Pearl warships in pushback against Chinese claims

Pearl Harbor warships are seeing their share of Chinese man-made islands in the South China Sea, with the destroyer USS Wayne E. Meyer recently conducting the sixth U.S. Navy “freedom of navigation” operation near the contested isles this year — angering China every time.

On Friday the Wayne E. Meyer and its crew of more than 300 “asserted navigational rights and freedoms in the Paracel Islands, consistent with international law,” the Navy’s 7th Fleet in Japan said.

China challenged the transit with its own warships and aircraft — as it usually does.

The passage comes as China continues to consolidate military control of the South China Sea and is extending investment influence to Pacific nations that the United States relied on for its island-hopping campaign in World War II.

America, meanwhile, is attempting to reshape the theater back to its advantage with help from allies and with a push for new long-range missiles that would change the calculus with China and Russia in the new era of “great power” competition.

The Wayne E. Meyer conducted a freedom of navigation operation in the Spratly Islands in August.

The Hawaii-based destroyers USS Preble and USS Chung-Hoon also conducted similar missions this year.

Following Friday’s transit, a spokesman for the Southern Theater Command said in a statement that China sent military vessels and aircraft that “made a warning” to Wayne E. Meyer “and demanded it to leave the area” because it was trespassing into China’s territorial waters without permission.

“China owns indisputable sovereignty” over the islands and their adjacent waters, spokesman Senior Col. Li Huamin said on the China Defense Ministry website, adding that “the U.S. for a long time has threatened China’s sovereignty in the South China Sea under the name of freedom of navigation, showing its lack of sincerity in maintaining international peace and regional security stability.”

“The People’s Liberation Army will stay on high alert and take all necessary measures to protect national sovereignty and security and safeguard peace and stability in the South China Sea,” Li said.

The Wayne E. Meyer challenged China’s 1996 declaration of “baselines” drawn around the Paracel Islands, which are also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan, the Navy said.

China claimed that 12-nautical-mile territorial seas should be measured from the island grouping as a whole, rather than from individual islands, according to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative.

“International law does not permit continental states, like China, to establish baselines around entire island groups,” Cmdr. Reann Mommsen, a spokeswoman for the Navy’s 7th Fleet, said in an email. “With these baselines, China has attempted to claim more internal waters, territorial sea, exclusive economic zone and continental shelf than it is entitled under international law.”

A “baseline” declaration by China over the Spratlys to the south would escalate tensions in the region, the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative said.

“Claimants like the Philippines and Vietnam would find disputed seas, including those immediately around some of their outposts, suddenly labeled China’s internal waters closed to foreign planes and ships,” the group said.

Approximately $5.3 trillion worth of goods transits through the South China Sea annually, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Asked whether China is escalating its response to the freedom of navigation operations, Mommsen said, “We have had safe and professional interactions with navies from several countries in this area of operations.”

A 2019 annual report to Congress on China’s military development said China seeks to secure its objectives through activities calculated to fall below the threshold of provoking armed conflict with the United States.

China has reclaimed over 3,000 acres of land from features in the Paracel and Spratly islands, building airfields and adding anti-ship and surface-to-air missiles and radars.

China also has invested in sophisticated long-range missiles to keep the United States at bay in what’s referred to as “anti-access, area denial.”

The United States is working feverishly to extend the range of its own missiles. On Aug. 2, the U.S. withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty with Russia that prohibited nuclear and conventional ground-based ballistic and cruise missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers.

Acting Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy testified Thursday at a Senate confirmation hearing that the serv­ice is developing several long-range munitions, including hypersonic weapons.

McCarthy predicted the new arms will “change the geometry within Southeast Asia.”

“And if we can get the appropriate partnerships, expeditionary basing rights with partners in the region,” McCarthy said, “we can change the geometry and basically have the effects to reverse anti-access, area denial capabilities that have been invested by near-peer competitors.”