China engaging in behaviour that is troubling Japan, India: Bolton

Thomas Peter/Reuters

China is engaging in a behaviour that is troubling a lot of nations in the region, including India and Japan, especially through its belligerent policies on the South China sea, United States National Security Advisor John Bolton has said.

China is engaged in hotly contested territorial disputes in both the South China Sea and the East China Sea. Beijing has built up and militarised many of the islands and reefs it controls in the region.

China claims sovereignty over all of South China Sea. Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei and Taiwan have counter claims.

Both areas are stated to be rich in minerals, oil and other natural resources and are also vital to global trade.

"China's current policies, like in the South China Sea, are nearly belligerent in many respects. It is also engaging in a behaviour that is troubling to Japan, Taiwan, India and the Central Asian Republics," Bolton said in response to a question at the Alexander Hamilton Society on Wednesday.

Bolton said that the arguments for China joining the World Trade Organisation was that it would become a more market-oriented rules-based society.

Instead, for 20 years, China has continued to steal American technology, discriminated against foreign trade investment, and against internal economic systems.

Bolton said that China can no longer get away with this.

For all the other disagreements that the US has with European countries on economic issues, they feel the same pain from Chinese behaviour on Intellectual Property and technology transfer, he said.

The recent policy of the Trump administration to act against China has taken the Chinese by surprise and hoped that this will cause changes in their behaviour, he said.

Bolton, who was in Russia recently, held talks with the Russian leadership and urged them to talk to China.

Even though Russia and China as of now appear to be friendly, the interests of the two countries do not match, he said.

While Russia is an exporter of hydrocarbons, China is a major importer. Russia sells advanced weapons systems and China buys them, he said.

He said that the Chinese are doing to the Russians the same thing they do to many American products and businesses, which is stealing their intellectual property, copying it and duplicating it.

And soon the Chinese will sell the same items for less than what the Russians sells to the world, he said.