Vietnam says China landed plane on disputed island

Vietnam last week protested the test, saying it violated Hanoi’s sovereignty, and demanded that China stop such actions.

The same day, a representative from the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry presented a diplomatic note to Chinese embassy counterpart opposing China’s action.

Ha Le, deputy head of the Vietnam Fisheries Surveillance Department, told AFP Chinese officials had offered to check on the report if more details became available.

Kirby said that to commence flight operations in the newly-built airfield within a disputed territory “raises tensions and threatens regional stability”. And on Sunday, it asked Beijing for an urgent investigation of the ramming and sinking of a Vietnamese fishing boat off Vietnam’s coast by a foreign vessel that may have been Chinese.

China said it has complete sovereignty over Fiery Cross Reef and had used a civilian plane to test the airstrip.

Besides Kagitingan, China built artificial islands on Calderon (Cuarteron), Burgos (Gaven), Mabini (Johnson South), Panganiban (Mischief), Zamora (Subi) and McKennan (Hughes) reefs, all claimed by the Philippines and within the country’s 370-kilometer exclusive economic zone recognized under Unclos.

The U.S., which has expressed concern over freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, late past year flew two B-52 bombers near Chinese-built islands in the Spratlys.

Almost 50 young Filipinos returned yesterday from remote Philippine-held Pag-asa island in the South China Sea where they had staged a week-long protest against Beijing’s claims in the disputed waterway.

Subi reef, located in the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, is shown in this handout Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative satellite image taken September 3, 2015 and released to Reuters October 27, 2015.

The controversy comes just several days after China’s Defence Ministry announced that it had launched a direct phone link with Vietnam.

“We have made this case clear repeatedly, and we will continue to make it”, he said.

The two states’ competing claims in the South China Sea came to a head in 2014 when Beijing parked an oil rig off the Vietnamese coast, leading to anti-China riots.

Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Brunei, and Malaysia all contest parts of the South China Sea that China has claimed as its own; Vietnam and the Philippines both claim parts of the Spratly Islands.