The admiral’s visit to China, in planning since February, came after months of Chinese development in the South China Sea that has alarmed U.S. allies and heightened tensions across the Pacific region. China has undertaken a land reclamation project in the South China Sea that includes building manmade islands and militarizing them.

“It’s a complex situation. They’ve established a dynamic, I think, where they’re trying to posture many of their actions as a responsive measure,” Richardson said of Chinese growth in the South China. “I made it fairly clear that our activity in the South China Sea is by and large relatively constant for a long time. The activity levels and the complexity and all that has not really changed.”

China has sought to characterize its activity and claims of “indisputable sovereignty” over most of the South China Sea as reasonable. But that position took a blow July 12 when the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague sided with the Philippines over China in a case filed by the government in Manila. Chinese President Xi Jinping said afterward that his country “never [accepted] any claim or action” citing the decision.

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Richardson met with Adm. Wu Shengli, the commander of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), and Richardson underscored that the United States will continue to conduct freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea and demonstrate that it remains open to commercial traffic. Wu is expected to attend a conference at the U.S. Naval War College in Portsmouth, R.I., in September.

“I think they kind of understand that we are going to be there,” Richardson said of the South China Sea. “I think it’s just a matter of continuing to exercise these types of things, and it will be less a point of discussion and more just what we do.”

Asked if the United States and the Chinese were in a stalemate, Richardson said he would not characterize the dynamic that way.

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“As any relationship between two very complex nations is going to be, we’re not going to agree on 100 percent, right?” he said. “There’s going to be areas where there is a little bit of stuff to work out.”

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Richardson’s comments came shortly after foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations gathered Tuesday in Laos and deadlocked on whether to issue a communique that referred directly to The Hague’s ruling. Cambodia opposed including the language in any response, according to a Reuters report.