China Stresses Importance of Principle of Sovereignty

SINGAPORE, July 27 (Xinhua) -- China said on Tuesday that upholding the principle of sovereignty has become all the more necessary in the present-day world where there is a severe lack of equilibrium in the balance of power.

In a speech at a dialogue meeting here between ASEAN and its dialogue partners, Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan said the purposes and spirit defined in the U.N. Charter and the norms governing international relations advocated at the Bandung Conference are still of strong vitality and practical significance today.

These are the basis of a new international political, economic and security order and carry the hope of a lasting peace for the world, Tang told the opening of the ASEAN Post-Ministerial Conference (PMC).

The core of these principles and norms are mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, non-aggression, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit and peaceful coexistence, Tang said.
"Countries, big or small, strong or weak, are all equal before the principle of sovereignty," he said.

"The reality that globalization has made national interests closely intertwined cannot alter the effectiveness of the principle of sovereignty, nor can it change the unlawfulness of interference in the internal affairs of a sovereignty state," he stressed.

"When the reality is marked by a severe lack of equilibrium in the balance of power in the world, upholding the principle of sovereignty has become all the more necessary. This is especially true of the vast number of developing and small and medium-sized countries, whose sovereignty and independence are the basic prerequisite for their subsistence and development," the Chinese foreign minister said.

He said claims such as "the supremacy of human rights over sovereignty" and "there is no national boundary in safeguarding human rights" are in essence excuses for strong countries to bully weak ones and attempts to have a rationale for big countries to control small ones.

Disputes among states, he said, can only be resolved peacefully through dialogue and negotiations on the basis of mutual respect of sovereignty. "This should be an important principle for the new international order."