A US report outlining China’s South China Sea land reclamation program is “hyping up” the military threat posed by the nation and undermines bilateral relations, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Sunday.
China started to reclaim land in the South China Sea last year in an effort to assert its territorial claims to more than 80 percent of the sea.
Once completed, the facilities might include harbors, surveillance systems and at least one airfield, the Pentagon said in its annual report on China’s military strategy.
The effort has been accelerating in recent months, with more than 800 hectares of reclaimed land currently, up from 200 hectares at the end of December last year, a US defense official said.
“The US report makes willful speculations and comments on China’s military growth in defiance of the facts,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying (華春瑩) said on Sunday, according to a statement on the ministry’s Web site. “It is hoped that the American side would abandon the cold-war mentality, view China’s military development with objectiveness and reason instead of prejudices, and stop issuing reports that jeopardize bilateral relations.”
Tensions over China’s island building program have been mounting this year after the publication of satellite images showing dredgers reclaiming land in seven areas.
China claims almost all of the waters in the South China Sea despite competing claims from Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei.
“Most analysts outside China believe that China is attempting to change facts on the ground by improving its defense infrastructure in the South China Sea,” the Pentagon report said.
The report also said that China’s rapid military modernization “has the potential to reduce core US military technological advantages.”
“The report questions China’s normal defense building and strategic intention, and makes inappropriate remarks on China’s justified actions of safeguarding territorial sovereignty and security interests in the South China Sea,” Hua said.
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