He has warned China would respond resolutely to any country carrying out what he described as deliberately provocative actions.
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Tuesday’s operations were “not directed at any specific country”, the United States official said. And if asked, officials were not to speak on the record about the maneuver, administration officials said.
Beijing said that the USS Lassen illegally entered Chinese territory when it sailed early on Tuesday near the Spratly, or Nansha, group of islands. “Is that true? Did we do that?” “We have only said that anything built on a low-tide rock or reef that is underwater much of the time, it does not cast a territorial sea”.
(Senator:) “Did we send a destroyer inside the 12-mile zone?” The exchange prompted Senator John McCain, R-Arizona, to express exasperation.
“They don’t want the Americans to be there”, Sun said.
China is “strongly discontented with and firmly against” the move, he said. The U.S. says it is not seeking to contain China, while China says the USA policy known as the “pivot” to Asia is precisely about that.
China’s regime of island-building and increasing assertiveness in the region is seen as part of its long-term play to challenge the United States and its regional supremacy.
“China will firmly react to this deliberate provocation”, Lu Kang, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said at a regularly scheduled news conference.
Hours later, China’s vice foreign minister, Zhang Yesui, summoned US Ambassador Max Baucus to deliver a formal protest.
An aerial view shows a Japan Coast Guard patrol ship (R) spraying water at a fishing boat (L) that is carrying Taiwanese activists on board about 32 km (20 miles) west-southwest of one of the disputed islands in the East China Sea.
‘US forces operate in the Asia-Pacific region on a daily basis, including in the South China Sea, ‘ he added.
Xi surprised USA officials after a meeting with Obama in Washington last month by saying that China had “no intention to militarise” the islands.
Speaking to foreign correspondents in Manila, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III said he supported the US naval maneuvers as an assertion of freedom of navigation and as a means to balance power in the region.
Pentagon spokesmen said the destroyer had sailed past Mischief Reef and Subi Reef, which were recently partially submerged reefs, but have been built into islands since previous year in a major construction drive by China.
The USS Lassen passed within 12 nautical miles – the normal limit of territorial waters around natural land – of at least one of the formations Beijing claims in the South China Sea.
Beijing’s response mirrored its actions in May when a navy dispatcher warned off a US Navy P8-A Poseidon surveillance aircraft as it flew over Fiery Cross Reef, where China has conducted extensive reclamation work.
Under his South China Sea peace initiative, Massachusetts said that the ROC, upholding the basic principles of “safeguarding sovereignty, shelving disputes, pursuing peace and reciprocity, and promoting joint development”, is willing to exploit resources in the South China Sea in cooperation with the other parties concerned.
With the development on the disputed waters in South China Sea, especially when USA sent its US Navy warship, it is now up to all the countries involved to make the next move.
“Has the United States now given China a pretext for going ahead and militarizing anyway?”
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Under the guidance of Xi, as chairman of the Central Military Commission, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has shown it might push the boundaries of Chinese sovereignty wherever it can safely do so.
