The Biden administration has reinforced a Trump-era rejection of nearly all significant Chinese naval claims in the South China Sea.
According to the Associated Press, the administration also warned China that any attack on the Philippines in the flashpoint region would trigger a mutual defense treaty reaction from the United States.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered the serious warning in a statement issued ahead of the fifth anniversary of an international tribunal ruling in favor of the Philippines over China’s territorial claims in the Spratly Islands and surrounding reefs and shoals. China opposes the decision.
Last year, the Trump administration came out in support of the judgment and stated that it considered nearly all Chinese maritime claims in the South China Sea outside of China’s internationally recognized waters to be illegal. The statement released on Sunday reinforces Trump’s position, which was set out by his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo.
“Nowhere is the rules-based maritime order under greater threat than in the South China Sea,” Blinken said, using similar language to Pompeo’s. And he denounced China’s efforts “to coerce and intimidate Southeast Asian coastal states, threatening freedom of navigation in this critical global throughway.”
“The United States reaffirms its July 13, 2020 policy regarding maritime claims in the South China Sea,” he said, referring to Pompeo’s original statement. “We also reaffirm that an armed attack on Philippine armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft in the South China Sea would invoke U.S. mutual defense commitments.”
The 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States and the Philippines requires both nations to come to each other’s support in the event of an attack.
Prior to Pompeo’s remarks, US policy had been to urge on peaceful resolution of maritime disputes between China and its smaller neighbors through UN-backed arbitration. The change did not apply to disagreements over land features above sea level that are deemed “territorial” in character.
AP reports:
Although the U.S. continues to remain neutral in territorial disputes, it has effectively sided with the Philippines, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam, all of which oppose Chinese assertions of sovereignty over maritime areas surrounding contested South China Sea islands, reefs and shoals.
China reacted angrily to the Trump administration’s announcement and is likely to be similarly peeved by the Biden administration’s decision to retain and reinforce it.
“We call on (China) to abide by its obligations under international law, cease its provocative behavior, and take steps to reassure the international community that it is committed to the rules-based maritime order that respects the rights of all countries, big and small,” Blinken said in the statement,
China has rejected the tribunal’s decision, which it has dismissed as a “sham,” and has refused to participate in arbitration proceedings. It has continued to defy the decision with aggressive actions that have brought it into territorial spats with Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia in recent years.
As last year’s statement did, Sunday’s announcement came amid heightened tensions between the U.S. and China over numerous issues, including the coronavirus pandemic, human rights, Chinese policy in Hong Kong and Tibet and trade, that have sent relations plummeting.
China claims almost all of the South China Sea and routinely objects to any action by the U.S. military in the region. Five other governments claim all or part of the sea, through which approximately $5 trillion in goods are shipped every year.
China has sought to shore up its claims to the sea by building military bases on coral atolls, leading the U.S. to sail its warships through the region on what it calls freedom of operation missions. The United States has no claims itself to the waters but has deployed warships and aircraft for decades to patrol and promote freedom of navigation and overflight in the busy waterway.
