Us military report ‘damages trust’
Print Edition
CHINA has condemned the US Defense Department’s annual report on the Chinese military, calling it deliberate distortion that has “severely damaged” mutual trust.
In its annual report to Congress on Chinese military activities, the US Defense Department said on Friday that China is expected to add substantial military infrastructure, including communications and surveillance systems, to artificial islands in the South China Sea this year.
China’s defense ministry spokesman Yang Yujun expressed strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to the Pentagon report and said it has “severely damaged mutual trust,” Xinhua news agency reported.
The report hyped up China’s “military threat” and “lack of transparency,” deliberately distorted Chinese defense policies and “unfairly” depicted Chinese activities in the East and South China Seas, Yang said.
“China follows a national defense policy that is defensive in nature,” Yang said on Saturday, adding that the country’s military build-up and reforms are aimed at maintaining sovereignty, security and territorial integrity and guaranteeing China’s peaceful development.
The US report accused China of “increasingly assertive efforts to advance its national sovereignty and territorial claims” and a lack of transparency about its growing military capabilities that are “causing tensions with other countries in the region.”
Yang said it was the United States that had been “frequently sending military aircraft and warships to the South China Sea to make a show of force.”
Despite its calls for freedom of navigation and restraint for peace, the US has pushed forward militarization of the South China Sea with an intention to exert hegemony, Yang added.
The Pentagon report said the planned addition of military infrastructure would give China long-term “civil-military bases” in the contested waters.
It claimed that China’s reclamation work had added more than 1,300 hectares of land on seven features in the Nansha Islands in the South China Sea in the space of two years.
The Pentagon report said China had completed its major reclamation efforts in October, switching focus to infrastructure development, including three 3,000-meter airstrips that can accommodate advanced fighter jets.
Yang defended the construction, saying it serves mostly civilian purposes and helps fulfil China’s international responsibilities and obligations.
He said that China has unswervingly made contributions to global peace and stability by increasingly engaging in overseas missions such as peace-keeping and disaster relief.
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