China accuses United States of “serious military provocation” over South China Sea overflight

Bill Urban as saying in Washington that China had raised its complaints over the flight and the us was investigating.

Responding to Beijing’s complaint, a Pentagaon spokesman said: “The United States routinely conducts B-52 training missions throughout the region, including over the” sea. If the bomber did fly into the area as a “provocation”, it wouldn’t be the first time that the US made a bold move on the questionable Chinese territory.

India’s trilateral naval exercise with Japan and the United States, named “Malabar”, should not destabilise China’s maritime neighbourhood, said China’s Ambassador to India Le Yucheng to The Hindu on Saturday.

The U.S. uses pre-planned freedom of navigation operations to assert its rights to “innocent passage” in other country’s territorial waters.

The United States owes China a reasonable explanation as to why U.S. B-52 bombers entered Chinese airspace near the Nansha Islands on Dec 10.

The comments came less than two months after the US sailed a Navy warship into disputed waters claimed by China in the South China Sea, intensifying the rivalry between the world’s two largest economies.

China’s Defense Ministry urged the U.S.to stop such unsafe and provocative actions, which have become another source of tension between both countries along with the USA government’s announcement of a new arms sale to Taiwan last week.

Six members in the U.S. House of Representatives recently expressed support for Taiwan’s initiatives in the South China Sea, including its peace proposal and efforts to make Taiping Island a hub for humanitarian assistance and scientific research.

The Wall Street Journal on Friday, citing senior United States defence officials, said the flight had “unintentionally” flown over the man-made island.

“Chinese armed forces will take whatever measures necessary to safeguard China’s national sovereignty and security as well as peace and stability of the region”, the ministry warned in an online statement on its website today. Beijing also demanded Washington to take immediate measures to avoid such incidents that strained the relations between the two countries’ militaries.

China claims nearly all of the resource-rich South China Sea, and has overlapping claims with the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei. There has never been a problem of freedom of navigation.

In October, the destroyer USS Lassen sailed within the 12 mile territorial limit around several of those artificial islands. Officials say the USA intends to continue periodic patrols to establish freedom of navigation, laying the stakes for more confrontations.