China Says It Warned, Tracked US Warship in South China Sea

The Chinese navy warned USS Lassen to leave the waters around the Spratly Islands, where Beijing has imposed a 12 nautical mile zone around the Subi and Mischief Reefs. China is “strongly discontented with and firmly against” the move, he said.

As we noted in our previous post, the goal this operation, like all FONOPS, was to demonstrate the United States’ view of the legal status of global waters and to demonstratively reject China’s excessive maritime claims.

A Chinese guided-missile destroyer and a naval patrol ship shadowed and gave warnings to the United States warship “according to law”, China’s Defense Ministry said in statements on its website, adding that the military would take all necessary steps to protect the country’s security.

Worldwide law permits military vessels the right of “innocent passage” in transiting other country’s seas without notification.

‘US forces operate in the Asia-Pacific region on a daily basis, including in the South China Sea, ‘ he added.

Yesterday’s exercise came as China’s Communist leaders held a sensitive policy meeting in the capital, but Foreign Minister Wang Yi provided a measured response to the news.

For Beijing, one of those “core interests” is safeguarding China’s territorial integrity and sovereignty claims, which have progressively expanded from peripheral restive regions such as Tibet and Xinjiang to Taiwan and, in more recent years, much of the South China Sea.

But despite the heightened risk of confrontation, a U.S. defence official said the mission had been completed “without incident”. A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr.

Former United States Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis C. Blair said: “This is simply unacceptable to the United States, and the United States will take strong military action, which will tend to move the issues from the civilian law enforcement to the military realm”.

Without identifying China by name, he said “one regional power” has been making “controversial pronouncements” that if must not be left unchallenged.

The Obama administration has long said it will exercise a right to freedom of navigation in any worldwide waters.

Carter, testifying to the Senate Armed Services Committee, initially would only say the US Navy had conducted operations in the South China Sea.

The foreign ministry in Beijing has condemned the operation as “illegal” and a “threat to China’s sovereignty”, and has vowed to “resolutely respond to any country’s deliberately provocative actions”.

Despite the lack of interaction between the American ship and the Chinese ships allegedly trailing it, the Chinese government has made adamantly clear it does not wish to tolerate the presence of such vessels in the worldwide waters it claims as its own. “You don’t need to consult with anybody”, Kirby said.

He said if the U.S. continued to “create tensions in the region”, China might conclude it has to “increase and strengthen the building up of our relevant abilities”.