South China Sea row must be solved through negotiated solution: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with Jim W. Dean, managing editor of the Veterans Today from Atlanta, on the recent dispatch of a US warship close to a Chinese island in the disputed waters of the South China Sea.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: The US says the move was to challenge efforts to restrict freedom of navigation? Does Washington have that right near the Chinese waters?

Dean: We are actually going to have a very long-running international dispute here. It’s not so much the US claiming that China doesn’t have the right, all the other countries in the region are claiming this also. The US has just basically been the figurehead on this.

And if you take a look at the map, which I really ask people to do, the South China Sea is huge and to go the way down south of China into the oceans…where a lot of these countries are.

And for China to say that this is all of our preserve and we’re going to be the boss to say how traffic is controlled here, internationally they don’t have any leg to stand on whatsoever.

They’re just claiming that some islands way way down there, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, were all China’s lands that gives them right to make this claim and they’ve got a bad hand there. But that’s from the legal point.

From a political point, they were making a big mistake because this is rallying the other nations around the US to confront them on this. And China has worked very very hard to build bridges with these people.

So, on this issue by not willing to negotiate, why don’t we work out a formula, where petrochemicals are found in this region, where all the countries in the region can share in them...

And I think the problem is because China has a billion-person population. The onset is we feel that the large population gives us the right to make a claim for all of the resources, simply because we need them. And unfortunately that sounds a little bit like communist capitalist.

Press TV: How do you think this is going to play itself out? Do you think that they’re going to back down or is it going to become more and more confrontational that the other side would perhaps put more pressure on Beijing?

Dean: I’m afraid I see both sides seeing some benefit in escalation, it strengthens themselves domestically. Since that’s an important issue for China. And at some point, they’re going to have to grow up and the grown-ups are going to have to come in and say this is going to have to be negotiated out.

And I see no way out of this without coming up with some kind of formula even if it’s based on population which I think would be fair that all of the future resources found in the region would be shared. They would be exploited and developed as a group and shared as a group. And if they do anything other than that they’re really really hurting everybody and shooting themselves in the foot.

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