#China fires missiles into South China Sea in warning to US

The Chinese Communist Party launched four missiles into the South China Sea as a warning to the US military amid their presence in the region, further escalating tensions between the two nuclear-armed powers.

The People’s Liberation Army fired four medium-range ballistic missiles on Wednesday as Beijing held military exercises in the waterway, Bloomberg News reported, citing a US defense official.

The rockets landed in the sea between China’s southern Hainan Island and the Paracel Islands, off the coast of Vietnam, near where US aircraft carriers have been conducting drills over the past several weeks as part of the Trump administration’s challenge to Chinese sovereignty in the area.

The Chinese Defense Ministry said the military exercises weren’t aimed at any particular nation and didn’t address the missile launches on Thursday, but Wu Qian, a spokesman, accused “some US politicians” of trying to instigate a conflict between Beijing and Washington.

Wu said China was “not afraid.”

China, which fired more than 100 ballistic missiles last year, has been testing its operational capacity and modernizing its arsenal since President Xi Jinping rolled out a new People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force last October.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper, speaking in Hawaii Wednesday, said China is using the modernization program to project its military power.

“To advance the CCP’s agenda, the People’s Liberation Army continues to pursue an aggressive modernization plan to achieve a world-class military by the middle of the century,” Esper said.

“This will undoubtedly involve the PLA’s provocative behavior in the South and East China Seas, and anywhere else the Chinese government has deemed critical to its interests,” he continued.

“The United States has a responsibility to lead. We’ve been a Pacific country, an Indo Pacific country, for quite a long time,” Esper added.

“We’re not going to cede this region, an inch of ground if you will, to another country, any other country that thinks their form of government, their views on human rights, their views on sovereignty, their views on freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, all those things, that somehow that’s better than what many of us share.”

Vice Admiral Scott Conn said Thursday that the US was poised to respond to any threats.

“As long as they’re doing it in accordance with international law and norms they have every right to do so,” he said, adding that as long as the military forces conduct themselves in a professional manner,  “you can have the same ships in the same water space.”

Chinese experts said the launch was a shot across the bow for the US military.

“China is signaling to the U.S., its allies and partners that China has an answer to America’s aircraft-carrier strike groups, an answer that is always available and not dependent on deployment schedules,” Carl Schuster, an adjunct faculty member of Hawaii Pacific University’s diplomacy and military science program, told Bloomberg. “In effect, China is saying, ‘If the U.S. puts two carriers in the South China Sea, we send aircraft carrier-killer missiles there.’”

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced sanctions and travel bans against several Chinese officials and business executives for their responsibility in militarizing areas of the South China Sea.

“The United States will act until we see Beijing discontinue its coercive behavior in the South China Sea, and we will continue to stand with allies and partners in resisting this destabilizing activity,” Pompeo said.

Meanwhile, the Commerce Department blacklisted 24 Chinese companies for assisting the Chinese Communist Party in building artificial islands in the South China Sea, a move the US views as military provocation.

The US has condemned China’s military presence in the strategic waterway and clashed with Beijing over its treatment of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong and its bullying attitude toward Taiwan, which China considers a rogue province.

Last week, Taiwanese television aired a simulation video of the military responding to an attack.

The video produced by the Taiwan defense ministry, according to the South China Morning Post, showed troops firing anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles to repel an invasion from across the Taiwan Strait, the waterway separating it from mainland China.

To check China’s presence in the region, the US sent the USS Nimitz and the USS Ronald Reagan into the region last month.

With Post wires