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Aerial photo taken on Jan. 11, 2014 shows the Yongxing Island, seat of Sansha City in south China's Hainan Province. [Xinhua]

Chinese political advisors denounced the United States' misjudgment regarding China's actions in the South China Sea and said America can't handle another country in the world to challenge its hegemony.

Cui Tiankai, Chinese ambassador to the United States and a member of the 12th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), said to China.org.cn, that America has misunderstood and misjudged China's actions in the South China Sea.

"The U.S. government thinks our actions to maintain our sovereignty are a direct challenge to its interests, maritime hegemony and leadership. Actually, all we have done is to defend our territorial sovereignty, which has a long history that no one has challenged before."

Cui explained that Japan had occupied some of the South China Sea islands during World War II. After WWII ended, the Chinese government took over the islands by going there in American warships. Later, America would notify the Chinese government if it would have any actions in that area.

"Our neighboring countries did the same. In the diplomatic documents during the 1950s and 1960s, Vietnam recognized our territorial sovereignty regarding the Nansha Islands and Xisha Islands. After Vietnam united in the 1970s and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea was made in 1982, Vietnam distorted it and started making claims. The Philippines and a few other countries acted similarly," the ambassador said.

"We had been in a bilateral negotiation to resolve the disputes with them, never thinking about using armed forces," he added. "But when they don't honor our agreements, we have to take actions in the South China Sea."

"This has nothing to do with America," said Zhou Wenzhong, secretary-general of the Boao Forum for Asia and a CPPCC member as well as the former Chinese ambassador to the United States from March 2005 to 2010. "The United States doesn't belong to this area. It is not a coastal country here. Do American ships have any barriers in South China Sea? No. There is no issue of navigational freedom."

Major General Qian Lihua, a CPPCC member and former director-general of the Foreign Affairs Office of the Ministry of National Defense, told China.org.cn that the fact that America used its Freedom of Navigation Program to interfere with international waters, is part of its "Return-to-the-Asia-Pacific" strategy. "What it really wants is to curb China's development, preventing China from being a force that can challenge it. We have seen this trend develop clearly," he said.

Qian explained that the Freedom of Navigation Program was actually a domestic program made by the United States to prevent other countries from so-called "excessive maritime claims." "The program is a unilateral action without the United Nations' approval and violates the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and other international laws," Qian stressed. "It faked itself as an international law and tried hard to maintain American hegemony. It tramples on the Convention on the Law of the Sea, the United Nations Charter and other countries' national security laws."

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