China Rejects Latest US FONOP in the South China Sea

China should stick to its construction plan for the South China Sea and take further countermeasures in case of provocation, Liang said.

Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying said in a statement that “the United States warship’s arbitrary entrance of China’s territorial water has violated the relevant Chinese law, and the Chinese side has taken relevant measures in accordance with the law including monitoring and warning”.

It described the American action as “intentionally provocative and “irresponsible and extremely dangerous”.

China claims nearly the whole of the South China Sea, resulting in overlapping claims with several other Asian nations like Vietnam and the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei. “Whatever provocative action the US takes, the Chinese military will take all necessary measures to resolutely protect the nation’s sovereignty and security”.

Military observers are suggesting that the latest move by the U.S. to send a warship in Chinese territorial waters will return tension to the South China Sea and encourage more regional stakeholders to challenge China.

The warship traveled within 12 nautical miles of Triton without providing prior notification to any of the three claimants, the USA defense official said.

“The U.S. act severely violated Chinese law, sabotaged the peace, security and good order of the waters, and undermined the region’ s peace and stability”, State news agency Xinhua reported Defense Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun as saying.

The backlash from China followed the sailing of an American missile destroyer, the USS Curtis Wilbur, within 12 nautical miles off Triton Island in the Paracel Islands chain on Saturday. But there was no Chinese navy presence seen in the area, the official said.

In October, the US Navy conducted a similar exercise in which the guided-missile destroyer Lassen sailed close to one of China’s man-made islands, also drawing a rebuke from Beijing.

The U.S. FONOP in the area was created to counter two aspects of China (and Vietnam’s) claims: the requirement for foreign warships to seek prior authorization before transiting near the feature, and the way territorial baselines are drawn around the Paracels.

The South China Sea is a major shipping route for trade, with roughly $5tn (£3.5tn) of trade making its way through the region each year – and the United States believes that the passage should be regarded as global waters.

While the USA has challenged China’s expansive maritime claims as part of President Barack Obama’s “pivot to Asia” strategy, the Pentagon emphasized Saturday it was also signaling opposition to actions by other countries vying with China.

Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Hai Binh said that Vietnam respects “innocent passage” of ships through territorial waters in line with worldwide law.

He noted that no claimants were notified prior to the transit.

“The excessive claims regarding Triton Island are inconsistent with worldwide law as reflected in the Law of the Sea Convention”.

“It is, in essence, the pursuit of maritime hegemony by the US under the cloak of ‘freedom of navigation, ‘” Lu added, calling “the flexing of military muscles and creating of tension by the USA under the pretext of the freedom of navigation is the biggest cause of militarization in the South China Sea”.