|
A
notice issued by the country's Maritime Safety Administration
prohibited entry into a portion of waters in the Gulf of Tonkin
to the west of the Leizhou peninsula in southwestern China from
Jan. 27 to Jan. 30, but it did not offer details on when the
drills would take place or at what scale.
A U.S. carrier group led by the USS Theodore Roosevelt entered
the South China Sea on Saturday to promote "freedom of the
seas," the U.S. military said, days after Joe Biden began his
term as president.
The contested waters have become another flashpoint in the
increasingly testy bilateral relationship between Beijing and
Washington. The U.S. military has steadily increased its
activities there in recent years as China asserts its
territorial claims in the area in conflict with neighbouring
countries including Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei
and Taiwan.
The announcement of the drills in the Gulf of Tonkin, just east
of Vietnam, came as the Southeast Asian country opened a key
Communist Party congress in Hanoi.
China on Monday complained that the United States frequently
sends aircraft and vessels into the South China Sea, through
which trillion dollars in trade flow every year, to "flex its
muscles" and said such actions are not conducive to peace and
stability in the region.
(Reporting by Beijing Newsroom; Additional reporting by James
Pearson in Hanoi; Writing by Se Young Lee; Editing by Raju
Gopalakrishnan)
[© 2020 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2020 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
|
|
