In her statement Tuesday, Wang called on all concerned not to raise tensions in the region and to resolve disputes by peaceful means.
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Additional patrols would follow in the coming weeks and could also be conducted around features that Vietnam and the Philippines have built up in the Spratlys, the second USA official said.
The United States defence official said the trip took the Lassen within 12 nautical miles of Subi Reef, but not a second man-made island known as Mischief Reef. “It’s not something that’s unique to China”.
US Defense Secretary Ash Carter earlier said that “the U.S. will fly, sail and operate wherever global law allows, as we do around the world”.
The reefs, which were submerged, were turned into islands by China after a massive dredging project in 2014.
The move is a significant escalation of the dispute over the strategically vital South China Sea, which Beijing claims nearly in its entirety, even waters close to the coasts of other nations.
China claims almost the entire South China Sea, a key shipping lane, with overlapping claims to the sea’s potentially rich mineral resources by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei. “Australia strongly supports these rights”, Defence Minister Marise Payne said.
“I think everybody would welcome a balance of power anywhere in the world”, Philippine President Benigno Aquino said.
The country “will staunchly defend its territorial sovereignty” and “resolutely respond to any country’s deliberately provocative actions”.
The patrols, however, threaten to upset already strained relations with China.
China believes the islands to be its sovereign territory, and strictly considers the 12-mile zone around the islands to be exclusively its territorial waters.
The best that can probably be hoped for is that Washington’s belated actions, although conducted at higher cost and risk than should have been the case, can hold the line on USA resolve until the next administration.
In late 2013, China started construction work on reefs that have been submerged, turning them into islands.
Depending on how Beijing frames its response, one silver lining could be improved clarity about the extent of China’s maritime boundaries within the ambiguous U-shaped line in the South China Sea.
The official also stressed that these operations are “distinct from the question of sovereignty over these islands”.
The USS Lassen destroyer was scheduled to pass by the Subi and Mischief reefs, which belong to the Spratly archipelago, over which China claims sovereignty.
The United States’ dispatch of the USS Lassen had been planned weeks in advance, in what Washington has called an exercise of the right to freedom of navigation in worldwide waters.
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Zhang noted that it had done so regardless of China’s earlier dissuasion. China said they were there as part of a routine drill following exercises with Russian Federation.
