The USS Benfold entered the waters of the Paracels with out the approval of the Chinese language authorities, significantly violating China’s sovereignty and undermining the steadiness of the South China Sea, the Individuals’s Liberation Military’s Southern Theatre Command mentioned.
“We urge the US to instantly cease such provocative actions,” the Southern Theatre Command mentioned in a press release.
The US Navy didn’t instantly remark.
The Paracels are amongst tons of of islands, reefs and atolls within the resources-rich South China Sea contested by China, Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei, with Beijing claiming historic rights to sources inside its so-called nine-dash line, or many of the area.
On July 12, 2016, the Everlasting Court docket of Arbitration in The Hague dominated that China had no historic title over the South China Sea. It additionally mentioned China had interfered with conventional Philippine fishing rights at Scarborough Shoal and breached the Philippines’ sovereign rights by exploring for oil and gasoline close to the Reed Financial institution.
In a written assertion on Sunday, US secretary of state Antony Blinken mentioned freedom of the seas was an “enduring” curiosity of all nations.
“Nowhere is the rules-based maritime order beneath better menace than within the South China Sea,” Blinken mentioned.
“The Individuals’s Republic of China continues to coerce and intimidate Southeast Asian coastal states, threatening freedom of navigation on this crucial world throughway.”