The move of China comes amid a meeting between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Washington recently.
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“If it is an HF (high-frequency) radar, then it would enormously boost China’s capacity to monitor ships and aircraft in the South China Sea”, said Mr Gregory Poling, head of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at CSIS.
China said more than 80 percent of the South China Sea belongs to Beijing, according to Bloomberg, and the United States is concerned such claims are a preliminary move to exclude USA vessels from worldwide waters.
“The US is not involved in the South China Sea dispute, and this is not and should not become a problem between China and the United States”, Hua told a daily news briefing.
Observing that the stakes for the United States are not insignificant, Earnest said America would want to ensure that the freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce in the South China Sea is protected.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has released a statement on the CSIS report, condemning the organization for targeting Chinese construction in the region, despite the fact that no other country is engaging in such development in the South China Sea.
The US, for its part, said it will only come up with a peace deal with Pyongyang to end the hostilities between them since the 1950 Korean War if North Korea agrees to denuclearization over a period of time. The deployment reported Tuesday, however, was the first since Beijing sent commercial airliners in to test the newly built runway on Fiery Cross Reef, one of its artificial islands in the South China Sea in January.
Members of the UN Security Council are in the final stage of drafting the resolution, a response to DPRK’s nuclear test last month and satellite launch earlier this month.
The U.S. and China showed no sign of quelling tension in the disputed South China Sea as their top diplomats met in Washington on Tuesday.
Asked by lawmakers about the strategic goal of China’s military buildup in the region, Harris replied: “I believe China seeks hegemony in East Asia”.
The North Korean military warned the US and South Korea Tuesday to expect retaliations for their annual joint military drill in March.
Kerry said that both Russian Federation and China have expressed concern over the missile defense system.
China has deployed fighter jets to a disputed island in the South China Sea, a USA official told CNN on Tuesday.
China, North Korea’s most important ally and largest trading partner, has historically been reluctant to put undue pressure on its southern neighbour for fear of destabilising the country and unleashing a flood of refugees across their border.
China’s Ministry of Defence said in a statement on its microblog that the facilities China had established on the “relevant islands and reefs” included navigation and meteorological equipment.
The nine-dash line refers to maps used since 1947 by China and Taiwan to claim certain islands in the region.
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Harris also said he supported regular USA air and naval patrols to assert freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, a vital waterway through which more than $5 trillion in global trade passes every year.
