Chinese aggression in the South China Sea has to be countered, a US Navy official says

The commander of the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet said on Sunday that China’s “aggressive behavior” in the South China Sea, including the deployment of water cannon by its coast guard on a Philippine vessel, must be contested and restrained.

In response to “shared challenges” in the area, Vice Admiral Karl Thomas reassured the Philippines of U.S. support, saying: “My forces are out here for a reason.” The Seventh Fleet, with its headquarters in Japan, is the biggest of the U.S. Navy’s forward-deployed fleets. It runs up to 70 ships, has around 150 aircraft, and more than 27,000 personnel. It has bases in Japan, South Korea, and Singapore from which it covers a region of 124 million square kilometers (48 million square miles).

“You need to confront those who, in your opinion, are functioning in a gray area. You have to push back when they are pushing you and taking more and more from you, Thomas told Reuters. You also have to keep sailing and working. There isn’t really a greater illustration of hostile behavior than what happened on the shoal on August 5th, he said.

On August 5, a Chinese coast guard vessel fired water cannon at a Philippine boat that was ferrying supplies to soldiers on board a battleship Manila that had been purposefully stranded on a shoal in the South China Sea, exposing a regional rift between Washington and Beijing.

In order to “understand what his challenges are and find opportunities to be able to help him,” Thomas said he had spoken with Vice Admiral Alberto Carlos, commander of the Philippine Western Command, which oversees the South China Sea. “We undoubtedly had similar problems. I thus wanted to learn more about his perspective on the activities for which he is accountable. Thomas, who was in Manila on a port visit, said, “And I want to make sure that he knew what I had accessible.

Thomas said that he boarded a plane on Saturday “to go out and check out the South China Sea” from Manila. In 2016, a panel ruled that Beijing’s broad claim to sovereignty over the majority of the South China Sea had any validity in law, leading to the Philippines winning an international arbitration judgement against China.

China claims historical ownership over the South China Sea, but it has constructed militarized artificial islands there that border the exclusive economic zones of the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia. A request for comment was not immediately answered by the Chinese Embassy in Manila.