Like other countries in the world, China must uphold its own sovereignty, territorial integrity and development interests. At the same time, we are willing to properly handle differences and disagreements in state-to-state relations.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
So China will be having to make some choices as to whose side it wants to be on. Hopefully, this will be the beginning of a major improvement in our relationship with them, if they choose correctly.
Our strategic dialogue with China can both protect American interests and uphold our principles, provided we are honest about our differences on human rights and other issues and provided we use a mix of targeted incentives and sanctions to narrow these differences.
China has become a major presence for most countries around the world but notably for its neighboring countries in Asia. So I think it is a common position for Japan and its Asian neighbors that we certainly would strive to maintain as much as possible friendly relations with China.
The Chinese state is constructed in an entirely different way from western states. Unlike European states, for over a millennium the Chinese state has not been obliged to compete for power with rivals such as the church, the aristocracy or merchants.
Nobody messes with China, nobody messes with the United States, or with Europe, because these are really big entities with a lot of clout and a lot of economic power. They have a place at the table.
What frustrates U.S. officials is that China sometimes seems more comfortable accommodating a strong United States, as it did in past decades, than partnering with an America that's less dominant.
China and the United States have major influence in international affairs and shoulder important responsibilities in upholding world peace and promoting common development.
We have reiterated on many occasions that China wishes to establish and develop long-term, good-neighbourly and friendly relations with all countries in south Asia.
There's a national ambition, a collective, in a sense, political ambition, which I think is the thing we see from far away. That's the fact that China's building roads and airports and extending its reaches out into the East China Sea and the South China Sea, and in a way that's putting it into some tension with its neighbors.
China has existed within very roughly its present borders for over two millennia and for virtually the whole of that period saw itself as a 'civilisation state.' It was only when it was too weak to resist the western powers in the early 20th century that it finally acquiesced in an arrangement that was alien to it.
No opposing quotes found.