US officials denounced Beijing on Tuesday for increasing confrontations with other countries in the South China Sea, actions that a State Department official said required “multilateral condemnation”.
“There is a clear and upwards trend of [People’s Republic of China] provocations against South China Sea claimants and other states lawfully operating in the region,” Jung Pak of the department’s bureau of East Asia and Pacific affairs, said in a forum hosted by Washington think tank Centre for Strategic and International Studies.