Beijing deploys antiaircraft missiles on disputed South China Sea island, Taiwan says

Beijing deploys antiaircraft missiles on disputed South China Sea island, Taiwan says, Taking added accomplish to beef up its aggressive attendance in the already abutting South China Sea, China has deployed antiaircraft missiles on a contested island in the region, Taiwan’s Ministry of Aegis said Wednesday.

The missiles acquire been deployed on Woody Island, aswell accepted as Yongxing, which is allotment of the Paracel chain, Taiwan said. Woody Island has been controlled by acreage China back the 1970s but is aswell claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan.

Taiwan said its aggressive would “pay abutting attention” to consecutive developments on Woody Island and apprenticed “relevant parties … to burden from any unilateral admeasurement that would access tensions.”

Satellite images from ImageSat International, aboriginal arise by Fox News, arise to appearance two batteries of eight surface-to-air missile launchers as able-bodied as a alarm arrangement on Woody Island. Fox quoted an bearding U.S. official as adage the images seemed to appearance an HQ-9 air aegis system, with a ambit of about 125 miles.

China claims ascendancy over a ample swath of the South China Sea and has been dredging beach and architecture facilities, including runways and ports, on assorted islets and reefs for the endure several years. But added countries, including the Philippines and Vietnam, aswell acquire asserted claims to some of the specks of acreage in the region.

U.S. admiral are afraid that China eventually wants to use the islets for aggressive purposes and is ultimately gluttonous to advance American armament out of what it commendations as its own backyard.

In contempo months, the U.S. has sailed several argosy abutting to acknowledged area captivated by China in what Washington has characterized as abandon of aeronautics exercises.

News of the missile deployment bankrupt anon afterwards Admiral Obama assured a acme at the Sunnylands acreage in Rancho Mirage, Calif., with 10 Southeast Asian leaders.

At the summit, Obama said he and the added leaders "discussed the charge for actual accomplish in the South China Sea to lower tensions, including a arrest to added reclamation, new architecture and militarization of acknowledged areas." But a final acknowledgment from the attendees independent no accurate measures for accomplishing so.

Asked about the missiles, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, actualization alongside Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop at a ahead appointed account appointment Wednesday afternoon in Beijing, at aboriginal said he had alone been told of the letters several account prior. He appropriate they were an attack by “certain Western media to actualize account stories.”

But after in the briefing, Wang said: “As for the bound and all-important aegis accessories China has congenital on islands and reefs area stationed Chinese cadre are stationed, that is constant with the aegis and self-preservation China is advantaged to beneath all-embracing law.”

On Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry agent Hong Lei had told a approved account appointment that China would “deploy all-important civic aegis accessories on the islands.”

“It does not impede abandon of aeronautics and over-flight in the South China Sea that all countries are advantaged to beneath all-embracing law,” he said.

Although the missiles deployed on Woody Island are allegedly arresting in nature, Alexander Huang, cardinal studies assistant at Tamkang University in Taiwan, said that “of advance it agency the militarization of the South China Sea islands, which China has promised not to militarize.”

Last month, speaking alongside U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Beijing, Wang Yi had said that "China has accustomed a charge of not agreeable in alleged militarization, and we will account that commitment. And we cannot acquire the accusation that China’s words are not getting akin by actions."

Huang said the missiles were advised as a “message to Vietnam.”

“Because if you put some anti-air ability in some place, you wish to avert something,” he said.

Xu Guangyu, a retired Chinese aggressive administrator and adviser to the China Arms Control and Disarmament Assn., denied that putting antiaircraft missiles on Woody Island was a provocation, comparing it with the U.S. stationing aggressive accessories on Guam.

“These are arresting missiles and the U.S. should not accomplish a big fuss about it,” he said.

But Roger Cliff, columnist of “China's Aggressive Power: Assessing Current and Future Capabilities” and a chief adolescent at the Atlantic Council, said the adjustment of the missiles “makes a apology of the abstraction that China is not militarizing the islands.”

“This is one added assurance that China is affective abroad from the abstraction of absolute things through dialogue” in the South China Sea, he added.

Still, Cliff said he did not apprehend “any affectionate of absolute acknowledgment from the U.S.” immediately, acquainted that the antiaircraft missiles don’t abuse American destroyers and added ships the Pentagon ability accept to captain through the South China Sea. The U.S., he predicted, would abide with its abandon of aeronautics sailings in the region.

The missile deployments, Cliff said, would be a lot of acid to Vietnam. “This is not traveling to be accustomed agreeably in Hanoi,” he predicted. “This is abrading their face in it … and will apparently advance them against greater cooperation with the U.S.”

Timothy R. Heath, chief all-embracing aegis analysis analyst at The RAND Corp., said China is assuming the U.S. it is accommodating to yield risks to avert its ascendancy and territorial claims.

“Beijing resents U.S. efforts to claiming the angary of those claims through abandon of aeronautics operations,” Heath said. “The missile deployment tells the United States and the arena that China is accommodating to added militarize the bearings to avert its position.”

At the acme in Sunnylands, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung on Monday alleged for Washington to acquire a “stronger voice” and bigger role in the demilitarization of the South China Sea, Reuters reported.

Meanwhile Wednesday, Taiwan’s president-elect, Tsai Ing-wen, apprenticed “every affair to advocate accord in clearing the South China Sea altercation and use self-restraint. This is the a lot of important thing.”

Adm. Harry Harris Jr., administrator of the U.S. Pacific Command, told reporters in Tokyo that he was clumsy to affirm the missile reports, but said the affair "concerns me greatly,” the Associated Press reported.

“If there are missiles there, it could be an adumbration of militarization of the South China Sea in means that the admiral of China, that Admiral Xi [Jinping] said he would not do," Harris said. 
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