Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is urging the United States to act cautiously in South China Sea.
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Australia is not involved in U.S. naval activity in the South China Sea, but strongly supports the USA policy of conducting freedom of navigation operations, the defense minister, Marise Payne, said.
Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan contest China’s claims of sovereignty over all of South China Sea and receive security support from the US.
“If the United States, having initiated this free of navigation exercise backs down, it will be worse than not having initiated it at all”, said Bolton.
Washington’s long-awaited move to assert freedom of navigation in the South China Sea also escalated the dispute over the strategically vital waters, where Beijing has been transforming reefs and outcrops into artificial islands with potential military use.
China claims sovereignty over nearly the whole of the South China Sea, which transit a few of the busiest sea lanes in the world and is believed to sit atop a vast amount of oil wealth.
Foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said on Tuesday that the USS Lassen, a guided missile destroyer, entered the waters near the islands “illegally” and “without receiving permission from the Chinese government”.
Chinese Embassy spokesperson Zhu Haiquan said earlier in Washington that the concept of freedom of navigation should not be used as an excuse for muscle flexing and infringing upon the sovereignty and security of other countries. Other countries in South-East Asia have competing claims for the Spratly Islands, Paracel Islands and Scarborough Shoal, which are thought to have resource-rich waters around them. “We will continue to closely monitor the relevant seas and airspace, and take all necessary steps in accordance with the need”, the ministry said in a statement that gave no details on precisely where the United States ship sailed.
The mission marks the first time the USA have conducted a patrol within 12 miles of the reefs since Beijing began building them in 2013.
A Filipino soldier patrolling at the shore of Pagasa island (Thitu Island) in the Spratly group of islands in the South China Sea, west of Palawan, Philippines, on May 11.
The official stressed that these operations are “distinct from the question of sovereignty over these islands”.
The decision to go ahead with the patrol follows months of deliberation and risks upsetting already strained ties with China.
The pictures also show a host of facilities with the potential for military applications being developed, including as many as three runways, at least one of them 3,000 metres (10,000 feet) long.
Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, 12-nautical-mile limits can not be set around man-made islands built on previously submerged reefs.
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Vietnam also claims the Spratlys and the Paracels as sovereign territory, extending Vietnam’s EEZ across much of the region and bringing it into direct conflict with China.
