BEIJING – Tensions over the South China Sea grew Tuesday after Beijing accused the United States of committing a “deliberate provocation” by sending a Navy destroyer into waters claimed by China.
“China will firmly react to this deliberate provocation,” Lu Kang, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said at a regularly scheduled news conference. “China will not condone any action that undermines China’s security.”
The U.S. ambassador, Max Baucus, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry on Tuesday evening and told that the United States should stop “threatening Chinese sovereignty and security interests,” the national broadcaster CCTV said.
The Defense Ministry said Tuesday night that two Chinese vessels – a missile destroyer, the Lanzhou, and a patrol boat, the Taizhou – had warned the U.S. warship to leave the disputed waters. The Pentagon has said that the destroyer, accompanied by surveillance aircraft, completed its mission without incident.
Despite the strong language – and a vow that such actions could force China to speed up its building program in the South China Sea – Beijing’s response repeated standard language about its rights and sovereignty over the South China Sea.
The Chinese statements came after the Lassen, a guided missile destroyer, sailed late Monday within 12 nautical miles of Subi Reef, one of several artificial islands that China has built in the disputed Spratly Islands chain. The United States had signaled for weeks that it would undertake the mission, which it called an exercise of the right to freedom of navigation in international waters.
The Spratly archipelago is closer to the Philippines, a U.S. ally, than to China. Satellite images show that China has built Subi Reef into an island, using huge dredging, and that it has started constructing a runway capable of accommodating military aircraft. It has completed another such runway in the Spratlys, on Fiery Cross Reef, and is working on a third.
The Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam also dispute China’s claims to the Spratly Islands.
