Lt. Nicholas Lingo, a spokesperson for the US Navy’s seventh Fleet headquartered in Japan, mentioned it was the second so-called freedom of navigation operation within the Paracel Islands — referred to as the Xisha Islands in China — to this point this 12 months, and the third focusing on Beijing’s “extreme maritime claims” in regional waters throughout the identical interval.
Wednesday’s operation by the guided-missile destroyer USS Benfold challenged not solely China however Vietnam and the self-ruled island of Taiwan, which additionally declare the islands, as all three governments require army vessels to hunt permission or give advance discover of “harmless passage” by way of the realm, Lingo mentioned.
The Paracels are a group of 130 small coral islands and reefs within the northwestern a part of the South China Sea. They haven’t any indigenous inhabitants to talk of, solely Chinese language army garrisons amounting to 1,400 individuals, based on the CIA World Factbook.
The islands have been in Chinese language arms for almost 50 years and through that point they have been populated with Individuals’s Liberation Military (PLA) army installations.
The PLA’s Southern Theater Command mentioned it warned the US destroyer to go away its “territorial waters.”
“The actions of the US army have critically violated China’s sovereignty and safety, critically undermined the peace and stability of the South China Sea, and critically violated worldwide legislation and norms of worldwide relations,” PLA Air Power Col. Tian Junli, spokesman for the Southern Theater Command, mentioned in a press release.
However Lingo, the US seventh Fleet spokesperson, mentioned the crusing of the US destroyer “upheld the rights, freedoms, and lawful makes use of of the ocean acknowledged in worldwide legislation.”
“Illegal and sweeping maritime claims within the South China Sea pose a severe risk to the liberty of the seas, together with the freedoms of navigation and overflight, free commerce and unimpeded commerce, and freedom of financial alternative for South China Sea littoral nations,” the assertion mentioned.
“Beneath worldwide legislation … the ships of all states — together with their warships — get pleasure from the proper of harmless passage by way of the territorial sea. The unilateral imposition of any authorization or advance-notification requirement for harmless passage is illegal,” the US Navy assertion mentioned.
Asserting freedom of navigation rights entails crusing throughout the 12-mile territorial restrict from a nation’s shoreline acknowledged by worldwide legislation.
The US Navy assertion mentioned Wednesday’s operation additionally challenged “straight baselines” — strikes to outline all of the waters throughout the island chain as a single territorial declare.
“Worldwide legislation doesn’t allow continental States, just like the PRC, to determine baselines round complete dispersed island teams. With these baselines, the PRC has tried to say extra inside waters, territorial sea, unique financial zone, and continental shelf than it’s entitled to underneath worldwide legislation,” the seventh Fleet assertion mentioned, referring to the Individuals’s Republic of China.
The PLA mentioned Wednesday the US Navy was growing tensions within the area.
“Info as soon as once more present that the US is an out-and-out ‘South China Sea Threat Maker’ and ‘Disruptors of Regional Peace and Stability,'” the PLA assertion mentioned.
