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Europeans Push Back Against Beijing in the South China Sea
yahoo.com
France has thrown its hat into the acrimonious South China Sea debate, calling for more European naval patrols in a contested waterway that is at the center of a growing dispute between China and the United States and its Asian allies.
French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, speaking Sunday at a three-day security conference in Singapore, called on European navies to have a “regular and visible” presence in the region to uphold the law of the sea and freedom of navigation.
“If we want to contain the risk of conflict, we must defend this right and defend it ourselves,” he said.
Although the French defense minister did not explicitly call out China, his remarks amounted to thinly veiled criticism of Beijing, which has aggressively pursued its territorial claims in the South China Sea with vast dredging work and construction of military facilities on artificial islands.
“If the law of the sea is not respected today in the China seas, it will be threatened tomorrow in the Arctic, in the Mediterranean, or elsewhere,” Le Drian told the security conference, known as the Shangri-La Dialogue and hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
France’s stance marked the latest international pushback against China’s tough tactics in the strategic waterway, where more than $5 trillion worth of goods pass through annually.
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