Beijing landed a military plane on a disputed South China Sea reef it has built up into an artificial island, officials said yesterday, in the first confirmation of such a flight.
A Chinese air force plane landed on Fiery Cross Reef (Yongshu Reef, 永暑島) in the Spratly archipelago (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島) on Sunday to evacuate sick workers, a news report posted online by the Chinese Ministry of Defense said.
China claims nearly all of the strategically vital sea, even waters close to its Southeast Asian neighbors, and has created artificial islands in an effort to assert its claims, despite conflicting claims from Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei.
China has significantly expanded Fiery Cross Reef, which is also claimed by Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines, drawing international criticism.
In 2014, China began work on a 3,000m-long runway on the reef, which is about 1,000km from its island province of Hainan.
Beijing in January carried out several of what it called civilian flights to Fiery Cross Reef, enraging Hanoi.
“On the Chinese territory, this kind of thing is not surprising at all,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Lu Kang (陸慷) told a regular briefing.
“It is a good tradition of the People’s Liberation Army to provide a necessary assistance to Chinese people in need,” he added.
Sunday’s flight came just days after US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter on Friday last week visited a warship close to flashpoint waters, after announcing joint naval patrols with the Philippines.
On the day of Carter’s trip, Beijing said that one of its top military officials had visited a South China Sea island.
Chinese Central Military Commission Deputy Chairman General Fan Changlong (范長龍) observed building work, the Chinese Ministry of Defense said, without giving a precise date or location of the visit.
Washington regularly accuses Beijing of militarizing the South China Sea, saying it has built runways and deployed weapons to the islands. Beijing denies the accusations and says US patrols have ramped up tensions.
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