- The United States is aligning its South China Sea policy with a 2016 arbitration court ruling and officially rejecting many of China’s broad claims about the strategic waterway.
- Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who called China for intimidation and coercion in the South China Sea, said Monday that “the predatory worldview of the PRC has no place in the 21st century.”
- China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei have overlapping claims to the strategic South China Sea, but Beijing’s claims are by far the largest and span most of the waterway.
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The United States is aligning its South China Sea policy with a 2016 international arbitration tribunal ruling and officially rejecting many of China’s claims about the disputed waterway, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday.
“Beijing’s claims to offshore resources in most of the South China Sea are completely illegal, as is its intimidation campaign to control them,” Pompeo said.
“Beijing uses intimidation to undermine the sovereign rights of Southeast Asian coastal states in the South China Sea, intimidate them with extraterritorial resources, assert unilateral dominance and replace international law with ‘power does justice,'” he said.
He added that “the predatory worldview of the PRC has no place in the 21st century.”
China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei have overlapping claims to the strategic South China Sea, but Beijing’s claims are by far the largest and span most of the waterway. Among the various claimant states, China has more aggressively asserted its disputed sovereignty.
China has tried to solidify its expansive demands on the region by building artificial islands and outposts, as well as increased military activity in the area, despite a 2016 ruling by an international arbitration tribunal that rejects many of the China’s demands.
Beijing has refused to acknowledge the decision, which sided with the Philippines, rejecting both the ruling and the court’s authority to weigh in on the dispute.
Even before the release of the Pompeo statement, the United States has repeatedly said that China’s claims to the South China Sea are “illegal,” most recently in a Defense Department statement condemning Chinese military exercises near of the Paracel Islands, territories that China confiscated from Vietnam.
While China was conducting its military exercises, two U.S. Navy aircraft carrier strike groups sailed into the South China Sea to conduct dual carrier operations as an unequivocal demonstration of force. The United States also routinely conducts freedom of navigation and bomber overflights in the region to challenge China’s excessive maritime claims.
“The world will not allow Beijing to treat the South China Sea as its maritime empire,” said Pompeo. “We support the international community in defense of the freedom of the seas and respect for sovereignty and reject any attempt to impose ‘power does the right thing’ in the South China Sea or the region as a whole.”
The latest move by the US is likely to further increase bilateral tensions and increase the risk of confrontation in the South China Sea, where the US and China have had a series of risky clashes in recent years.
