Earlier this week, an American B-52 bomber mistakenly flew within two miles of a disputed artificial island claimed by China in the South China Sea.
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The U.S. takes no official stance on sovereignty claims in the strategically crucial sea that China claims nearly in its entirety.
A USA official was quoted on Dec 11 as saying two bombers flew within 12 nautical miles of China’s manmade islands near the Spratly Islands – the Nansha Islands in Chinese – on Nov 8-9, not Dec 10 as alleged by the Chinese side.
The Wall Street Journal on Friday, citing senior United States defence officials, said the flight had “unintentionally” flown over the man-made island.
“We conduct B-52 flights in global air space in that part of the world all the time”, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said in November. The US uses pre-planned freedom of navigation operations to assert its rights to “innocent passage” in other country’s territorial waters. Foreign Minister Wang Yi stated in that the state of affairs was primarily stable, still in that outside nations shouldn’t “manufacture tensions”.
“We don’t think this is a constructive approach and will not receive the support and welcome of relevant nations”, Wang said.
The Foreign Ministry said it had “lodged solemn representation with the United States” over the incident.
EDUARDO MUNOZ/REUTERS China’s Defense Ministry stated the US intentionally raised tensions by flying the aircraft over the Chinese language-controlled island.
The society said President Ma should visit Taiping Island while still in office to reinforce Taiwan’s sovereignty claim over the island, boost the morale of the Coast Guard personnel stationed there, and to show the worldwide community Taiwan’s willingness to safeguard the freedom of navigation and overflight enjoyed by every country, as well as its resolution to solve the disputes over the contested waters in a peaceful way.
The US is critical of China for building artificial islands in the disputed sea, and has flown other B-52 bombers and sailed a guided-missile destroyer near some of the constructions in recent months.
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Beijing considers Taiwan a breakaway province and filed a diplomatic complaint demanding the United States not go through with the arms sale in order to avoid harming US-China relations. China is urging the U.S.to employ measures to prevent these sorts of incidents from happening again. U.S. defense firms are forbidden to sell arms to Taiwan.
