The United States government has imposed visa ban on members of the Communist Party of China (CPC) members, People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and few state-owned businesses for occupying and militarising South China Sea.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in a statement issued on Wednesday (August 26) by the State Department said that the US has begun “imposing visa restrictions on People’s Republic of China (PRC) individuals responsible for, or complicit in, either the large-scale reclamation, construction, or militarisation of disputed outposts in the South China Sea, or the PRC’s use of coercion against Southeast Asian claimants to inhibit their access to offshore resources”.
The visa ban extends not just to CPC and PLA members but also to private individuals and businesses involved in the occupation of South China Sea.
“These individuals will now be inadmissible into the United States, and their immediate family members may be subject to these visa restrictions as well,” the State Department said.
Along with this, the US Department of Commerce has added 24 Chinese state-owned enterprises including several subsidies of the China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) to the Entity List
The State Department said that the CCCC led the destructive dredging of the PRC’s South China Sea outposts and is also one of the leading contractors used by Beijing in its global ‘One Belt One Road’ strategy.
The US also came down heavy on China by saying that CCCC and its subsidiaries have engaged in corruption, predatory financing, environmental destruction, and other abuses across the world.
“The PRC must not be allowed to use CCCC and other state-owned enterprises as weapons to impose an expansionist agenda,” Pompeo said.