(Opinion) Don't Miss The Boat on Australian And US Policy in South China Sea
2016-03-30 08:44:55 source：Eurasia Review
By James Kraska and Pete Pedrozo
March 29, 2016
"Australia's 2016 Defense White Paper expresses concern over 'friction' in the South China Sea (SCS) arising from U.S.-Chinese naval interactions, and it worries that territorial disputes have created 'uncertainty and tension.' Those statements, which show Canberra (like the rest of the states in the Indo-Pacific region) is slowly coming around to the gathering threat posed by China to freedom of the seas.
Predictably, the Mandarins in Beijing harshly criticized Australia, as did reliably pro-Chinese scholars such as Sam Bateman in an article in East Asia Forum. Those antagonists view Australia's new White Paper as a move by Canberra to support U.S. naval operations in the region and a deepening of the Australia-U.S. Alliance."
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