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HANOI, Vietnam: Vietnam has protested against a Chinese military drill in the contested South China Sea and has demanded that China stop the actions it says are a threat to security and maritime safety.
China's state-run media on Tuesday said Beijing must prepare for “military confrontation” in the South China Sea as it began the week-long naval drills on and around the Paracel islands.
They will finish on the eve of a ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in a case filed by the Philippines challenging China’s claims to most of the South China Sea. The ruling is expected to be issued on July 12.
Beijing has boycotted the hearings and is engaged in a major diplomatic and publicity drive to try to delegitimize the process.
In an editorial, the Global Times — a newspaper owned by the People’s Daily group that often takes a nationalistic tone — said China should accelerate the build-up of its defense capabilities and “must be prepared for any military confrontation.”
“Even though China cannot keep up with the US militarily in the short-term, it should be able to let the US pay a cost it cannot stand if it intervenes in the South China Sea dispute by force,” it added.
The arbitration case had been orchestrated by the Philippines and the US to portray China as “an outcast from a rules-based international community,” said an editorial in the China Daily.
The newspaper, which is published by the government, added: “It is naive to expect China to swallow the bitter pill of humiliation.”
In recent years Beijing has rapidly built up reefs and outcrops into artificial islands with facilities capable of military use.
Vietnam's Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Hai Binh said in a statement posted late Monday on the ministry’s website that China’s moves seriously violate Vietnamese sovereignty and demanded that China stop the drills.
“Vietnam strongly protests and demanded that China respect Vietnam’s sovereignty, behave responsibly, immediately stop and do not take actions that threaten security, maritime safety in the East Sea or escalate tension in this region,” Binh said, referring to the South China Sea.
Vietnam, China and Taiwan all claim the Paracel islands which are occupied by China, and those three along with the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei claim all or parts of the Spratly Islands, which are believed to rich in natural resources and occupy one of the world’s busiest sea lanes.
China’s massive land reclamation projects and increased militarization of the seven reefs and atolls in the Spratlys over the past two years have raised serious concerns in the region.