Harris asks nation to join U.S. over China ‘bullying’
HANOI — Vice President Kamala Harris called on Vietnam to join the U.S. in challenging China’s “bullying” in the South China Sea, continuing her sharp rhetoric against Beijing as she met with Vietnamese leaders on Wednesday.
“We need to find ways to pressure and raise the pressure, frankly, on Beijing to abide by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and to challenge its bullying and excessive maritime claims,” she said in remarks at the opening of a meeting with Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc.
Harris also expressed support for sending an additional U.S. Coast Guard cutter to Vietnam to help defend its security interests in the disputed waterway.
The vice president’s rebuke of China comes in the middle of her weeklong tour of Southeast Asia, a trip that brought her to Singapore and Vietnam in a bid to strengthen U.S. ties to the Indo-Pacific region to counter China’s growing military and economic influence there.
Harris also unveiled an array of new partnerships and support for Vietnam in areas including climate change, trade and the coronavirus pandemic.
She announced that the U.S. will send 1 million additional doses of the Pfizer vaccine to Vietnam, bringing the total U.S. vaccine donation to Vietnam to 6 million doses.
Harris referenced the progress the two former foes have made, telling Vietnam’s president that “our relationship has come a long way in a quarter of a century.”
After her bilateral meetings, Harris took a moment of silence in the pouring rain and laid flowers at the monument where John McCain’s plane was shot down by the North Vietnamese in 1967. She noted it was the three-year anniversary of Sen. McCain’s death.