HANOI – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asked Southeast Asian nations Thursday to go beyond words and act against China’s “bullying” in the disputed South China Sea, promising America will back them up.Pompeo spoke with counterparts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in an annual conference by video due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Four of the members — the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei — have been locked in the long-raging territorial conflict with China, along with Taiwan, over the busy waterway, which Beijing claims almost in its entirety.