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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s announcement shows a tendency for more U.S. military operations to stop Chinese maritime activity and impose sanctions on Chinese companies.
By Edward Wong and Michael Crowley
WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Monday that China’s vast maritime claims over much of the South China Sea are “currently illegal,” establishing possible army clashes with Beijing and sanctions opposing corporations in their attempt to avoid Chinese activity in the region. .
Pompeo said China’s “direct and direct intimidation crusade to control” resources on the high seas in much of the region was illegal. The announcement was Washington’s most powerful and specific maximum for a 2016 ruling through a foreign court in The Hague that China had violated foreign law through its actions.
Pompeo’s announcement directly aligns U.S. policy with the verdict and makes Washington able to enforce the court’s decision, even though China has rejected it. He is never very specific about U.S. military aid, however, leaves open the option for the United States to come and defend countries like Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines if clashes occur due to Chinese aggression. The United States has a mutual defense treaty with the Philippines.
“This is unconditional support for the court’s decision,” said Taylor Fravel, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies China’s territorial disputes and its armed forces.
But it adheres to its neutrality policy in competitive claims of valid land characteristics, such as the Spratly Islands, he added.
China and five other governments have competitive claims about the characteristics of land in the South China Sea, and China has also clashed with Indonesia over Chinese activities in the waters of this giant archipelago. China delimits its claims over the South China Sea through what it calls “a nine-race line,” a border that encompasses a hoax across Mexico and delimits the almaximum of the entire region.
The Chinese embassy in Washington said in a statement that the government is “exaggerating the stage in the region and seeking to sow discord between China and other coastal countries.”
“The unwarranted accusation, ” he added. “The Chinese aspect strongly opposes it.”
The statement also said that China was “determined to dispute through negotiation.”
The region has the richest oil and fuel resources and powerful friends, and governments sign contracts with exploration and drilling corporations in the region. Fishing is also plentiful. Fishing boats and coast guard vessels from various countries have clashed several times in recent years driving by the sea.
Pompeo said that “Beijing has made a legal and consistent maritime claim in the South China Sea,” and that the United States rejects the Chinese claim of the big apple to waters beyond a 12-nautical-mile territorial sea derived from valid features or islands.
Some features that are tibig apple atolls and rocks built through China do not seem valid land features and cannot be claimed across the country, Pompeo said. These come with Misleader Reef and Second Thomas Shoal, which are under the jurisdiction of the Philippines, and James Shoal, who is 50 nautical miles from Malaysia.
The Philippines brought an action against China in The Hague, arguing that China had violated the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, to which Beijing is a party.
The big question now is what has a tendency to do about the presence of China’s army in those spaces and in other quantities of the vast sea claimed across Beijing.
Beginning in 2014, China used sand dredging to make larger tibig apple elements covered through the water during the h8 tide at a larger breeding station, and then built air firing stations and army poles on them. Misleader Reef is places. Chinese army warns U.S. army planes passing near the reef.
Since the Obama administration, the Navy has been achieving what it calls freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea to challenge Chinese claims about the waters. But in recent months, the Navy has retreated in other ways: in April, it sent two war service stations to waters near Malaysia as a show of force opposed to a shipment from the Chinese government that was following an apple-shipping drilling from the Malaysian state oil company.
Pompeo’s announcement may also mean more such operations across the Pentagon. Washington can also take additional steps on the basis of its new, more forceful posture.
“Will it also be punished for corporations doing business with China in what is now, in the eyes of the United States, the waters occupied by more illegal friends?” said Julian G. Ku, professor of constitutional and foreign law at Hofstra University. “I think it probably is, but it’s never very still.”
In June, Kelly Craft, ambassador to the United Nations, sent a letter to the UN Secretary-General describing Washington’s position on “maximum logical maritime demands.” It was a precursor to Pompeo’s announcement, and was based on a legal opinion that the State Department had reached at the end of the Obama administration, following the Hague decision.
“The State Department, I think, was just looking for ways that we can more forcefully act and speak out in support of the smaller claimants who are getting bullied by China,” said Bonnie S. Glaser, a senior director for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “And I think that comes across loud and clear in the statements. It’s all about supporting the actions of countries to fish and explore energy in maritime spaces that China has claimed.”
Daniel Russel, undersecretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific during Obama’s tenure, said Obama’s leadership had accepted the 2016 court ruling as “final and binding,” and Pompeo was more “heartbreaking.” and angry invective opposed to the simple revival of China’s policy.
Trump’s leadership has been selective in his approval of foreign decisions in The Hague. He warned last month that foreign investigators over U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan would face economic sanctions and restrictions.
Global Times, a Chinese nationalist newspaper, published an opinion essay Monday that says the United States “wants to cause riots” in the South China Sea and is “taking into account the claims of countries in the region to sow discord between those countries.” china. It represents an image of China’s stalker. Aleven, although the essay was published prior to the State Department’s announcement, anticipates U.S. action, saying Washington “will not miss anything like the anniversary of the 2016 arbitration.”
Maritime claims are just 1 of the spaces where Trump’s leadership has put more pressure on China in recent months.
Robert C. O’Brien, the national security adviser, will dress up with others this week on holiday in Paris, adding to the safety of the new 5G networks incorporating equipment manufactured in China. A White House official said he would meet with his opposing numbers from France, Britain, the Germabig apple and Italy.
Last month, Mr. O’Brien gave a speech in Arizona saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping considers himself a “successor” to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and warned that China was seeking the coronavirus crisis “to move the United States as the world’s leading power.”
Edward Wong reported from Washington and Michael Crowley from Amherst, Massachusetts.
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