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The USS Benfold sailed across the Paracel Islands, generally known as the Xisha Islands in China, in what the Navy calls a freedom of navigation operation (FONOP), Lt. Mark Langford, spokesperson for the US seventh Fleet, stated within the assertion.
The Paracels are a set of 130 small coral islands and reefs within the north-western a part of the South China Sea. They haven’t any indigenous inhabitants to talk of, solely Chinese language army garrisons amounting to 1400 folks, in line with the CIA Factbook.
The islands are additionally claimed by Vietnam and self-ruled Taiwan however in Chinese language fingers for greater than 46 years. The islands have been fortified with Individuals’s Liberation Military (PLA) army installations.
The US Navy assertion stated the Benfold additionally challenged the claims of Vietnam and Taiwan.
“All three claimants require both permission or advance notification earlier than a army vessel engages in ‘harmless passage’ by way of the territorial sea. Beneath worldwide regulation … the ships of all states – together with their warships – take pleasure in the correct of harmless passage by way of the territorial sea. The unilateral imposition of any authorisation or advance-notification requirement for harmless passage is illegal,” the US Navy assertion stated.
Asserting freedom of navigation rights includes crusing inside the 19 kilometre territorial restrict from a nation’s shoreline recognised by worldwide regulation.
However the US Navy singled out China for making what it calls “straight baselines” enclosing all of the waters inside the island chain and stated the Benfold was difficult these claims too.
“Worldwide regulation doesn’t allow continental States, just like the PRC (Individuals’s Republic of China), to determine baselines round total dispersed island teams,” the US assertion stated.
“With these baselines, the PRC has tried to assert extra inner waters, territorial sea, unique financial zone, and continental shelf than it’s entitled to underneath worldwide regulation,” it stated.
China reacted angrily to the presence of the Benfold in what it claims are its territorial waters.
“The PLA Southern Theater Command organised naval and air forces to trace, monitor and drive away the destroyer with warnings,” an announcement from the Chinese language army stated.
“What the US has performed critically infringes on China’s sovereignty and safety, and is yet one more exhausting proof that it’s pursuing maritime hegemony and militarising the South China Sea. Info totally show that the US is a ‘risk-maker’ within the South China Sea and the ‘largest destroyer’ of peace and stability within the South China Sea,” it stated.
China claims nearly the entire South China Sea as its sovereign territory.
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