The US Navy sent a destroyer close to a contested island in the South China Sea. Beijing has fortified the region with military installations to assert its territorial claims.
The departure came as the Chinese military entered the third day of a show of force around Taiwan, 1,000 miles away near the northern entrance to the South China Sea, in response to a brief visit by Taiwan’s president to the United States. .
On Monday, a statement from the US Navy’s 7th Fleet said the guided-missile destroyer USS Milius passed within 12 nautical miles – the internationally recognized limit of a nation’s territorial waters – of Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands, known as Nansha in China.
Mischief Reef, which lies in the Exclusive Economic Zone of the Philippines, is also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan. But Beijing has asserted its claims to the island, building it and putting military infrastructure on it.
The US claims that such actions violate the Law of the Sea Convention. “Areas like Mischief Reef, which are submerged at high tide in their natural state, are not entitled to a territorial sea. Efforts to reclaim land, facilities, and structures constructed on Mischief Reef do not change this characterization under international law,” the US 7th Fleet statement said.
China claims nearly all of the vast South China Sea as part of its territorial waters, including many outlying islands and inlets in the disputed body of water, many of which – like Mischief Reef – Beijing has militarized.
A spokesman for the People’s Liberation Army Southern Theater Command said the US destroyer “illegally encroached” on Chinese waters near Mischief Reef, which Beijing calls Meiji Reef.
“China has indisputable sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea and their surrounding waters,” Air Force Senior Colonel Tian Junli said in a statement.
The US destroyer’s so-called Freedom of Navigation Operation (Fonop) defended the rights of vessels of any nation to operate in the area, the 7th Fleet statement said.
US warships regularly conduct such Fonops in the South China Sea and Monday was the second in three weeks for the Milius, which on March 23 sailed near the Paracel Islands, known as the Xisha Islands in China, in the northern part of China. of the South China Sea.
“The United States will fly, sail and operate wherever international law permits – regardless of the location of excessive maritime claims and regardless of current events,” the 7th Fleet said in Monday’s statement.
After March’s Fonop, Beijing alleged that the US violated its sovereignty while “undermining peace and stability in the South China Sea,” said Tan Kefei, a spokesman for the Chinese Defense Ministry.
Monday’s US operation came as Chinese forces entered their third day of large-scale military exercises around the island of Taiwan, the autonomous democracy north of the South China Sea that China’s Communist Party claims as its his territory, although he never ruled. .
Beijing launched operations in Taiwan on Saturday, a day after Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen returned from a 10-day visit to Central America and the United States, where she met with U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Beijing has repeatedly warned against Tsai meeting McCarthy and has previously threatened to take “strong and resolute measures” if it goes ahead.
Source: CNN Brasil

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