USS Lassen to challenge China's Spratly Islands claim '

USS Lassen to challenge China's Spratly Islands claim 'within hours'

By Tara Copp Stars and Stripes
Published: October 26, 2015

WASHINGTON — The Navy destroyer USS Lassen will challenge China’s 12-mile sea claims around a controversial South China Sea island within hours, a U.S. defense official confirmed Monday.The Lassen, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, is already underway, conducting exercises in the South China Sea. It will transit within 12 miles of a manmade island that China has rapidly built up among a chain of elevated coral reefs, islands and land formations known as the Spratly Islands. That buildup, which includes an airstrip and appears to be for military purposes, has increased tensions between China and many of the United States’ Pacific allies. Malaysia Armed Forces chief Zulkefli Mohd Zin last week heavily criticized the Chinese buildup, calling it "unwarranted provocation."The Lassen will have overhead watch from a U.S. maritime patrol craft, a U.S. defense official said on background because he was not authorized to discuss the movement. The same official said the movement would take place “within hours.”Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has regularly challenged the Chinese territorial claim of the islands and the waters surrounding it. Carter has said the United States “will fly, sail, and operate wherever the international law permits, and we will do that at the times and places of our choosing, and there’s no exception to that.”According to a maritime report by the Department of Defense, there are more than 200 Spratly land features, though that figure varies based on how geographers count them. Vietnam occupies 48 of the Spratly Islands, Taiwan occupies one, the Philippines occupies eight, Malaysia occupies five and China occupies eight, according to the report.China, Taiwan and Vietnam each claim all of the Spratly land features.Carter has said the United States is not taking a position on which nations have sovereignty over the islands. Every nation can claim up to 12 nautical miles from its coast as sovereign territory. But it’s China’s rapid buildup of an airstrip on the Fiery Cross Reef that has generated the most concern.The Lassen’s home port is Yokosuka, Japan, and last week made a port stop in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia after spending the previous four weeks conducting maritime patrols throughout the South China Sea.On the first half of their patrol, the Lassen reported “numerous interactions occurred while at sea with foreign vessels, including the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy Jiangkai-class frigates,” according to a Navy news release. “Lassen used the codes for unplanned encounters at sea and standard bridge-to-bridge communication to ensure safe and professional navigation.”

USS Lassen to challenge China's Spratly Islands claim 'within hours' - News - Stripes

This moment was bound to come.

Quote:

China's defence ministry said it had monitored, followed, and issued warnings to the Lassen as it passed through early on Tuesday morning.

But despite the heightened risk of confrontation, a US defence official said the mission had been completed "without incident".

The manoeuvre comes after months of deliberation in Washington and is designed to uphold the principles of freedom of navigation in international waters, while underlining that the US rejects China's territorial claims around the reclaimed islands.

Chinese dredges working in March at the northernmost reclamation site of Mischief Reef, part of the Spratly Islands, in the South China Sea.
Chinese dredges working in March at the northernmost reclamation site of Mischief Reef, part of the Spratly Islands, in the South China Sea. Photo: CSIS

It is also designed to test a pledge made by President Xi Jinping during his visit to Washington last month that Beijing would not "militarise" the islands. The ship's path also reassures Washington's nervous allies that it would not allow Beijing to throw its weight around the region unchallenged. The US mission was welcomed by the Australian and Philippines governments.

While the artificial islands – built via a rapid programme of dredging and land reclamation which has accelerated in the past two years – will likely have limited military value, some are equipped with runways long enough to facilitate jet fighters and other military aircraft.

China's regime of island-building and increasing assertiveness in the region is seen as part of its long-term play to challenge the United States and its regional supremacy.

In a terse statement, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said the Lassen entered the waters "illegally" and without the approval of the Chinese government, "threatening China's sovereignty and security interests".

"China will firmly react to this deliberate provocation," he added later at a regularly scheduled news conference.

American ambassador Max Baucus was called into China's foreign ministry on Tuesday evening, where deputy foreign minister Zhang Yesui delivered a "solemn representation and strong protest", according to state broadcaster CCTV.

Much of China's public statements on Tuesday repeated previous standard language around its assertion of rights and sovereignty over the South China Sea. But there is concern that President Xi Jinping, who has projected an image of a strongman leader and has struck a nationalistic tone in his calls for a "great rejuvenation" of the Chinese nation, may feel obliged to respond to US "provocations" firmly.

In Canberra, Defence Minister Marise Payne said that while Australia was not involved in the current US exercise in the South China Sea, it was "important to recognise that all states have a right under international law to freedom of navigation and freedom of overflight, including in the South China Sea".

"Australia strongly supports these rights," Ms Payne said in a statement, adding that approximately 60 per cent of Australia's exports pass through the South China Sea.

According to an unnamed official cited by Reuters, the Lassen was in the area for several hours, marking the start of a series of challenges to China's territorial claims, and would be accompanied by a US Navy P-8A surveillance plane and possibly a P-3 surveillance plane.

"This is something that will be a regular occurrence, not a one-off event," the official said, adding that patrols would follow in coming weeks which could also be conducted around features constructed by Vietnam and the Philippines in the Spratly Islands. "It's not something that's unique to China."

International maritime law allows nations to claim territory within a 12-nautical-mile radius surrounding natural island formations, but this does not extend to submerged features that have been artificially raised above sea level.

Read more: South China Sea: Beijing calls US Navy warship's route a 'provocation'
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And China knows all about the P3, doesn't it?

*guffaw*

Just a little schooling on international law.

Anders Lassen would roll in his grave in the knowledge that the US were using his name for such a two faced hegemonic act.

In defeat for Beijing, Hague court to hear China Sea dispute

Reuters Reuters
Anthony Deutsch
22 hrs ago

In a legal defeat for China, the Hague-based tribunal rejected Beijing's claim that the disputes were about its territorial sovereignty and said additional hearings would be held to decide the merits of the Philippines' arguments.

China has boycotted the proceedings and rejects the court's authority in the case. Beijing claims sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea, dismissing claims to parts of it from Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei.

The tribunal found it has authority to hear seven of Manila's submissions under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and China's decision not to participate did "not deprive the tribunal of jurisdiction".

The United States, a treaty ally of the Philippines that this week challenged Beijing's pursuit of territorial claims by sailing close to artificial islands China has constructed in the South China Sea, said it wanted to see all disputes resolved peacefully, diplomatically and through international means such as arbitration.

"Although we are in the process of reviewing this lengthy decision by the tribunal, we note that it appears that arbitration will proceed to be considered on its merits," State Department spokesman John Kirby told a regular news briefing.

He added that in accordance with the terms of UNCLOS, the decision of the tribunal would be legally binding on both the Philippines and China.

John McCain, chairman of the U.S. Senate's armed services committee, hailed the Hague ruling.

In defeat for Beijing, Hague court to hear China Sea dispute

Talk about sticking your middle finger up at your neighbours

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There are seven countries closer to those islands than China.