US slams Chinese ‘nature reserve’ as effort to claim South China Sea

The United States has slammed China over a territorial dispute with the Philippines in the South China Sea, a key maritime region that has emerged as a flash point for questions of regional sovereignty.

In a statement on Saturday, the US State Department said China was seeking to deny Filipino fishermen access to the area surrounding the Scarborough Reef, near the island of Luzon.

It also rejected China’s claims that the area constituted a “nature reserve”, dismissing the assertion as a bid by Beijing to advance its territorial ambitions.

“The United States rejects China’s ongoing attempts to enforce its destabilizing ‘national nature reserve’ at Scarborough Reef and deny Filipino fishermen access to their traditional fishing ground,” the statement reads.

“This is yet another unilateral attempt by China to use dubious environmental and legal pretexts, backed by coercion, to advance its sweeping territorial and maritime claims in the South China Sea at the expense of its neighbors.”

The statement concluded with a line that the US “stands with our Ally, the Philippines, in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific”.

In recent weeks, tensions have flared in the South China Sea, after Chinese ships fired water cannon on Filipino fishing vessels near the Scarborough Shoal.

The area has been claimed by both China and the Philippines as each country’s sovereign territory, in a decades-long dispute.