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The United States has accused China of “bullying behavior” in the South China Sea and said it is concerned by the country’s “provocative actions” aimed at offshore oil and gas developments in the disputed waters.
A Chinese government survey ship on Friday was tagging an exploration vessel operated by Malaysia’s state oil company Petronas in the disputed waters, the Reuters news agency reported quoting three regional security sources.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said earlier in the week that the ship was conducting normal activities and stated that US officials were maligning Beijing.
“The United States is concerned about reports of China’s repeated provocative actions aimed at the offshore oil and gas development of other claimant states,” the US State Department said in an emailed statement on Saturday.
“In this instance, (China) should cease its bullying behavior and refrain from engaging in this type of provocative and destabilizing activity,” it said.
‘US has a history of gunboat diplomacy’
Commenting this, American political analyst Dennis Etler said, “China is not doing anything it hasn’t done in the past, protecting what it deems to be its sovereign rights in the South China Sea. Once the US buggers off and recognizes China’s strategic interests in the region, whatever conflicts exist will be equitably solved by the concerned parties.”
“It is the US, moreover, that has a history of gunboat diplomacy, war, invasion, and occupation throughout Southeast Asia. Has it been forgotten that the US inherited the French colonial project in Vietnam, the British colonial project in Hong Kong and Malaysia, the Dutch colonial project in Indonesia, and Japanese militarism’s Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere in the Asian-Pacific?” he said.
“The absurdity of the US condemning China for ‘bullying behavior’ in the South China Sea is beyond the pale. American bullying behavior in the region has, moreover, been curtailed as its diseased Seventh Fleet is now holed up in Guam quarantined by COVID-19. The US has little recourse now other than feckless verbal outbursts to counter China’s assertion of its sovereign rights in the South China Sea,” noted Etler, a former professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California.
