U.S. Navy Chief Says He’ll Keep Sailing in South China Sea
There have been some tense moments between U.S. and Chinese forces in the South China Sea over the past several months, with China’s fighters buzzing American surveillance planes and its warships shadowing American aircraft carriers in international waters. And a high-level meeting between top naval officers from the two countries doesn’t seem likely to lower tensions.
That’s according to the head of the U.S. Navy, Adm. John Richardson. Richardson just returned from a five-day trip to China, where he met in Beijing with Adm. Wu Shengli, who commands the Chinese navy. Speaking with reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday, Richardson said he “made it absolutely clear” to the Chinese that Washington will look after its “interests in the area and commitments to allies.”
Richardson said that Beijing was trying to blame the U.S. for several recent incidents where Chinese fighter planes came dangerously close to American surveillance planes over international waters. “They’re trying to posture many of their actions as a responsive measure to things we’re doing,” Richardson said, lapsing into Pentagon-speak. But he insisted that American activity in the South China Sea “has been relatively constant” over the years and hadn’t changed in a way that would warrant an aggressive Chinese response.
The two naval leaders seemed to agree on one cause of confusion: the media.
Wu “made the point there’s been an awful lot more media attention” on activities in the South China Sea than there has been in the past, Richardson said. But “we have a free press and they’re going to cover where their interests go,” the admiral replied. “And their state media is also talking about this as much, if not more, than Western media. So we had a nice discussion about the role of media, how the media is influencing populations, maybe raising expectations or raising emotions.”