'Beijing's claims to offshore resources across most of the South China Sea are completely unlawful, as is its campaign of bullying to control them.'
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday announced a formal rejection of"most" of China's maritime claims in the South China Sea, the latest in the escalation between Washington and Beijing.
The move is"pretty significant," said Gregory Poling, a senior fellow for Southeast Asia and director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It lets the US very clearly call out China's activities as illegal, not just destabilizing or unhelpful, but to say this is illegal," he said."That helps partners like Vietnam and the Philippines, and it's going to put pressure on other countries — the Europeans, for instance — to get off the fence and say something themselves.
In addition, the US"rejects any PRC maritime claim in the waters surrounding Vanguard Bank , Luconia Shoals , waters in Brunei's EEZ, and Natuna Besar ." "The US is professing support for these countries' rights in those areas. Now, if the US wants to come to support an ally or partner in the South China Sea which is getting pushed around by China, now it has the legal justification to say China's actions are illegal in our view... even though Pompeo has previously indicated these are coercive actions by the Chinese, he probably would not have said they are illegal, now he can," he explained.
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