President Trump could impose sanctions on Chinese state-owned companies involved in Beijing’s establishment of military outposts in the South China Sea, according to a senior State Department official.
“Yes, there is room for that,” State Department Assistant Secretary David Stilwell, who leads the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said Tuesday. “This is a language the Chinese understand — demonstrative and tangible action.”
Stilwell acknowledged the possibility of new sanctions during a wide-ranging discussion of China’s attempt to assert sovereignty over most of the South China Sea.
The prospect of sanctions is a step toward the kind of comprehensive response to China’s militarization of the South China Sea that security experts following the issue have hoped Trump would adopt. “The only real solutions are coordinated international diplomatic and economic pressures,” CSIS senior fellow Gregory Poling, who hosted the Tuesday event, said during a recent interview.
Stilwell made his comments in the wake of a high-profile deployment of two U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups for military exercises in the South China Sea, where some officials worry a clash between the United States and China could take place.
Stilwell expressed the hope that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s denunciation this week of China’s attempt to dominate key waterways might encourage other allies to impose sanctions or take other actions to counter Beijing.
[Opinion: Why Mike Pompeo’s South China Sea statement is so significant]
