MAY 13, 2015
BEIJING, CHINA (AFP)
Beijing expressed anger Wednesday after reports the United
States was considering ramping up its military presence in disputed South China
Sea waters and confronting Chinese territorial claims with ships and aircraft.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter asked staff to explore sending
Navy surveillance aircraft and vessels to islands which Washington believes
have been rapidly built up by China in recent months, the Wall Street Journal
said Tuesday, citing officials.
"We are severely concerned by relevant remarks made by
the American side," Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told
a regular briefing in Beijing.
"Freedom of navigation does not mean that the military
vessels or aircraft of a foreign country can wilfully enter the territorial
waters or airspace of another country."
China claims nearly all of the South China Sea, even waters
approaching the coasts of its Asian neighbours, and has provoked alarm with increasingly
bold actions.
United States officials last week accused China of building
up to 800 hectares (2,000 acres) of artificial islands in the Spratlys, an
archipelago of more than a hundred islands, reefs and atolls between Vietnam
and the Philippines.
China could construct airfields, surveillance systems and
harbours that would jeopardise regional stability, they said.
The US has so far not sent ships and aircraft within 12
nautical miles of the reclaimed reefs -- the standard zone for territorial
waters around natural land -- in order to avoid escalating tensions, the WSJ
said.
“We’re just not going within the 12 miles — yet,” it quoted
a senior US official as saying.
A challenge by the US military in the region could
potentially trigger a regional standoff, the newspaper added.
China urged "the relevant country" to
"refrain from taking risky and provocative actions", Hua told
reporters.
US Secretary of State John Kerry will meet senior officials
in China later this week.
The US has used its military to push back against what it
considers Beijing's aggressive stance before.
Last November two giant long-range B-52s flew over China's
newly-declared Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea.
We believe that world wars are inevitable as a debt and
medicare/medicaid/obamacare burdened United States will continue to slide down
the economic drain. In few years the
massive public debt and other private debts will suffocate the country, a la
Greece. More reckless crusades a la Iraq,
Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Iran, Ukraine, and so on will continue as a way of
getting out of the economic recessions.
Stay tuned.
United States is preparing for these inevitable wars by signing economic agreements with countries as a means of influencing their decisions.