Australia And The USA Urged To Challenge China’s ‘Adventurism’ In The South China Sea

A joint USA-Australia report into China’s activity on the South China Sea is urging both countries to do more in pushing back against China.

The report called ” Countering China’s Adventurism in the South China Sea” accuses the People’s Republic of China of conducting ‘psychological warfare’ on Australia,  the United States and their allies to undermine their resolve.

China is accused  of being a revisionist state with an authoritarian government that is willing to take risks.  Claims are also made that China’s aim is to push Western forces out of the South China Seas and most of the Western Pacific and maybe emboldened by the lack political will to deal with the South China Sea issue.

A warning is issued by the report that China is now close to claiming effective sovereignty over the South China Sea and that China is coercing countries to acknowledge China’s regional preeminence and modify their international stanzas accordingly.

Recommendations are made in the report on how to deal with China in the South China Sea. It recommends that the Western allies need to formulate and apply a carefully crafted competitive strategy to pressure China to knowledge its breaches of international law and to start reducing its military presence in the South China Sea.

China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang has stressed  that the islands in the South China Sea are Chinese territory and that building facilities and deploying necessary defense equipment on them is the right of a sovereign state as recognized by international law.

The South China Sea is rich in resources and traversed by a quarter of global shipping. At the heart of the issue surrounding the South China Sea is a series of barren islands in two groups, rye Spratly  islands in the Paracel islands.