China engaged in coercive military activities with India: WH report

China is engaged in provocative and coercive military and paramilitary activities with neighbouring countries including India, the White House said on Thursday, a day after a top American diplomat backed India's move to strongly resist Chinese aggression into its territory.

"Beijing contradicts its rhetoric and flouts its commitments to its neighbours by engaging in provocative and coercive military and paramilitary activities in the Yellow Sea, the East and South China Seas, the Taiwan Strait, and Sino-Indian border areas,” the White House said in a report.

The report, “United States Strategic Approach to the People's Republic of China”, submitted to the Congress was required by the National Defense Authorization Act 2019, which mandated a whole-of-government strategy with respect to China.

"As China has grown in strength, so has the willingness and capacity of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to employ intimidation and coercion in its attempts to eliminate perceived threats to its interests and advance its strategic objectives globally,” the report stated.

"Beijing’s actions belie Chinese leaders’ proclamations that they oppose the threat or use of force, do not intervene in other countries’ internal affairs, or are committed to resolving disputes through peaceful dialogue,” it said.

A day earlier a top Trump Administration diplomat backed India's move to strongly push back Chinese aggression into its territory by saying that the latter's pattern of constant attempt to shift the status quo has to be resisted.

"If you look to the South China Sea, there's a method here to Chinese operation. It is that constant aggression, the constant attempt to shift the norms, to shift what is the status quo. That has to be resisted, whether it's in the South China sea where we've done a group sail with India, or whether it's in India's own backyard, both, on land as well as in the Indian ocean,” Alice Wells, the outgoing Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, told a Washington DC-based think tank.