China has hit back after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. and the Philippines share concern over China’s “repeated violations of international law” in South China Sea.
Blinken’s statement of support for the U.S.-Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) while in the Southeast country Tuesday amounted to a “thinly veiled threat,” China’s embassy in Manila said.
Blinken’s trip to the Philippines earlier this week came amid heightened tensions between the Philippines and China. The latter is deploying its coast guard and paramilitary forces to assert Beijing’s claims in the disputed sea. China asserts control over most of the South China Sea, including areas hundreds of miles from its coast within the exclusive economic zones of the Philippines and several neighbors.
Over the past year, this has led to increasingly dramatic confrontations with supply convoys en route to a Philippine military outpost at Second Thomas Shoal. China’s interception of this month’s convoy left several Philippine crewmembers injured and drew condemnation from the U.S. and several other countries.
“We have a shared concern about the PRC’s (People’s Republic of China) actions that threaten our common vision for a free, open Indo-Pacific, including in the South China Sea and the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone,” Blinken said at a press briefing in Manila on Tuesday.
Blinken cited “violations of international law and the rights of the Philippines—water cannons, blocking maneuvers, close shadowing, other dangerous operations.”
Calling the trade-heavy South China Sea critical to not only Philippine but also U.S. and world interests, he reaffirmed Washington’s “ironclad commitment” under the MDT to respond to an attack on the Philippine armed forces, public vessels or aircraft anywhere.
In its response on Wednesday, the Chinese embassy in Manila said the U.S. was the party behind the flaring tensions.
“China is not the one that provoked the recent tense situation in the South China Sea,” the statement said, adding Beijing had been forced to take “necessary steps” to protect its territory and maritime rights amid “infringement of our rights and interests and provocation.”
“We firmly oppose the groundless accusations made by Secretary Blinken about China’s legitimate and lawful actions in the South China Sea and his thinly veiled threat to invoke the so-called MDT obligations,” the spokesperson added, calling the seven-decade-old treaty a “vestige of the Cold War.”
Eloisa Lopez/Getty Images
The statement further accused Washington of egging Manila on in its dispute with Beijing and of pursuing the “freedom of rampage” by deploying military ships and aircraft to China’s “doorsteps.
The U.S. military operates in international waters throughout the Western Pacific, where it has bases in the Philippines, Japan, and South Korea.
In 2016, a Hague-based international tribunal dismissed China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, citing the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Beijing maintainthat s the ruling is invalid and asserts its claims, which encompass waters hundreds of miles beyond Chinese territorial waterand s have a longstanding historical basis.
Next month, President Joe Biden will host a summit with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. The South China Sea and China’s maritime activities are likely to be topics of conversation.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.