China breaks pledge by siting long-range missiles

Tension grows in South China Sea as Beijing militarises disputed Spratly islands

CHINA has deployed long-range missiles on three distant outposts in the South China Sea.

According to US media reports, the weapons were installed in the Spratlys, an island chain that Xi Jinping, the president, said in 2015 would be not be militarised by China.

Tensions have been escalating in the disputed waters as China transforms partially submerged reefs into fortified islands.

The country says its military facilities are purely defensive and that it can do what it likes on its own territory. “Those who do not intend to be aggressive have no need to be worried or scared,” a foreign ministry spokesman said yesterday. However, the installation of surface-to-air and anti-ship missiles on the Spratlys – reported by US news network CNBC – would mark a shift in the balance of power in the region, where Beijing claims nearly all the strategic waters, despite partial counter-claims from Taiwan and south-east Asian nations.

CNBC quoted unnamed sources saying the missiles were moved within the past 30 days. It said the YJ-12B anti-ship cruise missiles allowed China to strike vessels within 295 nautical miles, and that HQ-9B long-range surface-to-air missiles could hit targets inside more than half that distance.

President Xi said during a state visit to the US in September 2015 that China would not militarise the Spratly archipelago, although Washington believed airstrips and radar were already being installed some months later. China previously installed long-range missiles further north in the Paracel Islands, but is thought to have deployed only short-range missiles in the Spratlys.

Bonnie Glaser, senior adviser for Asia at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said: “China’s deployments and activity in the Paracels have served as a blueprint for what they are doing in [the] Spratlys. HQ-9B SAMS are but one example. Next will be fighters and establishment of baselines.”

The US navy has been confronting China in the region with “freedom of navigation” exercises. US aircraft carriers Theodore Roosevelt and Carl Vinson have sailed through the South China Sea in recent months, angering Beijing. Meanwhile, the US military has reportedly warned its airmen about “unauthorised laser activity” in Djibouti – the east African nation in which China operates its only overseas base.

“Multiple intelligence sources report that China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy is suspected of operating a high-power lasing weapon at the base or on a ship off shore,” said a report in Jane’s Defence Weekly.

Lasers were used by the Soviet military during the Cold War to temporarily blind US pilots.