"Look at what the US has brought to the Asia-Pacific region over last 70 years, the most rapidly growing region economically in the world," US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter told a Washington audience.
"It's been the peace and stability there that we underwrote that's allowed first Japan to rise, then South Korea, then Taiwan, then Southeast Asia, now China and India. That's what we've stood for and they've benefited from that," he asserted.
The US, he argued, is going to keep doing what it has always done for 70 years.
"We're going to fly and sail and operate where international law permits, period. And we demonstrate that and that won't stop," he said.
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The South China Sea is also a major shipping lane. Over half of the world's commercial shipping passes through the Indo-Pacific waterways.
They accuse China of illegally reclaiming land in contested areas to create artificial islands with facilities that could potentially be for military use.
The US has criticised Beijing for building artificial islands in the disputed sea, and has flown a B-52 bomber and sailed a guided-missile destroyer near some of the constructions China has made in recent months.
Carter said the US is also making investments in its defense budget that are specifically oriented towards the checking the development of the Chinese military.
"All around the region, people are reacting. The Chinese are, with this kind of stuff, going to get people to react and compensate. But more importantly, it's self-isolating behavior," he said.
"I don't know when they'll realise that, whether they will realise that, but it's not the American approach to have a cold war there, to carve up the region, to divide. We're not trying to stop the Chinese from doing what they're doing," Carter said.