US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday: “There is every evidence, every day, that there has been an increase of militarisation from one kind or another”.
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China claims most of the South China Sea as its territorial waters and exclusive economic zone, denoted by a “nine-dash line” that extends nearly to the coasts of the Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.
At a summit of Southeast Asian leaders in California on Monday, Nguyen Tan Dung, Vietnam’s prime minister, suggested to US President Barack Obama that the US take “more efficient actions” against militarisation and island-building in the South China Sea. The missiles arrived over the past week.
A U.S. official confirmed that China has placed a surface-to-air missile system on Woody Island and the State Department said commercial satellite imagery appears to indicate that China has deployed such a system.
On Wednesday, Kerry reiterated that the nonmilitarization standard in the South China Sea should be applied to all countries.
Hanoi has said that Beijing had violated its sovereignty over archipelagoes in the East Vietnam Sea by sending missiles to an island and building a chopper base on another.
U.S. Navy Pacific Command’s commander, Admiral Harry Harris, countered Yi’s characterization and said that the missiles “could be an indication of militarization in the South China Sea in ways that…”
According to him, both Australia and New Zealand wanted to see a lowering of tensions as he urged Chinese President Xi Jinping to resolve all disputes in the sea-through which one-third of the world’s oil passes-through legal means.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said that patrols by United States aircraft and ships, coupled with joint exercises with regional allies were the real cause of growing unease. Analysts said the latest deployment could be an attempt to deter such freedom of navigation operations. “We are concerned that these actions are increasing tensions in the region and are counterproductive”. The limited self-defense facilities deployed on the islands are the result of China’s right to self-defense granted by global law, which has nothing to do with militarization.
“I don’t think it’s lost on any of the parties that are in a disputed position in the South China Sea that any blow-up of activities there would be very bad for security and economic issues in the region”, he said.
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Fox News said images from civilian satellite firm ImageSat International show two batteries of eight surface-to-air missile launchers on Woody Island, as well as a radar system.
