David Larter, Navy Times
The U.S. Navy’s top officer raised U.S. concerns over China’s expansive South China Sea claims in a high-level visit with his counterpart in the Chinese navy.
Adm. John Richardson, chief of naval operations, said he met with Adm. Wu Shengli, the commander of the People's Liberation Army-Navy, for three hours and had a “very substantial discussion,” which he characterized as open and honest. The meeting in Beijing came a few days after an international court ruled that many of China's historical claims and island-building offered no legal basis to controlling nearly all of the disputed South China Sea.
“We really covered the full spectrum of our relationship, from those areas where our cooperation and collaboration is doing very well," Richardson said, according to an audio clip. "But on the other hand we didn’t dodge any of the more contentious issues regarding dispositions in the South China Sea, the Court of Arbitration Ruling and those issues, recognizing that only through being completely frank and honest are we going to make any progress in those areas.”
The Chinese state media site Xinhua posted a readout off the discussion, saying Wu told Richardson that the Chinese would not stop island construction projects in the Spratly Islands, which Beijing calls the Nansha Islands.
"We will never stop our construction on the Nansha Islands halfway,” Xinhua quotes Wu saying. “The Nansha Islands are China's inherent territory, and our necessary construction on the islands is reasonable, justified and lawful.”
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