US: China has mobile artillery on reclaimed isle

SINGAPORE – The United States said yesterday China had placed mobile artillery weapons systems on a reclaimed island in the disputed South China Sea, a development that Republican Sen. John McCain called “disturbing and escalatory.”

Brent Colburn, a Pentagon spokesman traveling with Defense Secretary Ash Carter, said the US was aware of the weapons.

McCain, chairman of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee, said the move would escalate tensions but not lead to conflict.

“It is a disturbing development and escalatory development, one which heightens our need to make the Chinese understand that their actions are in violation of international law and their actions are going to be condemned by everyone in the world,” he said at a news conference in Ho Chi Minh City.

“We are not going to have a conflict with China but we can take certain measures which will be a disincentive to China to continue these kinds of activities,” he said.

In Beijing, China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she had no information on the weapons.

US officials say Chinese dredging work has added some 2,000 acres to five outposts in the resource-rich Spratly islands in the South China Sea, including 1,500 acres this year.

It has released surveillance plane footage showing dredgers and other ships busily turning remote outcrops into islands with runways and harbors.

Carter called on Wednesday for an immediate halt to land reclamation in the South China Sea and was expected to touch on the issue of maritime security and freedom of navigation again on Saturday in a speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue security conference in Singapore.

China says the islands are in sovereign Chinese territory.

Pentagon offi cials said efforts by China and other claimant countries to turn reefs into islands in the Spratlys undermines international law and raises questions about their future plans and intentions.

“It creates an air of uncertainty in a system that has been based on certainty and agreedupon norms,” said Colburn, the Pentagon spokesman. “So anything that steps outside of the bounds of international law we see as a concern because we don’t know what the ... motivations are behind that. We think it should concern everyone in the region.”

Asian military attaches and analysts said the placement of mobile artillery pieces appeared to be a symbol of intent, rather than any major development that could tilt any balance of power.

“It is interesting and a point to watch. But it should be remembered they’ve already got potentially a lot more firepower on the naval ships that they routinely move through the South China Sea,” one military attache said.

China claims most of the South China Sea. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also claim parts of the vital trade route. All claimants except Brunei have military fortifications in the Spratlys.

China changing status quo

Earlier, Carter said the scale of Beijing’s land reclamation activities in the South China Sea and West Philippine Sea, not the US, was altering the status quo in the region.

He stressed US opposition to the militarization and the unilateral reclamation of territory in the region was not new.

“The new facts are the reclamation and the scale on which it is being done, and that’s not an American fact; that’s a Chinese fact,” he said.

Carter, speaking to reporters at the start of a 10-day trip to Asia, said the US was trying to maintain a shared regional security structure that has advanced “prosperity for everyone” over the past 70 years.

“We’ve been flying over the South China Sea for years and years and years, and ... will continue to do that: fly, navigate, operate. So that’s not a new fact,” Carter said.

Carter also said the 12-nautical-mile limit that coastal states may claim as territorial waters under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) does not apply to submerged features that have been turned into artificial islands.

He made the statement when asked how the US might demonstrate its commitment to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows without at some point going within 12 miles of these new islands created by China.

“The 12 nautical miles… does not pertain to features that were submerged and now are no longer submerged,” he told reporters on a military aircraft from Hawaii to Singapore, the first leg of a 10-day tour of Asia. He will also visit Vietnam and India.

Under UNCLOS, coastal states have the right to establish their territorial seas up to a limit not exceeding 12 nautical miles from their coastline.

The coastal state exerts sovereignty over its territorial sea, the air space above it and the seabed and subsoil beneath it.

The Chinese military last week ordered a US Navy P-8 Poseidon surveillance plane to leave an area above the disputed Spratly islands but the American aircraft ignored the demand and said it was flying in what US officials consider international airspace.

Carter said the P-8 flight over the South China Sea was nothing new as the US has been flying over the area for many years and would continue doing so.

Hua Chunying on Thursday reiterated her country’s claim to the islands as sovereign Chinese territory and noted Washington had made no comment about other claimants’ initiatives to build on some of the islands.

The US had been “selectively mute on individual countries that have selectively occupied China’s islands and reefs, but have made irresponsible remarks on the construction activities that are lawful, fair and reasonable within China’s scope of sovereignty,” Hua told a news briefing.

“The Chinese people can make their own judgment. No one has the right to tell China what to do,” she added.