China Has Deployed Missiles On Disputed Island, U.S. And Taiwan Say

The new bases are also highly vulnerable to USA attack in a conflict and the US will continue to defy Beijing by sailing its Navy ships inside China’s claimed territorial waters, said Edward N. Luttwak, a China expert and military strategist based in the US state of Maryland.

China is reported to have deployed surface-to-air missiles on an island in the Xisha group of islands in the South China Sea amid regional tensions and U.S. involvement.

This image with notations provided by ImageSat International N.V., shows satellite images of Woody Island.

The Chinese foreign minister said the reports are simply inventions of Western media.

Later Wednesday, a US defense official declined to comment on China’s denial, but noted that a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman had asserted that Beijing has the right to build up defense systems on islands it claims. In 2014, the country added a military airstrip to the island, saying it would “greatly improve Chinese defence capabilities”.

 The summit between the U.S. and the Association of SouthEast Asian Nations (ASEAN) ended with a call for a shared commitment to “peaceful resolution of disputes… without resorting to the threat or use of force” and “non-militarisation and self-restraint”.

China has positioned anti-aircraft missiles on a disputed island in the South China Sea, Taiwan said Wednesday.

“[The deployment of the HQ-9] reflects a harder step by Beijing towards these Maritime claims”, said Ashdown. “Yet, like all nations, we need to defend our rights”, he added.

“The United Sates continues to call on all claimants to halt land reclamation, construction, and militarization of features in the South China Sea”.

One U.S. official described chaff as “a confetti bomb of aluminum shreds”.

“There is every evidence, every day that there has been an increase of militarization of one kind or another”. “It’s of serious concern”.

But the work has angered other countries which also claim the territory, and there is growing concern about the implications of the area becoming militarised.

On the sidelines of the meeting in California, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung urged Obama to have a “strong voice” and take “more practical actions” to put an end to activities aimed at changing the status quo in the region, according to a Vietnamese government news website. “If they have been deployed they are probably China’s effort to signal a response to freedom-of navigation operations, but I don’t think it is a totally unprecedented deployment”.

In unusually forthright language, Botzet said China’s policy of military buildup was not in its interest.

The official said the deployment is on Woody Island in the Paracel chain, but it is unclear whether this is a short-term deployment or something meant to be more long-lasting.

He said China briefly deployed fighter jets previous year on the island, which it has occupied since the 1950s.

Yao Yunzhu, a senior researcher at the PLA Academy of Military Science, said of the report about the missile deployment that “there is nothing surprising”.

China claims most of the South China Sea, through which more than $5 trillion in global trade passes every year, and has been building runways and other infrastructure on artificial islands to bolster its title.