The 46th Fleet of the Navy of the Liberation Army of the Chinese People brows a military port in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province of southern China, on February 21, 2024.
Xinhua news agency | Xinhua news agency | Getty images
China said Wednesday that he warned and “removed” an American destroyer who had sailed near the coast of the disputed Scarborough Shoal in the southern Sea of China, one of the most valuable shipping lanes worldwide.
The destroyer, USS Higgins, “illegally entered China’s territorial waters on Huangyan island without the approval of the Chinese government,” said the country’s ministry of defense, according to a CNBC translation of the declaration in Mandarin.
The island of Huangyan is the name of China to refer to the Shoal, which has been the subject of a maritime dispute between China and the Philippines.
China accused the American army of “seriously” that it violates its sovereignty, and added that the actions of the United States “severely undermine peace and stability in the South China Sea, and violate international law and basic norms that govern international relations.”
The USS Higgins is a warship with the seventh fleet of the United States, based in Yokosuka, Japan. Sarah Merrill, a fleet spokeswoman, told CNBC that USS Higgins was carrying out a “browsing operation” in accordance with international law.
Archive: The Uss Higgins Guided Missile Dasting (DDG 76), Primer and bearer of Nimitz Uss Carl Vinson Class aircraft (CVN 70).
NASA 382199 | Historical corbis | Getty images
“China’s statement about this mission is false … the United States is defending its right to fly, navigate and operate wherever international law allows, as the USS Higgins did here. Nothing otherwise says otherwise,” Merrill added.
The incident comes at a time when Washington and Beijing are locked in a commercial dispute that has seen the two incendiary statements, with China in March warning that it was prepared for “a commercial war or any other type of war”, with the United States, before the tensions decrease.
On Tuesday, a Chinese war ship had crashed in one of its own ships of the Coast Guard while pursuing a patrol boat belonging to the Philippines.
China claims almost the entire sea of southern China as its “Nine Dash” line, which rejects a 2016 decision of an international arbitration court in the Netherlands, which did not find a legal or historical basis for Beijing’s claims.
There have been several clashes between Chinese and Filipinos ships in the South China Sea, with the Philippines accusing Beijing forces last year of pursuing the Philippine vessels and directing lasers in patrol airplanes near another disputed reef.
The clashes have involved collisions of boats, water cannons and injuries to Filipino sailors, according to Filipino officials.
In May 2024, President Filipino, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., said that if a Filipino citizen is killed in the Southern China Sea through an incident with the Chinese Coast Guard, it would surely be a “red line” and approaches “very close, very close to what we define as an act of war.”
He added that “our treaty partners, I think, also have the same standard”, referring to US forces. Washington has a mutual defense treaty with Manila since 1951, which states that an attack against the Philippines or the United States in the Pacific is considered an attack against the other.
