Vice President Mike Pence has undertaken a kind of "freedom of navigation" operation of his own over the disputed South China Sea, an interview published Tuesday revealed ahead of Pence's visit to Singapore for a series of meetings in the region.

In an interview with Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin in which Pence focused on the White House's Indo-Pacific policy, the vice president said his trip to the region "is meant to show the United States has no intention of ceding influence or control" to Beijing.

As part of this push, Pence had met with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday in Tokyo, where the two discussed, among other things, China's increasingly assertive posture in both the South China Sea and broader region.