China rejects Vietnam protest over sea flight test

State media reported Sunday that Hua Chunying, Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said that the test flight with a civilian aircraft to a reef in the Spratly Islands was “completely within China’s sovereignty”.

China claims most of South China Sea, and apart from building facilities on islands it controls, while it has also been reclaiming land and building new islands from reefs to increase its presence in the area.

Vietnam was aggravated enough to issue a protest note to China’s Foreign Ministry, calling the flight, “a serious infringement of the sovereignty of Vietnam on the Spratly archipelago”.

The Philippines refers to the South China Sea as the “West Philippine Sea”, emphasizing that parts of the water fall under its exclusive economic zone as allowed by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

China’s campaign of island building in the South China Sea might soon quadruple the number of airstrips available to the People’s Liberation Army in the highly contested and strategically vital region.

Vietnam handed a letter of protest over the flight to the Chinese Embassy in Hanoi on Saturday.

“It is another often-played move from Japan to trumpet the “China Threat” and stir up an ‘anti-China chorus [with other countries, ]'”Liu Jiangyong, vice director of the Modern International Relations Institute at Tsinghua University, told the Global Times”.

Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also have claims to parts of the Sea, home to strategic shipping lanes as well as substantial oil and gas reserves.

“The test flight of China in Kagitingan Reef has definitely raised tensions in the region”, he added.

Now five claimants have built airstrips in the contested Spratly Islands. He said claimants should instead focus on reaching agreement on acceptable behavior in disputed areas.

In Washington, State Department spokesman John Kirby said China’s landing of the plane “raises tensions and threatens regional stability”.

It began work in 2014 on a 3,000-meter runway on the reef.

On Monday, the Philippines joined Vietnam in criticizing China’s move, and said it was also considering a formal protest. Among its claims is to have the tribunal declare that the Fiery Cross Reef is at most a reef entitled to a 12-nautical-mile territorial sea.

USA ally Australia also sent a surveillance plane flying near the artificial islands in early December, showing it did not recognize China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea.