China will “crush” any foreign incursion into its sovereign territory including in the South China Sea, a senior Beijing military official said Thursday on the sidelines of a defence forum. Washington and Beijing have verbally sparred over China’s increasingly assertive approach in disputed maritime regions, including the South China Sea. In recent months, Chinese vessels have engaged in a series of high-profile confrontations with Philippine ships in the waters, which Beijing claims almost in their entirety despite an international court ruling that its assertion has no legal basis.
