Both officers also agreed on the need to stick to protocols established under the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES).
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HONG KONG When a U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer sailed near one of Beijing’s artificial islands in the disputed South China Sea this week, it was operating in a maritime domain bristling with Chinese ships.
The spokesman said China supported the right to freedom of navigation and overflight, but accused the USA of abusing those for its own interests.
The USA naval challenge to China’s territorial assertiveness in the South China Sea came after months of frustration within the Pentagon at what a few defense officials saw as unnecessary delays by the White House and State Department in approving the mission.
“The South China Sea is a completely different beast”, said Li Jie, a senior researcher at the Chinese Naval Research Institute in Beijing. The official says Richardson told Wu the US will continue to sail wherever global law allows.
China’s military will take “all necessary” measures in response to any future U.S. Navy incursions into what it considers its territorial waters around islands in the South China Sea, a Defence Ministry spokesman said Thursday.
The Philippines on Friday welcomed the decision of an global tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands to assume jurisdiction over its case against China, which seeks to invalidate Beijing’s massive claim in the resource-rich South China Sea.
The report pointed out that “territorial claims are the jurisdiction of another body, the worldwide Court of Justice (ICJ), and the ICJ only entertains cases if all parties in the dispute participate”.
The White House reiterated that its military operation in the South China Sea was in accordance with worldwide law.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration concluded it has jurisdiction to proceed with a complaints brought by the Philippines, despite China’s refusal to accept the proceedings.
The South China Sea is home to one of the world’s busiest shipping routes.
Reuters reported that the Chinese and United States navies were set to hold high-level talks Thursday over tension in the South China. Adm Harris has spoken out against China’s island building in the Spratlys.
Several countries in the region have made claims over areas of the South China Sea including China, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.
Chinese state media said on Thursday a “guided-missile destroyer flotilla” under the navy’s South China Sea Fleet carried out a “realistic confrontation training exercise” involving anti-aircraft firing and firing at shore at night.
He continued, “It demonstrates that sovereign claims are not necessarily indisputable and it shows that judging issues like this on the basis of global law and worldwide practice are a viable way of – at a minimum – managing territorial conflicts, if not resolving them”.
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EEZ can only be imposed based on boundaries of inhabitable land, and this has prompted all the countries making claims on the region to station personnel, and in a few cases build military bases out of the water, to bolster their claim. The Chinese coast guard ships took effective control of the disputed area shortly afterwards.
