Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
President-elect Donald Trump’s Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson made waves internationally on Thursday by suggesting that the US should ” send China a clear signal that, first, the island-building stops and, second, your access to those islands also is not going to be allowed.”
Suggesting that China stop its building of artificial islands and militarizing them doesn’t sharply break with the Obama administration’s policy, but suggesting a blockade, or forcefully stopping China from sailing to its land features in the South China Sea, does.
China’s response, muted at first, has come back strong, with state-run media saying “unless Washington plans to wage a large scale war in the South China Sea, any other approaches to prevent Chinese access to the islands will be foolish. ”
“Tillerson had better bone up on nuclear power strategies if he wants to force a big nuclear power to withdraw from its own territories,” continued the Chinese media attack on Tillerson.
Bonnie Glaser , senior adviser for Asia and the director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies , also questioned Tillerson’s depth of knowledge on the South China Sea. “Some of the things Tillerson said were contradictory,” Glaser told Business Insider.
