China Reportedly Deploys Fighter Jets To Disputed Islands

The move of China comes amid a meeting between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Washington recently.

China is “clearly militarizing the South China (Sea)”, said Admiral Harry Harris, head of the U.S. Pacific Command, adding: “You’d have to believe in a flat Earth to think otherwise”.

Just last week, United States officials said China had deployed surface-to-air missiles on Woody Island in the Paracels farther north, sparking concern about the growing militarisation of the South China Sea.

The news was first reported Tuesday by Fox News, which said US intelligence spotted two jets on Woody Island in the last few days.

China sent fighter jets to a disputed island in the South China Sea, U.S. officials said.

This file aerial view taken on July 27, 2012 shows part of the city of Sansha on the island of Yongxing, also known as Woody island in the disputed Paracel chain, which China now considers part of Hainan province. China’s Foreign Ministry also urged the United States to stop sowing dissension among countries around the South China Sea.

Wang was supposed to visit the Pentagon Tuesday, but the visit was canceled.

While he did not explicitly name the U.S., Mr. Wang suggested that it is among those guilty of engaging in increased military activity in the South China Sea.

Vietnam was rumoured to have placed less-advanced defensive systems on some of the Spratly islands, CSIS´s Michael J Green, Bonnie S.Glaser and Zack Cooper said in an article posted to the CSIS website and dated 19 February.

The top USA and Chinese diplomats meet Tuesday in Washington at a fraught time in relations between the two world powers.

China’s Ministry of Defence said on its microblog that the facilities China had established on the “relevant islands and reefs” included navigation and meteorological equipment.

The day afterwards, White House spokesman John Earnest replied to his counterpart by pointing out that no other countries have claims on Hawaii, where as the same could not be said of the South China Sea. China already has significant radar coverage on the mainland and nearby Paracel Islands, explains CSIS, but a radar system on the Cuateron reef is crucial because it would unilaterally access busy straits and channels.

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.

The United States and China say they are nearing a deal over UN sanctions on North Korea, raising the prospect of finalizing the resolution to punish the North within this week.

The Central News Agency of Taiwan indicated that President-elect Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan said self-control should be exercised by all parties “based on the principle of peaceful resolution” of all disputes in the region. He called for more freedom of navigation operations and possibly boosting the US military posture in the region. The U.S. said the presence of missiles provided increasing evidence of militarization of the area by China.