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Australia: No plans to stop surveillance flights over South China Sea

Reuters

Australia will not bow to Chinese pressure to halt surveillance flights over disputed islands in the South China Sea that are at the center of rival claims between China and some of its neighbors, Defense Minister Marise Payne said in December 2015.

The Australian Defense Department said one of its aircraft had flown “a routine maritime patrol” over the South China Sea from November 25 to December 4, 2015.

China claims most of the South China Sea, through which more than U.S. $5 trillion of world trade ships every year, a fifth of it heading to and from U.S. ports.

Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also claim parts of the South China Sea.

China is building seven islands on reefs in the Spratly Islands, including a 3,000-meter-long airstrip on one of the sites, according to satellite imagery.

Such activity has fanned regional tension. In October 2015, a U.S. guided missile destroyer sailed close to one of China’s artificial islands, drawing an angry rebuke from Beijing.

Payne said Canberra would not be deterred by warnings from Beijing, which again responded angrily to the Australian patrol, and described the flights as a routine part of Australia’s role in helping to maintain regional stability and security.

“We always navigate in a very constructive way in the region,” she told reporters in Adelaide.

China’s Foreign Ministry, asked about the Australian flights, said countries outside the region should not “deliberately complicate the issue.” Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said he had nothing to add.

Chinese media has not been so restrained.

Influential tabloid the Global Times, published by the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily, implied in December 2015 there could be military retaliation if Australia persisted with the patrols.

“Australian military aircraft had better not regularly come to the South China Sea to add to the trouble, and especially not test China’s patience by getting close to China’s islands and reefs,” it said in an editorial.

China and Australia are friends and should act that way, it said. “It really ought not to happen that one day, due to a freak combination of factors, coincidentally an aircraft was downed and it just happened to be Australian.”

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