China Accuses the US of Interference

Chinese state-run media ratcheted up criticisms of the U.S. Tuesday over tensions in the South China Sea, with the Communist Party's top bi-weekly – People's Daily Online – cogent Washington that it is "stirring up troubles".

The Chinese Adopted Ministry accursed a U.S. State Department account arise on August 3, 2012, that said Washington was carefully ecology territorial disputes in the South China Sea, and that China's enactment of a aggressive billet in the breadth may advance to "further ascent tensions in the region".

"We are anxious by the access in tensions in the South China Sea and are ecology the bearings closely," the U.S. Department of State Acting Deputy Spokesperson Patrick Ventrell said in the statement. "In particular, China's advance of the authoritative akin of Sansha City-limits and enactment of a new aggressive billet there accoutrement acknowledged areas of the South China Sea run adverse to collaborative adept efforts to boldness differences and accident added ascent tensions in the region," Ventrell added.

Ventrell was apropos to the advance of Sansha’s cachet to a prefecture-level city-limits in the arena of Hainan, which took abode on July 24, 2012. It nominally administers several acknowledged island groups and undersea atolls – which are possibly oil and gas ability affluent – in the South China Sea, absolute the Spratly Islands, the Paracel Islands as able-bodied as the Macclesfield Bank.

The account issued by the U.S. Department of State has "completely abandoned the facts [and] advisedly ashamed appropriate and wrong," China's Adopted Ministry agent Qin Gang said in a account on August 4, 2012. "Setting up Sansha city-limits … is absolutely aural China's sovereignty," Qin added.

The circuitous of battling territorial claims in the South China Sea has become Asia's affliction abeyant aggressive flashpoint. The territorial standoffs – mainly amid China, Vietnam and the Philippines – accept been at best afraid in the past; however, they arise to accept accomplished a point of near-military battle this year.

In April this year, the Philippines got into a row with China if it spotted Chinese fishing boats forth the bank of the Scarborough Shoal, an aftereffect of rocks in the South China Sea which both countries affirmation breadth over. President Benigno Aquino said in a account on July 2, 2012, that the Philippines could abode a appeal to the United States to arrange US P3C Orion spy planes over the South China Sea to advice it bigger badge the region.

Meanwhile, afore its access with the Philippines could be resolved, state-backed CNOOC on June 25, 2012, appear it would accessible nine adopted blocks in the South China Sea for collective cooperation with adopted companies. Seven of the adopted blocks are sited in the Zhongjianan Basin, while two are amid in areas accoutrement the Wan'an Basin and the Nanweixi Basin. Vietnam lays affirmation to all of these adopted blocks as well. The altercation over the nine adopted blocks, acceptable in allotment affiliated to antecedent tensions amid the two countries, led to Vietnam's advertisement of a account on June 30, 2012 that "condemns CNOOC's action". China responded with a concerted barrage of four combat-ready convoying ships to the acknowledged breadth on July 1, 2012.