https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...e7b026-5f93-11e7-a6c7-f769fa1d5691_story.html
China vows to step up air and sea patrols after U.S. warship sails near disputed island
In this April 2017 file photo, an airstrip, structures and buildings on China's man-made Subi Reef in the Spratly chain of islands in the South China Sea are seen from a Philippine Air Force C-130 transport plane. (Bullit Marquez/AP)
By Simon Denyer and Thomas Gibbons-Neff July 3 at 1:07 PM
BEIJING — China’s military vowed Monday to step up air and sea patrols after an American warship sailed near a disputed island in the South China Sea in what Beijing called a “serious political and military provocation.”
The past few days have seen a dramatic downturn in relations between the two sides, after the United States announced its intention to sell arms to Taiwan and sanction a Chinese bank doing business with North Korea.
Then, on Sunday, the USS Stethem, an American guided-missile destroyer, sailed within 12 nautical miles of Triton Island, a small isle in the Paracel Islands chain claimed and controlled by China, a U.S. defense official said.
The Stethem’s patrol marked the second such operation near Chinese-controlled islands in six weeks, after a few months’ hiatus in the wake of Trump’s inauguration. U.S. officials tried to portray it as a routine operation that had been planned in advance, but whatever their intentions, it has created more rough waters in the relationship between the two countries.
The question now is whether the deterioration in ties will lead inexorably to a trade war, or whether it can be contained.
China’s Defense Ministry said its armed forces had dispatched two frigates, a minesweeper and two fighter jets to warn the Stethem away.
The Paracels are among a group of islands and atolls in the South China Sea at the heart of ongoing tensions in Southeast Asia. China claims full sovereignty over the sea and has built fully functional military facilities complete with airfields and antiaircraft defenses on some islands.
The White House, in both the Obama and Trump administrations, has seen the militarization of the South China Sea as a threat to stability in the resource-rich region, where ships from numerous countries have long fished.
[China to U.S.: New military sales to Taiwan “wrong moves”]
China’s Defense Ministry said the United States has “seriously damaged strategic mutual trust” between the two countries by entering what it claimed were China’s territorial waters, while the country’s Foreign Ministry accused the United States of staging a “serious political and military provocation.”
The incident came just hours before Trump spoke by telephone to Xi — on Sunday night in Washington, Monday morning in Beijing.
During the call, Trump “raised the growing threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs,” the White House said in a statement. Trump earlier spoke by telephone to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the same subject.
But Xi also took the opportunity of the call to make his feelings known, requesting the United States “handle the Taiwan issue appropriately,” according to a Chinese statement.
U.S.-China relations appeared to be on an upswing after Trump said he and Xi had enjoyed “great chemistry” at a meeting in Florida in April.
At the time, Trump expressed confidence in China’s efforts to apply pressure on North Korea to end its nuclear and missile defense program. But officials say frustration has grown in the White House with China’s reluctance to tighten the screws on Pyongyang as much as Washington would have liked.
The downturn in ties was effectively announced on Twitter on June 20, when Trump declared that China’s pressure on North Korea had “not worked out.”
Xi said bilateral relations have achieved some “important results” since the two men met at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, but noted that they have since been affected by some “negative factors.”
“Xi stressed that both China and the United States need to control the general direction of the bilateral relationship in light of the consensus reached at the Mar-a-Lago summit,” China’s government said.
Neither statement mentioned the tensions over the South China Sea.
China had appeared confident that it had reached an understanding with the United States after Mar-a-Lago and had gauged the minimum necessary action required to satisfy the Trump administration, said Bonnie Glaser, a senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Chinese leaders seemed to have miscalculated.
“Apparently, they didn't respond adequately to U.S. concerns about banks and front companies in China that are enabling North Korea's illegal activities,” she said.
Arthur Kroeber, managing director of consultants Gavekal Dragonomics, said Trump’s change of tack was unsurprising.
“The basic deal Trump thought he offered Xi at the Mar-a-Lago summit — a light touch on trade in exchange for more cooperation on North Korea — was absurdly unrealistic, given China’s obvious unwillingness to change its North Korea policy,” he wrote in a client note.
But Kroeber said he still didn’t expect Trump to embark on a “stupid and self-defeating trade war” with China that would hurt the United States much more than it gains.
“The more likely outcome is that he will settle for largely symbolic actions on a narrow range of products that do little to change trade flows but enable him to crow to his political base that he has got tough with foreigners who are cheating Americans out of production and jobs,” he wrote.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a news conference Monday that both sides were “determined to press ahead” with their relationship despite encountering “some issues.”
A Chinese foreign policy expert, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said Beijing does not want to see a deterioration in relations with Washington before an important Communist Party Congress in the fall, which is due to formally award Xi a second five-year term as leader.
“Facing America’s recent behavior, the Chinese government had to make a public response,” he said. “But President Xi’s words were relatively low-key. He only said that there have been some negative factors. He didn’t use more intense words.”
U.S. officials said the Navy’s action, known as a freedom-of-navigation operation, or FONOP, was not targeted at any one country, nor aimed at making a political statement.
[Opinion: Chinese-U. S. honeymoon is over]
But China accused the United States of deliberately stirring up trouble in the South China Sea and staging “provocative operations” that violate China's sovereignty and threaten its security.
China, which has enjoyed de facto control of the Paracels since expelling Vietnam in a military engagement in 1974, said the islands, which it calls the Xisha, are an “inherent part of Chinese territory.”
The Foreign Ministry said the Stethem had “trespassed” there, entering the waters “without China’s approval” and committing “a serious political and military provocation.”
Wu Qian, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry, said the United States has “refused to mend its ways despite repeated criticisms.”
He said the American action seriously damaged strategic mutual trust and military relations between the two sides, endangered the safety of front-line officers and soldiers from both sides, and undermined regional peace and stability.
“The Chinese army will strengthen its defense capacity, increase the intensity of its sea and air patrols, and firmly defend national sovereignty and security, according to the extent of the threat that its national security is facing,” he said in a statement.
Triton Island is claimed by China, Vietnam and Taiwan. In May, a U.S. destroyer sailed well within 12 miles of Mischief Reef, a man-made island in the Spratly Islands to the south of the Paracels.
[Satellite images show reinforced Chinese missile sites near disputed islands]
The 12-mile line is the internationally recognized distance that separates the shores of a sovereign nation from international waters. The United States has routinely conducted voyages within this 12-mile limit around islands in the South China Sea as a message to countries such as China, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines.
Many of these nations have laid claim to islands in the South China Sea, some of which are no more than tiny strips of sand and reef. The last time the U.S. Navy sailed near Triton Island was in January 2016, when the USS Curtis Wilbur came within 12 miles of its shores. The Pentagon did not notify any of the island’s claimants before that operation.
Capt. Charlie Brown, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet, did not confirm the Sunday operation, but said in an emailed statement that the Navy routinely conducts FONOPs. He said the operations are not “about any one country, nor are they about making political statements.”
“U.S. forces operate in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region on a daily basis, including in the South China Sea,” Brown said. “All operations are conducted in accordance with international law and demonstrate that the United States will fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows. That is true in the South China Sea as in other places around the globe.”
The Stethem, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, is based in Japan.
Gibbons-Neff reported from Boston.
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Taiwan arms sale, NKorea sanctions outrage Beijing in test of U.S.-China ties under Trump
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