Vietnam fury after China lands plane on disputed land

VIETNAM has formally accused China of violating its sovereignty and a recent confidence-building pact, after its Asian neighbour landed a plane on an airstrip Beijing has built in a contested part of the South China Sea.

A spokesman for the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry said yesterday that China had conducted a test flight to an airfield “built illegally on Fiery Cross Reef” which is part of the Spratlys, an archipelago of islands that China is using to enforce its territorial claims in the region.

In a statement, Vietnam called the move “a serious infringement of the sovereignty of Vietnam on the Spratly archipelago” that violated a recent agreement for solving maritime issues between the two countries.

Vietnam handed a protest note to China’s embassy and asked China not to repeat the action, the spokesman added.

The competing claims of the two Communist-led countries over the South China Sea came to a head in 2014 when Beijing parked an oil rig off the Vietnamese coast, which lead to antiChina riots. Late last year, Beijing completed an airfield on Fiery Cross Reef that security experts say is large enough to accommodate most Chinese military aircraft.

Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Hanoi in November and both sides agreed during the visit to maintain peace in the sea and build a relationship of trust.

China claims almost all the South China Sea, which is believed to hold huge deposits of oil and gas.