President Joe Biden on Wednesday said the United States would stand with Southeast Asian allies in defending freedom of the seas, democracy and human rights and said he backed efforts to hold the Myanmar junta accountable to its commitments to peace.
Southeast Asia has become a strategic battleground between the United States and China which controls most of the South China Sea and has turned up military and political pressure of fiercely democratic Taiwan, a self-ruled island it considers its own.
Biden joined Southeast Asian leaders in rebuking Myanmar's junta on Tuesday, as a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) opened without a representative from the country following its top general's exclusion for ignoring peace proposals.
He also said the United States was deeply concerned by "China's coercive and proactive actions across the Taiwan Strait", a waterway linking Taiwan and the mainland.
Biden also said he would speak out for "human rights in Xinjiang and Tibet (and) the rights of the people of Hong Kong".
China denies human rights abuses in far western Xinjiang and the Himalayan region of Tibet. It also denies meddling with freedoms in the former British colony of Hong Kong.
REUTERS