Experts at a Senate hearing pointed to a string of incidents -- including standoffs this year between US and Chinese ships -- as evidence of a more assertive sea posture by Beijing.

State Department official Scot Marciel said that Beijing has told US and other foreign oil companies to halt work with Vietnamese partners in the South China Sea or face consequences inside lucrative China.

"We object to any effort to intimidate US companies," Marciel, a deputy assistant secretary of state handling Asia, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He said Washington has raised concerns directly with China.

"We have also urged that all claimants exercise restraint and avoid aggressive actions to resolve competing claims," he said.

But Marciel said the United States would not take sides on the myriad island disputes involving China and its neighbors including Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam.

Senator Jim Webb, who called the hearing, said he understood the need to stay out of Asia's sometimes emotionally charged territorial disputes but worried that the lack of US position may embolden China.

"We don't discuss it enough here in the United States -- we are the only guarantor there to provide a credible umbrella under which those other countries in the region can successfully grow their economies without intimidation," said Webb, a Democrat from Virginia.

Webb, a former secretary of the navy, worried that China was quickly closing the gap with the United States in seapower.

"If the United States is to remain an Asian nation, and a maritime nation, our nation's leaders have a choice to make," he said. "The United States should maintain the quality and strength of its seapower -- if not improve it."

China, which has historic tensions with Vietnam, has administered the Paracel islands since 1974 when it overran a South Vietnamese outpost shortly before the end of the Vietnam war.

The islands -- known as the Xisha by China -- are considered strategic outposts with potentially vast oil and gas reserves, and rich fishing grounds.

Tension recently mounted when Vietnam named a "president" for a government body overseeing the islands.

China disputes the Diaoyu, or Senkaku, chain with Japan along with Taiwan, which Beijing also claims as a whole.

Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso raised hackles in Beijing earlier this year when he said the United States would defend the uninhabited chain as part of its security alliance with Tokyo.

Separately, the potentially oil-rich Spratly island chain is claimed entirely or in part by Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.

Richard Cronin, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Stimson Center think-tank, told the Senate hearing that President Barack Obama should end the "passive" US attitude on sovereignty issues.

"The Obama administration should lend at least moral support to Southeast Asian countries which are subject to intimidation, and be resolute in asserting its own rights to free passage in the face of Chinese provocations," Cronin said.

But he said the United States would fail if it tried to "stigmatize" China.

"Instead, we should make every effort to respect China's aspirations for leadership and major power status, but within the internationally recognized rules," Cronin said.

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