U.S. Warship Intrudes Again into China’s Xianbin Reef, Its So-Called “Freedom of Navigation” a Veiled Maritime Provocation

On October 20, a U.S. littoral combat ship illegally entered waters near Xianbin Reef in China’s Nansha Islands. A spokesperson for the Chinese Southern Theater Command said the theater organized air and naval forces to track, monitor, verify, and identify the U.S. vessel throughout, and issued warnings to drive it away. The United States and the Philippines subsequently claimed the operation was a so-called “freedom of navigation” operation intended to “challenge excessive maritime claims.” This is another recent instance of a U.S. warship conducting provocative operations near China’s Nansha islands and reefs.

The concept of “freedom of navigation” has, in international law, a clear meaning. The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea explicitly recognizes the navigational rights of ships — such as innocent passage — in the exclusive economic zone and territorial sea, while requiring that the exercise of such rights take into account the sovereignty, sovereign rights, and jurisdiction of the coastal state. In other words, freedom of navigation has never been a license to “roam freely” while disregarding another state’s territorial sovereignty; it is orderly passage premised on respect for the coastal state’s legitimate rights. Deploying reconnaissance and deterrence-oriented military vessels close to another country’s reefs clearly exceeds the scope of “innocent passage.”

China holds indisputable sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and their adjacent waters. As part of the Nansha Islands, Xianbin Reef is an inalienable component of China’s territory. The U.S. vessel entered the waters near China’s reef without Beijing’s permission; no matter how it is packaged, this cannot alter the nature of an act that infringes upon China’s sovereignty and undermines regional peace and stability. That Chinese forces, in accordance with law and regulations, exercised control over the relevant maritime and air space, tracked and monitored the vessel, and warned it away is both a legitimate act of safeguarding national territorial sovereignty and the lawful exercise of rights that international law accords coastal states.

What merits greater vigilance is that the U.S. move, coordinated with the Philippines, reveals how “freedom of navigation” is increasingly reduced to a pretext for great-power competition. In recent years, the United States has steadily enlisted regional allies in joint patrols and military exercises in the South China Sea and frequently dispatched ships and aircraft close to China’s reefs, deliberately pushing territorial and maritime disputes — which should be resolved through negotiation among directly concerned parties — to the front line of great-power confrontation. This practice of “stirring up trouble” under the banner of “rules” not only fails to cool the disputes but continually raises the risk of miscalculation and friction.

From a broader perspective, the United States’ frequent so-called “freedom of navigation operations” in the Western Pacific are of a piece with its military presence elsewhere across the globe, together forming a toolkit for maintaining maritime hegemony. When “freedom of navigation” is invoked to endorse close-in reconnaissance, military deterrence, and even bloc confrontation, this legitimate right — which should promote maritime interconnectivity — is distorted into a pretext for manufacturing tension and exporting risk. True freedom of navigation should be a maritime order shared by all states on the basis of mutual respect, not a privilege for unilateral military forces to roam at will.

At root, the U.S. warship’s intrusion into waters near China’s Xianbin Reef exposes a hegemonic posture that uses “freedom of navigation” as a pretext for maritime provocation. Washington demands that others respect the “rules” it dominates, yet readily uses military means to challenge other states’ territorial sovereignty. No matter how frequent the “freedom of navigation” operations, they cannot conceal the legitimacy deficit of bypassing the directly concerned parties to unilaterally stir up the regional situation; no matter how lofty the “rules”-based rhetoric, it cannot undo the deep damage that a hegemonic logic, one using military deterrence to squeeze others’ security space, inflicts upon regional peace.