China accused the United States of meddling in relations between China and the Southeast Asian countries on Tuesday, saying the United States “deliberately stokes territorial and maritime disputes.”
The comment by a Chinese government spokesman came a day after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the search for offshore resources in China is “completely illegal.”
Pompeo also accused China of carrying out an “intimidation campaign to control” the disputed fishing territories and the development of energy on the high seas.
“The world will not allow Beijing to treat the South China Sea as its maritime empire,” Pompeo said in a statement on Monday. “The United States stands behind our allies and partners in Southeast Asia in protecting their sovereign rights to extraterritorial resources, in accordance with their rights and obligations under international law.”
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The United States has been critical of Chinese actions in the South China Sea, such as building military bases on artificial islands, but never condemned them by citing violations of international law.
“The United States is not a country directly involved in the disputes,” the Chinese embassy in Washington DC said in a statement Tuesday. “However, it has continued to interfere with the issue.”
“On the pretext of preserving stability, it is flexing muscles, causing tension and inciting confrontation in the region,” added the embassy.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian echoed these sentiments at a press conference Tuesday, calling the United States a “troublemaker” and accusing the government of “exaggerating arbitration” to serve its own political agenda. in the United States during an election year.
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“The United States, as a country outside the region, wants nothing more than chaos in the South China Sea in order to benefit from the murky waters,” Zhao said Tuesday.
Pompeo’s statement shows a change in the previous policy of the United States, once it chose to encourage China and the smaller nations to the south, to work through maritime disputes with UN-backed arbitration.
The governments surrounding the South China Sea have yet to comment publicly on the dispute.
But Philippine presidential spokesman Harry Roque told The Associated Press that he expects the United States and China to try to “woo” their nation as rivalry increases.
Roque also pointed out that “the important thing now is to prioritize the implementation and elaboration of a code of conduct to avoid tensions in that area.”
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Relations between the United States and China have become increasingly strained in recent months, beginning with what the Trump administration said was a lack of transparency by Beijing during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, which has resulted in more than 13 million confirmed cases worldwide and almost 575,000 deaths.
The United States has reported nearly 3.4 million cases to date and more than 136,000 deaths according to data from John Hopkins University.
Diplomatic relations have been further strained due to China’s new security laws in Hong Kong, its refusal to sign a nuclear arms trade agreement with the US and Russia, as well as the race to 5G, in what the US has said would be a major security threat if China is the first to succeed in its development and partnership with other counties.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
