US: China Will Never Bully America!

The commander of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier deployed to Northeast Asia said on Tuesday that American forces wouldn't be deterred by China's warnings about the likelihood of conflict.

Rear Adm. Christopher Sweeney, who heads Carrier Strike Group 11, a flotilla of warships led by the "supercarrier" USS Nimitz, said so.

The Nimitz and its escorts arrived in the South Korean port of Busan on the East China Sea following back-to-back war games with Japan and South Korea. The strike group will wrap up a monthlong show of force when it conducts trilateral naval drills with both Asian allies next week.

As its physical power increases, China is challenging America's right to act in the region without consequence. Its officials are eager to put a stop to decades of American military operations, including reconnaissance, that have occupied its neighboring seas. Beijing counters that Washington is currently involved in an all-out containment drive to halt its growth.

Just last week, USS Milius, one of the Navy's Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, challenged China's sweeping maritime claims by sailing near the Paracel Islands, a disputed archipelago in the South China Sea, known in Beijing as the Xisha Islands.

It was the Navy's first freedom of navigation operation of the year, after five in 2022 and five the year before that, either around the Parcels or the Spratly Islands, another disputed island group in the sea.

China has consistently rejected a 2016 international tribunal ruling in The Hague that invalided its historical claims to almost the entire area.

Tan Kefei, a spokesperson for the Chinese defense ministry, said the U.S.'s maritime operation took place without China's approval and undermined peace and stability in the region.

The multi-domain U.S.-China rivalry is playing out in unpredictable plays in the military arena. The U.S. and its allies say Chinese forces are now more inclined to take risks to assert their country's territorial claims, flying and sailing in ways that could lead to an accident, or worse.