The deployment caused the US State department to issue a statement of concern over the escalation, obtaining
in return China’s rejoinder that the Americans had no right to interfere in a matter of its sovereign jurisdiction.
For good measure, the US Deputy Chief of Mission in Beijing was summoned to the foreign ministry. China feels
its actions are unjustly selected out for criticism while the provocative activities of other claimants, particularly
the Philippines and Vietnam, are glossed over or ignored. China has thus become less tolerant of criticism
and more insistent on its sovereign rights. Chinese state-controlled newspapers have been particularly shrill in
their insistence on China’s freedom of action. The
China Daily
, in a commentary on 30 July this year, accused
the US of double standards and reflected it was ‘Better [for China] to be safe than sorry... [and] to safeguard
its sovereignty and territorial integrity.’ More broadly, it was of the view that the United States’ strategic shift
is intended to contain China. ‘The current security environment for Beijing is the most complex and severe
since the foundation of the People’s Republic of China’, an assessment that led it to conclude that, with
respect to safeguarding national sovereignty and territorial integrity, no country would renounce the use of
force. Alongside such thinly-veiled official warnings is a concentration of opinion calling for China to take a
more aggressive stance, including from maritime agency chiefs, PLA officers and military advisers