China again lands planes on disputed island in South China Sea

China has alarmed its rivals with its massive reclamation and construction of facilities on disputed reefs, including a 3,000-metre (9,842-foot) runway on Fiery Cross, around 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) from the southern province of Hainan.

Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative/CSISFiery Cross, January 19, 2015. China rejected Hanoi’s protest.

The attempt has invited a flurry of speculations, as well as criticisms across the world.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Saturday that China deployed a “civil aircraft” on the island, which it calls Yongshu Jiao, to determine whether the new airfield in what she said was Chinese territory conformed to civil aviation standards.

A tribunal in The Hague is expected to announce its verdict in a landmark case filed by the Philippines accusing China of violating global law in the South China Sea, further raising tensions.

Chinese officials have repeatedly stressed that the new islands would be mostly for civilian use, such as Coast Guard activity and fishing research. On the sidelines of the ASEAN meetings in Kuala Lumpur, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin argued that “to build necessary military defense facilities on islands far away from our mainland is required by the need both of national defense and of safeguarding our islands and reefs”.

China’s landing of an aircraft at Fiery Cross Reef has already drawn criticism from its neighbors.

China sparked condemnation from the United States and Japan in late 2013 when it declared an ADIZ over the East China Sea, covering uninhabited islands disputed with Tokyo.

In this matter, Zhang Baohui, a Political Science Professor and Director of the Centre for Asian Pacific Studies at Lingnan University in Hong Kong, said: “Such operations could gravely destabilize the South China Sea situation, even peace and stability of the whole region”.

It could not be more clear who is escalating tensions, Liu said. A 2010 report by U.S. Air Force Major Christopher J. McCarthy says, “Today, China has emerged as a regional power with robust Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) capabilities and unclear political and military intentions”.

More than $US5 billion ($7 billion) of trade passes every year through the South China Sea, which is also believed to hold huge deposits of oil and gas.

Senator McCain said that the lack of US action after a US Navy patrol near the islands last October was allowing China “to pursue its territorial ambitions” in the region.