In response to that and to concerns expressed by regional states in Washington, the US Secretary of States, Hilary Clinton, declared at a meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum in July for the first time that the US has a ‘national interest’ in resolving the disputed claims to islands in the South China Sea and that it ‘supports a collaborative diplomatic process’ to this end that ‘we oppose the use or the threat of force by any claimant’.
Other states at the Forum joined her in calling for a collective approach to the South China Sea.
The Chinese Foreign Minister, caught off guard, simply repeated Beijing’s long-standing opposition to ‘internationalizing’ the disputes.