... South China Sea dispute

China Warns U.S. Against Upsetting Stability In The South China Sea

 

The United States has announced a formal rejection of many Chinese maritime claims in the South China Sea. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Monday, July 13, described the rebuff as a "strengthening of U.S. policy," asserting that, "Beijing's claims to offshore resources across most of the South China Sea are completely unlawful, as is its campaign of bullying to control them."

"The world will not allow Beijing to treat the South China Sea as its maritime empire. America stands with our Southeast Asian allies and partners in protecting their sovereign rights to offshore resources, consistent with their rights and obligations under international law," Pompeo said in a statement.

One expert, Gregory Poling, a senior fellow for Southeast Asia and director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told CNN that the statement is "pretty significant."

"What the US basically said is that we are going to remain neutral on questions of who owns what island or rock in the South China Sea, but we're no longer going to keep quiet on China's illegal claims to the waters," CNN quoted Poling, as saying.

"It lets the U.S. very clearly call out China's activities as illegal, not just destabilizing or unhelpful, but to say this is illegal. That helps partners like Vietnam and the Philippines, and it's going to put pressure on other countries, the Europeans for instance, to get off the fence and say something themselves," he said during the interview with CNN.

Pompeo commented on the 2016 ruling by the UN Permanent Court of Appeals (PCA) in The Hague that went in favor of the Philippines Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) over China’s claims based on the "Nine-Dash Line" it uses to claim the bulk of the South China Sea.