China Angry Over US Warship Presence in South China Sea

Tension mounted between the US and China as on Friday Beijing reacted angrily to the presence of a US warship, USS Milius, near the islands in the South China Sea region that China claims to be its own, CNN reported.

“The US military has seriously violated China’s sovereignty and violated international law,” Tan Kefei, spokesperson for the Defence Ministry, said.

“The guided-missile destroyer broke into China’s territorial waters again without the approval of the Chinese government,” Tan said.

The warning comes amid growing tensions between China and the United States in the region.

On Thursday, after the U.S. sailed the USS Milius guided-missile destroyer near the Paracel Islands. China claimed that its navy and air force had forced the American vessel away. This claim was denied by the U.S. military.

The same US warship on Friday sailed again in the vicinity of the islands, which are occupied by China but are also claimed by Taiwan and Vietnam.

The U.S. has no South China Sea claims itself, but has deployed Naval and Air Force assets for decades to patrol the strategic waterway, through which around $5 trillion in global trade transits each year and which holds highly valuable fish stocks and undersea mineral resources.

A United Nations-backed arbitration tribunal ruled in 2016 that the historical claim from China on the waters had no legal basis under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas.

U.S. forces currently operate daily in the South China Sea, and have been present for more than a century.