Navy commander: South China Sea not a US-versus-China battle

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s South China Sea military deployments are no different from USA deployments on Hawaii, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Monday, striking a combative tone ahead of a visit by Foreign Minister Wang Yi to the United States this week.

The statement said diplomatic notes had been issued to China’s embassy in Hanoi and to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to protest at Beijing’s activities, including the building of a military helicopter base on Duncan island.

From listening posts to jet fighter deployments and now surface-to-air missiles, China’s expanding facilities in the Paracel Islands are a signal of long-term plans to strengthen its military reach across the disputed South China Sea.

The U.S. frequently sends military vessels or planes to waters in the South China Sea to conduct reconnaissance against China.

China and other claimants of the South China Sea have the capacity to work out their disputes through dialogue and negotiation. Those have included one by two B-52 strategic bombers in November and by a U.S. Navy destroyer that sailed within 12 nautical miles of Triton Island in the Paracels last month.

An influential Chinese state-run tabloid, the Global Times, said in an editorial on Thursday that China needed to strengthen its “self-defense” in the South China Sea in the face of “more frequent provocations from the US military”.

China’s expansion of the Paracels, which it has occupied since forcing the navy of the-then South Vietnam off the islands in 1974, pre-dates its moves to begin large-scale reclamations on seven reefs in the Spratlys three years ago.

The Philippines government also criticized the HQ-9 deployment, voicing grave concerns that China was violating a promise not to militarize its islands.

It has joined the outpouring of accusations by the United States and its allies that China is “militarising” the South China Sea and threatening “freedom of navigation” by placing a missile system on Woody Island. It automatically links Chinese defence facility deployment to militarization while selectively dodging the Philippines and Vietnam that have militarized the Chinese islands they occupy or the US joint drills and patrols. It also highlights the importance of Taiwan, not a formal state unto itself, but still crucial to the U.S.’s realist vision of containing China.

Eland suggested the U.S. government could defuse the issue by pulling its powerful m naval and air presence out of the South China Sea.

“We get actual footage from the area, like video, camera shots… to establish what is actually there”, he said.

Concern over the South China Sea region is not diminishing.

China has not denied the appearance of the missiles, but says it is entitled to defend its territory and points to the construction of lighthouses, weather stations and other infrastructure undertaken to provide more “public goods and services to the worldwide community”. Within days, Australia, New Zealand and the European Union called on China to defuse tensions in the region.

“Commercial imagery indicates that China has deployed a surface-to-air missile system on a disputed outpost in the South China Sea”, Pentagon spokesman Cmd.

Taiwan already has a complex relationship with China, and the landslide election victory of presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party (which traditionally favours a Taiwanese identity distinct from China) will further muddy the South China Sea situation. If the United States had the equivalent of China’s Sixth Fleet sailing off the coast of the United States as close as the United States is sailing along the coast of China, there would be riots in the streets in the United States.