Sail-by of U.S. warship angers Beijing
China calls American action near artificial island ‘dangerous, provocative’
BEIJING— China denounced what it called an illegal, dangerous and provocative act by the United States Tuesday, after a U.S. warship sailed within 12 nautical miles of an artificial island built by China in the South China Sea.
China said it had monitored, followed and warned the USS Lassen as it passed close to the Subi Reef in the Spratly archipelago. But a U.S. defence official said the mission had been completed on Tuesday “without incident.”
The U.S action is intended to uphold the principle of freedom of navigation in the international waters of the South China Sea, U.S. officials said, and underscores that Washington does not accept China’s claim to territorial waters around artificially built islands.
Experts said it was also aimed at reassuring nervous American allies that Washington would not allow Beijing to throw its weight around in the region unchallenged. The USS Lassen, a guided-missile destroyer, was accompanied by Navy surveillance planes, the U.S. official said.
The decision to go ahead followed months of deliberation in Washington, but angered China, which said last month it would “never allow any country” to violate what it considers to be its territorial waters and airspace around the islands.
The U.S. vessel entered Chinese waters “illegally and without the Chinese government’s permission,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said in a statement, adding that Chinese authorities had monitored and warned it as it passed.
“The action by the U.S. warship has threatened China’s sovereignty and security interests, endangered the safety of personnel and facilities on the islands and damaged regional peace and stability,” he said, urging the United States to “correct its wrongdoing immediately” and not take further “dangerous and provocative actions.”
Earlier, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi had urged the United States “not to act blindly or make trouble out of nothing.”
China claims almost all of the South China Sea as its territory, including the main islands and reefs, and has argued that giving up that claim would “shame its ancestors.” The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also have overlapping claims.
A massive Chinese program of land reclamation and construction on several islands has taken place since 2014, upsetting ties with the United States and several of those rival claimants.
This week’s naval mission is also partly intended to test a pledge made by President Xi Jinping during his visit to Washington last month that Beijing would not militarize the islands.