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25-03-2023
BEIJING/ WASHINGTON: China’s defence ministry has said that it had for a second time monitored and driven away the US Navy guided missile destroyer USS Milius after it entered what Beijing claims as its territorial waters in the South China Sea near the Paracel Islands.
Friday marked the second straight day of a standoff and heated words between the two superpowers amid growing tensions in the South China Sea.
“We sternly demand the US to immediately stop such provocative acts, otherwise it will bear the serious consequences of the unforeseen incidents,” a spokesperson for China’s defence ministry said in a statement on Friday.
“The act of the US military seriously violated China’s sovereignty and security, severely breached international laws, and is more ironclad evidence of the US pursuing navigation hegemony and militarizing the South China Sea,” ministry spokesman Tan Kefei said.
He said that China would take “all necessary measures” to ensure its territorial security but did not elaborate.
The Southern Theatre Command of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) said in a statement on Thursday 
that the USS Milius had been found intruding in waters around the Paracel Islands and that China’s navy and air force were mobilised to “warn” the ship which had then departed the area.
The US Navy disputed China’s version of events, saying the destroyer left the area on conclusion of a “routine operation”.
As China issued its second protest and warnings on Friday, the US Navy issued a lengthy statement specifying that the USS Milius had engaged in asserting “navigational rights and freedoms in the South China Sea near the Paracel Islands, consistent with international law”.
The USS Milius’ freedom of navigation operation was a lawful use of the sea and challenged “restrictions on innocent passage imposed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC)”, and also Taiwan, and Vietnam who also have territorial claims in the disputed South China Sea, the US Navy said. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
