China yesterday urged the US military to “stop flexing muscles” in the South China Sea, a point of persistent friction in a relationship both sides said was generally improving.
Chinese Ministry of National Defense spokesperson Colonel Wu Qian (吳謙) told reporters in Bangkok that the South China Sea was among numerous issues discussed earlier in the day when US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper held his first face-to-face meeting with Chinese Minister of National Defense General Wei Fenghe (魏鳳和).
They met for more than half an hour on the margins of a broader Asia defense ministers’ conference.
Photo: AFP
“We agreed to keep talking and engaging frequently,” Esper told reporters afterward in a brief exchange. “We continue to make progress on any number of issues.”
Wu told a news conference that Esper and Wei had a “very positive and constructive” meeting and “agreed in many areas.”
However, he was clear that Beijing is irritated at the US Navy’s presence in the South China Sea.
Wu said Wei reaffirmed China’s commitment to safeguarding its “territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests” in the South China Sea.
“The Chinese side also urges the US side to stop flexing muscles in the South China Sea and do not provoke and escalate tensions in the South China Sea,” he said through a Chinese interpreter.
Asked by a reporter to be more specific about Chinese objections, Wu said the US should “stop intervening in the South China Sea and stop military provocations.”
Esper spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said in a later statement that the defense secretary “pointedly reiterated that the United States will fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows — and we will encourage and protect the rights of other sovereign nations to do the same.”
Wu’s comments came as Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) spokesman Cheng Dewei (程德偉) in Beijing confirmed that the nation’s first domestically built aircraft carrier had sailed through the Taiwan Strait for “routine” training and tests on Sunday.
The “Type 001A” carrier crossed the Strait before entering the South China Sea for “scientific research tests and routine training,” Cheng Dewei said on an official social media account.
“It is not aimed at any specific target and has nothing to do with the current situation,” Cheng said, without elaborating.
However, Eric Hundman, assistant professor of political science at New York University Shanghai, said that the ship’s crossing was a “continuation of Beijing’s consistent efforts to pressure Taipei.”
“The choice to sail through the Taiwan Strait was undoubtedly deliberate and probably intended as a signal to both Taiwan and the US of China’s increasing naval capabilities,” he said.
Chinese state television yesterday broadcast images of the carrier with at least three fighter jets on its flight deck.
Additional reporting by AFP
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