Pentagon slams Chinese missile launches in South China Sea
WASHINGTON, United States — The US Defense Department said Thursday that Chinese test launches of ballistic missiles in the South China Sea were threatening peace and security in the region.
Confirming reports that Beijing's forces launched as many as four ballistic missiles during military exercises around the Paracel islands, the Pentagon said the move called into question China's 2002 commitment to avoiding provocative activities.
China's "actions, including missile tests, further destabilize the situation in the South China Sea," the Pentagon said in a statement.
"Such exercises also violate PRC commitments under the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea to avoid activities that would complicate or escalate disputes and affect peace and stability," it said, referring to China by the initials of its official name, the People's Republic of China.
Over the past decade China has built up military installations on several disputed reefs and outcroppings in the South China Sea to assert its sovereignty over much of the region against territorial claims by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan and Indonesia.
The Pentagon said the Chinese military's August 23-29 military exercises near the Paracels -- which it calls Xisha -- were "the latest in a long string of PRC actions to assert unlawful maritime claims and disadvantage its Southeast Asian neighbors."
It said the United States had urged China in July to reduce its "militarization and coercion" in the region.
Instead, "The PRC chose to escalate its exercise activities by firing ballistic missiles," it said.
Earlier Thursday Beijing blasted Washington over its blacklisting of two dozen state-owned Chinese companies involved in building and supplying China's South China Sea bases.
"The US's words grossly interfere in China's internal affairs... it is wholly tyrannical logic and power politics," said foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian.
"China will take firm measures to uphold the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies and individuals," he said.
The US decision to disinvite China from upcoming maritime exercises in the Pacific is "non-constructive," China's Foreign Affairs Minister Wang Yi says.
"We find that a very non-constructive move," Wang says at a press conference with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo after the two met in Washington.
"It's also a decision taken lightly and is unhelpful to mutual understanding between China and the US." — Agence France-Presse
The United States accuses China of orchestrating a "concerted" campaign of dangerous and provocative air force maneuvers against US military planes in international airspace, warning such moves could spark inadvertent conflict between the two powers.
The Pentagon says aggressive tactics by Chinese aircraft threatened US planes flying over the East and South China Sea regions, tallying more than 180 such incidents since fall 2021 -- "more in the past two years than in the decade before that," said Ely Ratner, assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs. — AFP
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken calls on China, a partner of Iran, to use its influence to push for calm in the Middle East after Hamas militants struck Israel, provoking retaliation and fears that violence will spread.
The top US diplomat, who was visiting Saudi Arabia, had a "productive" one-hour telephone call with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller says.
"Our message was that he thinks it's in our shared interest to stop the conflict from spreading." Miller tells reporters on Blinken's plane from Riyadh to Abu Dhabi. — AFP
The US Justice Department says a US Navy petty officer pleaded guilty on Tuesday to providing sensitive military information to a Chinese intelligence officer.
Wenheng Zhao, 26, and another US sailor, Jinchao Wei, were arrested in August on suspicion of spying for China.
Zhao pleaded guilty in a federal court in California to charges of conspiring with a foreign intelligence officer and accepting a bribe, the Justice Department says in a statement. — AFP
The US Justice Department says US Navy petty officer pleaded guilty on Tuesday to providing sensitive military information to a Chinese intelligence officer.
Wenheng Zhao, 26, and another US sailor, Jinchao Wei, were arrested in August on suspicion of spying for China.
Zhao pleaded guilty in a federal court in California to charges of conspiring with a foreign intelligence officer and accepting a bribe, the Justice Department says in a statement. — AFP
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer accuses Chinese firms of "fuelling" a drug addiction crisis in the United States, as he met with officials in Shanghai on the first leg of a visit to the country.
Schumer is the latest high-level American official to visit China as Washington seeks to ease tensions with Beijing.
He met Saturday with Chen Jining, the ruling Chinese Communist Party's chief official in Shanghai, according to a pool report, stressing the United States "does not want to decouple our economies". — AFP
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