lose thousands and thousands [of personnel]. But China would be
utterly defeated. If America goes to war, it wages war in its totality.
They would go to this with unparalleled violence and energy."
The
US has an "overall competitive edge" partly due to technological
superiority, Dr Roberts said, but also because the four branches of its
military—Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force—are trained to work
closely together. "It's demonstrated how it can use all those arms to
deliver military victory," he said.
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