US, Philippines express concern over concentration of military vessels in South China Sea

The Secretary of State of the United States, Antony blink, and his Filipino counterpart, Teodor Locsin, expressed in a telephone conversation their “common concerns” about the concentration of “Chinese maritime militia ships” in the South China Sea.

This was stated by the State Department spokesperson, Ned Price, who clarified that Blinken and the Philippine foreign minister warned against the Pentecostal Reef concentration.

“Both reiterated their call for Beijing to comply with the 2016 arbitration award issued under the Law of the Sea,” Price said.

Blinken also reaffirmed the applicability of the 1951 US-Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty. to the South China Sea.

Likewise, the two sides hailed “enhanced bilateral and multilateral cooperation” in the region, the spokesperson said.

The United States has increased its military presence in the South China Sea, in the middle of Beijing’s increasingly aggressive maneuvers in this strategic area of ​​the Indo-Pacific.

Between Wednesday evening and early Thursday morning, the multipurpose amphibious assault ship USS Makin Island and the amphibious transport vessel USS San Diego sailed through the Strait of Malacca, as shown by satellite data obtained by the South China Sea Strategic Location Research Initiative (SCSPI), a Beijing-based organization.

The sailors of the USS Makin Island they also executed “A training exercise with live fire”the US Indo-Pacific Command tweeted Thursday, along with a hashtag calling for a “free and open Indo-Pacific.”

The presence of the amphibious ship is recorded after a group of aircraft carriers led by the USS Theodore Roosevelt conducted exercises with Malaysia on Tuesday and Wednesday.

According to the SCSPI, the guided-missile destroyer USS Mustin it was also operating in the East China Sea on Saturday; likewise, the American destroyer USS John McCain it crossed the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday.

In response, China has deployed its Liaoning aircraft carrier from the Miyako Strait off southwestern Japan for “scheduled exercises” near Taiwan.

Deployment occurs at times when Beijing is showing less and less qualms about revealing its intention to capture most of the South China Sea, a strategic seaway where it is believed that there are valuable oil and gas deposits, and which is also claimed by Taiwan, Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Japan Yes Vietnam. An international tribunal ruled in 2016 that the Chinese claim has no legal basis.

For years, China has had a territorial dispute with Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, and the Philippines over several islands in the South China Sea. Significant oil reserves have been discovered on the continental shelf of these islands, particularly in Xisha (Paracel Islands), Nansha (Spratly Islands) and Huangyan (Scarborough Reef) Islands.

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