“We urge China to reaffirm that it has no plans to deploy or rotate military aircraft at its outposts in the Spratlys, in keeping with China’s prior assurances”, Garry Ross, a Pentagon spokesman said, according to Reuters.
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China has raised some questions after one of its military aircraft landed on the Fiery Cross Reef or Yongshu Reef.
It was “a problem” that the workers had apparently been working on “infrastructure improvements of a military nature”, he was quoted as saying at a regular news briefing.
Meanwhile, Russia’s arms sales boosted China’s defence capabilities, Li Lifan, a Russian affairs expert at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said.
When asked about the end of the military exercises, dubbed Balikatan 2016, the U.S. official described the exercises as a good time to show Beijing that the United States was serious about freedom of navigation and that no decision has been made about the ownership of the disputed territories in the South China Sea.
China claims almost all of the South China Sea, to parts of which Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines also lay claims of their own.
“The joint patrols between the United States and the Philippines in the South China Sea are militarizing the region and are nonbeneficial to regional peace and stability”, read an official statement issued immediately on a military website.
It is said to be the first time China’s military has publicly admitted to landing a plane on the artificial island in the resource-rich South China Sea.
Tensions are rising in the South China Sea and claimants like the Philippines are stepping up their efforts in hopes of deterring Chinese aggression.
The Philippines, which also claims islands and reefs controlled by China, has also criticized Beijing’s moves.
This is a weekly look at the latest key developments in the South China Sea, home to several territorial conflicts that have raised tensions in the region.
In addition to the light house on Zhubi Reef, China has also built large, multifunctional lighthouses on Huayang Reef and Chigua Reef, both of which are already in use. “We profit when we live in a rules-based world”, Russel said. Vietnam believes that China’s construction of an airfield on one of the atolls that Beijing turned into an island in 2014, however, is a direct violation of its sovereignty rights.
Rep. Matt Salmon of Arizona, Republican chair of the panel, agreed. Carter told about 9,000 troops that the United States would back up the Philippines and other allies in the region.
Although Salmon is a staunch critic of higher spending on most USA government programs, he was fulsome in his support of the administration’s budget request for $1.5 billion for US foreign operations and assistance for East Asia, for the fiscal year starting in October an 11 percent increase over fiscal 2015.
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