Harris rebukes China in speech

HANOI — U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris delivered a sharp rebuke to China for its incursions in the South China Sea, warning its actions there amount to “coercion” and “intimidation” and affirming that the U.S. will support its allies in the region against Beijing’s advances.

“We know that Beijing continues to coerce, to intimidate and to make claims to the vast majority of the South China Sea,” she said in a foreign policy speech Tuesday in Singapore in which she laid out the Biden administration’s vision for the Indo-Pacific. “Beijing’s actions continue to undermine the rules-based order and threaten the sovereignty of nations.”

Harris, who is on a weeklong swing through Southeast Asia, declared that the U.S. “stands with our allies and our partners” in the face of threats from China. Her subsequent stop in Vietnam was delayed several hours due to an investigation into a possible incident of the so-called Havana syndrome — a mysterious health ailment plaguing U.S. diplomats — in Hanoi.

After a delay of several hours that her staff refused to explain, Harris departed for Vietnam, the trip’s second and final stop. She meets with top Vietnamese officials on Wednesday.

The U.S. Embassy in Hanoi issued a statement saying the delay was because Harris’ office learned about a report of a “recent possible anomalous health incident” in the Vietnamese capital. The U.S. government uses “anomalous health incident” to describe the syndrome, a rash of mysterious health incidents first reported by American diplomats and other government employees in Havana in 2016.