海角大神

Rex Tillerson, president-elect Donald Trump鈥檚 pick for secretary of state, told senators at his confirmation hearing on Wednesday that he would keep Chinese ships from accessing artificial islands it has been building in the South China Sea.

鈥淲e鈥檙e going to send China a clear signal that, first, the island-building stops, and second, your access to those islands is also not going to be allowed,鈥� said Mr. Tillerson.

The construction of military installations on newly created islands, in waters claimed by other Asian countries, was 鈥渁kin to Russia鈥檚 taking of Crimea,鈥� he said.聽

鈥淭hey鈥檙e taking territory or declaring control of territories that are not rightfully China鈥檚.鈥�

Tillerson did not elaborate on how, exactly, the United States would seek to block China from the islands. The Obama administration has periodically sent warships to skirt the islands, which has done little to discourage China from work on the installations.

But the policy would dramatically reshape US thinking on Chinese expansionism, drawing a hard new territorial line in China鈥檚 backyard and, experts say, invite a military confrontation with Beijing.

"If Tillerson tries to fulfill that promise [to deny Beijing access to the islands], there will be a ," said Hugh White, professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University, in an interview with the Australian Financial Review. "Some would see this as a statement of strength and assertiveness, I would see it as one of ignorance and irresponsibility."

China鈥檚 foreign ministry in its first reaction to Tillerson鈥檚 comments, reported the Guardian, with spokesman Lu Kang stressing 鈥渘on-confrontation, non-conflict, mutual benefit and win-win cooperation鈥� as the bedrock of China-US relations. But he also said that China had been acting within the limits of its sovereignty, and left no room for interpretation in its control of the islands.

鈥淟ike the US, China to carry out normal activities,鈥� he said, according to Bloomberg.

Analysts in China consulted by The New York Times , disbelief, and defiance.

鈥淚s this a warning? Or will this be a policy option?鈥� Zhu Feng, executive director of the China Center for Collaborative Studies of the South China Sea at Nanjing University, told the Times. 鈥淚f this is a policy option, this will not be able to block China鈥檚 access to these constructed islands. There is no legal basis.鈥�

And a US attempt to police Chinese activities in the South China Sea could put the government in an untenable position domestically: much of the public sees those waters and territories as indisputably Chinese, with school textbooks marking out a swath of the Sea within the 鈥渘ine-dash line鈥� 鈥� a demarcation that is not recognized by its neighbors or the Hague 鈥� as belonging to the nation.

After an international court in the Hague ruled in July that the nine-dash line had no legal basis, public anger was such that official censors stepped in to on social-media site Weibo, reported Foreign Policy that month. The government, meanwhile, simply ignored the ruling.

Tillerson also suggested that the US would rally its Asian allies to get behind an aggressive approach 鈥� though much of southeast Asia has made recent gestures that it would defer to Chinese influence. As Ben Rosen wrote for 海角大神 in July, the Association of Southeastern Asian Nations (ASEAN) watered down criticism of China鈥檚 noncompliance with the Hague鈥檚 ruling from a joint statement at the behest of Cambodia:聽

鈥淐ambodia鈥檚 demand that ASEAN refrain from mentioning the ruling shows the sway that China has over its neighbors about territorial disputes in the South China Sea, even if it erodes their own sovereignty, because of the economic significance of the sea lanes. The South China Sea carries more than $5 trillion in global trade through it each year,鈥� Rosen reported.