By COLIN CLARK
WASHINGTON: China continues to claim sovereign control of the South and East China Seas, but the Beijing is taking no actions to enforce its claims, a senior State Department official says.
“The point to stress is this: no one is stopping a US Navy warship. The Chinese are not stopping US Navy warships,” Daniel Russel, assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs, told me during a Defense Writers Group breakfast. Sen. John McCain and other lawmakers have pressed hard for the Obama Administration to execute more visible Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs) in the region to demonstrate American resolve and ensure the sea lanes are free for all nations to use.
Russel made the intriguing point that the Seventh Fleet and its Pentagon leaders do not necessarily “announce every FONOPs, so some things are visible; some things are only visible to people with radar and tracking.”
“The Chinese are not being let off the hook,” Russel says, adding that the PRC’s “claims have lost any credibility” with nations in the region. Of course, China has no legal leg to stand on since the UN tribunal ruled incontrovertibly this summer that China has no legal claims to sovereignty over the South China Sea.
Read the full story at Breaking Defense