US Protests to China in Own Backyard as Biden Pivots to Asia

By Ahednews, Agencies

The US military protested to Chinese military activities in the South China Sea as leading policy outlet Politico said the new Biden government is reorienting foreign policy priorities to China and Asia from the Middle East.

The US Indo-Pacific Command [INDOPACOM] said in a statement on Friday that Chinese military flights in the South China Sea over the past week fit a pattern of destabilizing and aggressive behavior by Beijing.

"The Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group closely monitored all People’s Liberation Army Navy [PLAN] and Air Force [PLAAF] activity, and at no time did they pose a threat to US Navy ships, aircraft, or Sailors," INDOPACOM spokesperson Navy Capt. Mike Kafka said.

Such actions, he claimed, reflected China’s attempt to use its military as a “tool to intimidate or coerce” those operating in international waters and airspace.

The INDOPACOM spokesperson also said the United States would continue to fly, sail and operate in the South China Sea.

“The US has a persistent military presence and routinely operates throughout the Indo-Pacific, including the waters and airspace surrounding the South China Sea and East China Sea, just as we have approached the region for the past 240 years,” he said.

China, which has long geared its military towards defending itself against the United States, recently conducted exercises that would simulate an operation against an aircraft carrier, according to the sources.

"They purposely conducted the drills when the US carrier was passing through the Bashi Channel," one source said, referring to the waterway between southern Taiwan and the northern Philippines.

"China is trying to tackle the issue of the South China Sea; it wants to stop the US military from entering the South China Sea. China wants to diminish the United States' weight in the western Pacific."

The South China Sea is a gateway to major sea routes, through which about 3.4 trillion dollars’ worth of trade passes each year. China claims sovereignty over much of the strategic waterway and has since 2014 built artificial islands on reefs and installed military bases on them.

The United States routinely sends warships and warplanes to the South China Sea to assert what it calls its right to freedom of navigation, ratcheting up tensions among the regional countries.

China has constantly warned the US against its military activities in the sea, saying that potential close military encounters between the air and naval forces of the two countries in the region could trigger accidents.