US Navy guided-missile destroyer challenged Chinese claims of sovereignty in and around islands in the South China Sea on Thursday.
Asserting freedom of navigation rights involves sailing within the 12-mile territorial limit from a nation's coastline recognized by international law, according to CNN.
Further, US Navy statement saying such Chinese claims in the South China Sea violates international law and "pose a serious threat to the freedom of the seas."
However, US Navy singled out China for making what it calls "straight baselines" enclosing all the waters within the island chain and said the Benfold was challenging those claims too.
"International law does not permit continental States, like the PRC (People's Republic of China), to establish baselines around entire dispersed island groups," the US statement said.
"With these baselines, the PRC has attempted to claim more internal waters, territorial sea, exclusive economic zone, and continental shelf than it is entitled to under international law," it said.
China claims almost all of the 1.3 million square miles of the South China Sea as its sovereign territory, according to CNN.
"US forces operate in the South China Sea on a daily basis, as they have for more than a century," the US Navy statement said.
Earlier, The USS Benfold sailed around the Paracel Islands, known as the Xisha Islands in China, in what the Navy calls freedom of navigation operation (FONOP), Lt. Mark Langford, spokesperson for the US 7th Fleet, said in the statement.
The Paracels are a collection of 130 small coral islands and reefs in the northwestern part of the South China Sea.
The islands are also claimed by Vietnam and self-ruled Taiwan but in Chinese hands for more than 46 years. The islands have been fortified with the People's Liberation Army (PLA) military installations.
( With inputs from ANI )
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