The United States, Australia, India, and Japan have rejected unilateral and dangerous actions in the disputed South China Sea and East China Sea, warning that repeated incidents of coercion and harassment are threats to regional security.
Foreign ministers of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or QUAD met in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday (Wednesday in Manila), where they reaffirmed their commitment to a “free and open Indo-Pacific” amid the increasingly assertive posturing by China in the two disputed waters.
“We remain seriously concerned about the situation in the East China Sea and South China Sea. We reiterate our strong opposition to any unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo by force or coercion,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, India’s S. Jaishankar, Japan’s Takeshi Iwaya, and Australia’s Penny Wong said in a joint communique.
China claims the South China Sea virtually in its entirety and has deployed much larger fleets of coast guard, navy and suspected maritime militia ships in the past years to assert its extensive claim against smaller claimant states, namely the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Brunei.
Manila has renamed the stretch of waters in the South China Sea closer to the Philippines’ western coast as the West Philippine Sea.
An international arbitration decision in 2016 ruled to invalidate China’s territorial claims but it did not participate in the proceedings initiated by the Philippines and ignored the decision.
The QUAD members reiterated their support for the ruling, calling it a “significant milestone and the basis for peacefully resolving disputes between the parties.”
Chinese vessels have used high-pressure water cannons and dangerous maritime maneuvers on Philippine ships or vessels that China has accused of entering its territorial waters illegally.
Japan has a separate territorial dispute with China over a set of islands in the East China Sea, which it calls Senkakus.
“We express our serious concerns regarding dangerous and provocative actions, including interference with offshore resource development, the repeated obstruction of the freedoms of navigation and overflight, and the dangerous maneuvers by military aircraft and coast guard and maritime militia vessels, especially the unsafe use of water cannons and ramming or blocking actions in the South China Sea,” the statement said.
Such actions, the top diplomats said, “threaten peace and stability in the region.”
They also expressed deep concern over what they call as “militarization of disputed features” in the waters and urged all parties to uphold “freedom of navigation and overflight and other lawful uses of the sea.”
Further, they called for unimpeded access and trade in the strategic waters, stressing that all claimants should act in accordance with international law, as reflected in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
The Philippines has adopted a strategy of publicly releasing videos and photos of Chinese harassment in the waters—a move that has gained international attention, prompting many countries to denounce Beijing’s assertive actions. — VDV, GMA Integrated News
