In the first leg of her South Asian tour, United States Vice President Kamala Harris, on Tuesday, criticised Beijing for its ‘coercion and intimidation’ in the South China Sea. She added that the US will support its allies in the region against China’s advances. Harris is on a weeklong tour through Southeast Asia, starting in Singapore. 

“We know that Beijing continues to coerce, to intimidate and to make claims to the vast majority of the South China Sea. Beijing’s actions continue to undermine the rules-based order and threaten the sovereignty of nations,” she said in her foreign policy speech, laying out the Biden administration’s vision for the Indo-Pacific.

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She also referred to the Philippines’ legal victory over China, invalidating the latter’s nine-dash line territorial claim over the South China Sea. In recent years, Beijing has put forward strong assertions over its rights on the contested South China sea and built a military presence in the region. 

Harris said that the  US stands with our allies and our partners in the face of threats from China.

“It is in our vital interest to stand united with our allies and our partners in Southeast Asia in defense of a free and open Indo-Pacific,” she said.

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This speech from the US Vice President comes as the US is in the process of ending its decades-long focus on the Middle East with a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

She said that while the US is focused on closing out its Afghanistan engagement by evacuating as many people as possible, it is also imperative that as we address developments in one region, we continue to advance our interests in other regions, including this region.

In her rebuke to China, Harris did emphasise that the US is seeking greater engagement in the Indo-Pacific region not just to counter China, but to advance an “optimistic vision that we have for our participation and partnership in the region.” In deference to Singapore’s staunch neutrality in the US-China dispute, Harris also affirmed that the US isn’t looking to “make anyone choose between countries.”

Southeast Asia represents America’s fourth-largest export market. Singapore serves as the anchor of the US naval presence in the region. 

The chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan complicates US’ message of support to the region, raising questions about the country’s commitment to its allies. While Biden said last week that an indefinite engagement would have benefited “true strategic competitors” China and Russia, China has seized on the images of violence from the evacuation to slam the US for its engagement there. 

Harris did not go into detail on the Afghanistan issue. She said that the US had “achieved what we had gone there to do”, and is now “laser focused” on evacuating Afghans who had worked with US troops.

After her speech Tuesday, Harris held a roundtable discussion with business leaders on supply chain issues. Later, she planned to travel to Vietnam, where she’ll meet with top officials Wednesday.

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Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Monday that the US had done “unscrupulous and dishonest things” in Afghanistan and called on the nation to help rebuild.

“The United States is the root cause and the biggest external factor in the Afghan issue,” Wenbin said. “It cannot just run away like this.”

With inputs from the Associated Press