White House tells China: Hawaii is not South China Sea

The US has strongly refuted the Chinese claim that what it is doing in the disputed South China Sea is akin to the US’ deploying of defence facilities in Hawaii, saying no other country has a claim on Hawaii.

The militarisation of facilities in the South China Sea does not help efforts to resolve maritime claims in the region, US secretary of state John Kerry said before he was to meet Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi in Washington on Tuesday.

The US is “encouraging the peaceful resolution of competing maritime claims”, he said.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest on Monday said, “There is no other country that has a claim on Hawaii. But yet when you consider the land features in the South China Sea, there are a variety of overlapping territorial claims that a variety of countries have made on those features.”

Mr Earnest’s remarks came in response to Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying who on Monday said China was doing in the South China Sea what the US does in Hawaii.

“China deploying necessary national defence facilities on its own territory is no different from the US deploying defence facilities on Hawaii,” Ms Hua said.

Recognising that the Chinese government may have disagreements about the claims made by other countries, Mr Earnest said that is precisely the reason the US believes all the parties should resolve their differences about this matter in a way that does not provoke a military confrontation.