Last Sept. 22, 2020, China’s President Xi Jinping spoke before the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) via video broadcast and declared, “We will never seek hegemony, expansion, or sphere of influence.”
Forty-six years earlier on April 10, 1974, China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping declared before the UNGA, “If one day China should change her color and turn into a superpower, if she too should play the tyrant in the world, and everywhere subject others to her bullying, aggression and exploitation, the people of the world should identify her as social-imperialism, expose it, oppose it and work together with the Chinese people to overthrow it.”
What happened in the South China Sea between Deng Xiaoping’s famous 1974 UNGA speech and Xi Jinping’s recent UNGA speech starkly illustrates how China has actually transformed into the expansionist hegemon, bully, and tyrant that it promised the world it would never become. Under its infamous nine-dash line, China is claiming 85.7 percent of all the geologic features, waters, fish, oil, gas, and other natural resources in the South China Sea, encroaching on the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of five Asean coastal states, including the Philippines. In 1974, China started to aggressively enforce its nine-dash line, a graphic symbol of China’s drive for hegemony and expansion in the South China Sea.
Read more: https://opinion.inquirer.net/134468/chinas-hegemony-and-expansion-in-scs#ixzz6auBJgr64
Follow us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook