The Chinese and USA navies were due to hold high-level talks over tension in the South China Sea after a United States warship challenged Beijing’s territorial assertions in the disputed waters.
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Beijing rebuked Washington for sending a guided-missile destroyer within 12 nautical miles of one of China’s man-made islands on Tuesday, saying it had tracked and warned the USS Lassen and called in the USA ambassador to protest.
“We would urge the U.S. not to continue down the wrong path. But if the USA side does continue, we will take all necessary measures according to the need”, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Colonel Yang Yujun said in a statement released on Thursday.
The U.S. Navy sail-past provoked angry Chinese reactions but was welcomed by America’s allies, including the Philippines and upheld by others like Vietnam, which has also been locked in a bitter territorial feud with China.
An early test of the relationship comes next week when the head of the US Pacific Command, Admiral Harry Harris, goes on a scheduled trip to Beijing to meet senior Chinese officials.
Washington has stated that the objective of the USS Lassen patrol is to assert freedom of navigation in worldwide waters. Though Mr. Harris has been highly grave of China’s island building in the Spratlys since he believes that China is using bulldozers and dredges to create a “great wall of sand” in the South China sea. A few of the sea is also claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan.
The official added: “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”.
Both wanted to avoid giving the appearance that any operation was in response to other events, the official said, such as the breach of 21 million US personnel records that has been linked to hackers in China.
China has been dredging and transporting sand to build the islands in the shallow seas just to the west of the Philippines.
Speculation has risen that Australia might undertake similar exercises, either alongside the US navy or on its own, but any move would risk antagonizing top trading partner China.
China’s National Defence Ministry spokesperson has responded to United States media’s claim for the freedom of navigation principle after a USA warship entered the waters near China’s Nansha Islands in South China Sea On October 27th. The South China Sea is one of the tensest places in East Asia.
Following a stand-off between Chinese ships and the weak Filipino navy in 2012, China took control of a rich fishing ground called Scarborough Shoal that is within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.
Zhang dismissed USA concerns that China’s territorial claims in the region were a threat to transport or regional security. The tribunal is now expected to examine the Philippines’ submissions including one into the validity of China’s claim to more than 80 percent of the South China Sea, based on a nine-dash line drawn on a 1947 map for which it gives no precise coordinates.
She also confirmed reports that two Australian Royal Navy destroyers are now in China for a joint live fire exercise.
Protecting freedom of navigation resonates in the region because the South China Sea hosts more than $5 trillion of shipping each year and is home to about a 10th of the world’s annual fishing catch.
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