China has placed fighter jets on the same South China Sea island where anti-aircraft batteries were spotted last week, a United States news report said Wednesday. ― Reuters picWASHINGTON, Feb 24 ― China is “changing the operational landscape” in the South China Sea by deploying missiles and radar as part of an effort to dominate East Asia, a senior usa military official said yesterday.
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The release of the report also coincides with the first day of a three-day visit to the U.S.by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, during which the issue of competing South China Sea claims is expected to be discussed, as well as North Korea’s latest nuclear test.
After Chinese state media last November published images of J-11 fighter jets on Woody Island, the U.S. Navy sailed a guided-missile destroyer past another contested island in the South China Sea and flew B-52 bombers and sailed another warship in the region for a “freedom of navigation” exercise.
Secretary of State John Kerry said after meeting Foreign Minister Wang that steps by China, Vietnam and others have created an escalatory cycle.
China’s Defense Ministry has said defense facilities had existed on the islands for years, according to the government-run Global Times.
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.
“If a radar is there for some sort of normal navigation process and there’s no missile attached to it, there are ways to work these things out”, Mr. Kerry said at Tuesday’s joint news briefing with Mr. Wang.
Aucoin, whose Japan-based fleet covers a region from India to the worldwide dateline in the Pacific Ocean, said the U.S.is not making such maneuvers to single out any country, and wants all nations that are reclaiming land to stop. “I believe China seeks hegemony in East Asia”.
Maintaining peace and stability in the region is in line with the common interests of China, the USA and relevant parties.
China’s foreign and defense ministries didn’t confirm the presence of the radar, but said construction work in the Spratlys mainly served civilian purposes, while military deployments there were limited, defensive, and in compliance with sovereign rights to self defense. The top diplomats of the USA and China meet February 23, in Washington at a fraught time in relations between the two world powers.
More than $5 trillion of worth of natural resources and goods transit the South China Sea each year. U.S. Naval force Captain Darryn James, representative for U.S. Pacific Command, said China’s rehashed arrangement of cutting edge warrior air ship to Woody Island proceeded with an irritating pattern.
The Asian Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies said the images showed that construction of facilities at Cuarteron Reef appeared almost complete and that the artificial island now covered an area of about 21ha.
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Wang countered by saying China has “historic” claims in the sea and criticizing actions by the Philippines, which China says has broken earlier accords over the area.
