ABOARD A US MILITARY AIRCRAFT: US Defence Secretary Ash Carter, in Washington's latest challenge of Chinese land reclamation in the South China Sea, said the scale of Beijing's activities, not the United States, was altering the status quo in the region.
Carter, speaking to reporters at the start of a 10-day trip to Asia, said the United States was trying to maintain a shared regional security structure that has advanced "prosperity for everyone" over the past 70 years.
"We've been flying over the South China Sea for years and years and years, and will continue to do that: fly, navigate, operate. So that’s not a new fact," Carter said.
"The new facts are the reclamation and the scale on which it is being done, and that's not an American fact, that's a Chinese fact," Carter said.
The United States has publicly highlighted Chinese island-building activity in the disputed Spratly Islands several times in recent weeks. Carter called for an end to the land reclamation work by China and other countries on Wednesday and a halt to the militarization of the territorial dispute.
The U.S. Navy last week sent a reconnaissance plane carrying Navy and television camera crews to film the Chinese dredging work, which U.S. officials say has added some 2,000 acres to five outposts in the resource-rich Spratlys, including 1,500 this year.
The Spratlys are claimed by half a dozen different countries surrounding the South China Sea, including the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and China.
"The reason that the United States and everyone else in the region has a stake in this is because it gets to the question of freedom of navigation, freedom of the seas, freedom from coercion, abiding by peaceful and lawful processes," Carter said.
He said the security framework the United States and others in the region have promoted for the past 70 years is based on inclusiveness and the idea that "everybody wins and everybody participates."
Asked whether the United States would send ships to within 12 miles of the Chinese-built islands to demonstrate Washington does not accept Beijing's territorial claims, Carter said, "The United States will ... fly, sail, operate wherever international law allows."
He also rejected the notion that the islands, which China built on top of previously submerged reefs, could claim 12 miles of territorial waters.
"The 12 nautical miles that I think you’re referring to does not pertain to features that were submerged and now are no longer submerged," Carter said.
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