China constructed the 3,000-meter runway on the Yongshu Jiao Reef by dredging sand up onto reefs and atolls in Nansha Islands.
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Two large Chinese civil aircraft landed on Wednesday on an airfield that China “illegally” built on the reef, Vietnam said.
China landed two more planes on a contested reef in the South China Sea Wednesday, state media said, despite global condemnation of a landing at the same location days earlier. But Hua said on Saturday the test flight that day was completed “completely within China’s sovereignty”. China blasted the US action and warned Washington not to repeat the maneuver. As far as the regional countries are concerned, the publication said that the newly built reefs and islands are mainly for civilian use and instead of calling on foreign powers; the regional nations should wait and see whether China will keep its promise.
China’s increasing military presence in the disputed sea could effectively lead to a Beijing-controlled air defense zone ratcheting up tensions with other claimants and with the United States in one of the world’s most volatile areas.
Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines and Brunei have been raising claims over the Sprately archipelago in the South China Sea for the last several decades.
It is equipped to handle long-range bombers and transport craft, as well as China’s jet fighters, boosting the country’s strategic stronghold in the sea.
He also said the United Kingdom “will recognize the decision” of the arbitral tribunal handling Manila’s case against Beijing over the South China Sea. Reacting to the report, Gu Xiaosong, a researcher of the Southeast Asian studies at the Guangxi Academy of Social Sciences told the daily that “India has no territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea”. They returned to mainland China in the afternoon. The uninhabited islands are in the East China Sea, 330 km from China’s coast, 170 km northwest of the Japanese island of Ishigaki and a similar distance north of Taiwan.
Pictures released by China’s state news agency Xinhua showed dozens of people holding a banner and waving on the tarmac in what it described as ‘our country’s most southern airport’.
About $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes through the sea each year every year. This flight however did result in some backlash from the Chinese government who considered it a “serious military provocation” this according to an article on CNN.
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In October, the Pentagon began conducting patrols within 12 nautical miles of the man-made islands.
