China missiles game changer: US admiral

WASHINGTON: China’s deployment of missiles and radars and its building of runways on reefs in the South China Sea are “changing the operational landscape” there, the head of the US Pacific Command said on Tuesday.

China was “clearly militarising the South China (Sea),” Admiral Harry Harris told the US Senate Armed Services Committee, adding: “You’d have to believe in a flat earth to think otherwise.”

Yi-Kerry talks

Speaking ahead of a meeting in Washington between China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Harris said China was continuing to escalate the situation in the South China Sea with new deployments.

“I think China’s SSMs - surfaceto-surface missiles, surface-toair missiles on Woody Island...Its new radars on Cuarteron Reef... The 10,000-foot runway on Subi Reef. and on Fiery Cross Reef and other places; these are actions that are changing in my opinion the operational landscape in the South China Sea,” he said.

Responding to a question, Harris said Chinese DF-21 and DF-26 anti-ship missiles could pose a threat to US aircraft carriers, but said the vessels were resilient and that the United States had “the capability to do what has to be done if it comes to that.”