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China's Defense Ministry said it had declared its "baseline" for the Paracel Islands in 1996,
something the United States knew. Despite that, the Chinese government said, the United States
had sent a ship into Chinese "territorial waters."
A statement from China's Foreign Ministry said the U.S. ship did not ask for permission to enter
Chinese territorial waters, and had broken both Chinese and international law.
administration has been criticized in Congress for not conducting them more regularly and robustly.
Greg Poling, a South China Sea expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think
tank, said the administration was likely to face further criticism after opting for relatively
uncontroversial challenges to China in all of its freedom-of-navigation operations in the past year.
"They will have essentially performed the same FONOP, meaning an objection to China's demand for
prior notification, four times in a year," he said.
"That is not only redundant, but it does nothing to put a spotlight on the other, much more worrying,
restrictions China is placing on freedom of navigation."
China has been placing more serious restrictions on movement, he said, around artificial islands
China has built on reefs in the Spratly chain, notably Mischief Reef.
(Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom and Jeff Mason.; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jeffrey
Benkoe)
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-southchinasea-usa-exclusive-idUSKCN12L1O9