China’s intrusive and territorial claims in the Indo-Pacific region are “illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive,” new US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo said on Friday, adding that he would continue working with allies and partners to keep the area free and open.
Paparo made the remarks at a change-of-command ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, where he took over the command from Admiral John Aquilino.
“Our world faces a complex problem set in the troubling actions of the People’s Republic of China [PRC] and its rapid buildup of forces. We must be ready to answer the PRC’s increasingly intrusive and expansionist claims in the Indo-Pacific region,” Paparo said.
Photo: AFP
“Some call it the gray zone. My friend General Brawner from the Republic of the Philippines has a phrase called ICAD, and he has renamed the gray zone, which sounds otherwise benign and dull into ICAD — which is illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive,” he said.
“We will safeguard the international order characterized by transparency, cooperation, fair competition and the rule of law. We’ll bring all to bear in all domains, harnessing an integrated capability supporting partnerships to maintain peace and security while safeguarding sovereign rights,” he said.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who presided over the ceremony, criticized China over its increasingly coercive actions in the region, including in the Taiwan Strait and the East and South China seas.
Photo: Screen grab from the US Indo-Pacific Command’s X account
The US Indo-Pacific Command posted on X a photograph that included Chief of the General Staff Admiral Mei Chia-shu (梅家樹) among those present at the ceremony.
In other news, German Minister of Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock on Saturday did not rule out the possibility of a German frigate transiting the Taiwan Strait in the coming weeks.
Speaking during a state visit in New Zealand, Baerbock said that the Baden-Wurttemberg and a supply ship would tomorrow set off on a training mission in the Pacific, German news agency DPA reported.
Although the ships’ route would not be announced in advance, she said that the “right of peaceful passage” applied to the Taiwan Strait, suggesting the vessel might transit the Strait.
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INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
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