Building of Islands

China to Halt Its Building of Islands, but Not Its Projects on Them

By EDWARD WONG

China announced on Tuesday that it would soon halt island-building projects around some reefs and shoals in disputed waters of the South China Sea but that it would continue constructing military and civilian facilities on those outcroppings.

The announcement may have been intended to ease tensions with the United States, which has strongly criticized the building of the islands and has sent surveillance flights close to the sites, to the chagrin of the Chinese military. The construction of facilities, though, would further establish the sites as islands that China could claim as its territory.

In the announcement on the website of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Lu Kang, a spokesman, said that “relevant departments” in China had decided to go forward as planned with completing land reclamation work on some reefs and islands in the Spratly archipelago in the “coming days.”

He added that the sites in the Spratlys, which the Chinese call the Nansha Islands, would be used for “military defense needs” as well as “civilian demands,” including maritime search and rescue efforts, disaster prevention and mitigation, scientific research, meteorological observation, navigational safety measures and fishery services.

“After the land reclamation, we will start the building of facilities to meet relevant functional requirements,” Mr. Lu said.

He also reiterated earlier remarks defending the building of islands, saying that it fell “within the scope of China’s sovereignty,” was not targeting any other country and would not affect freedom of navigation or overflights allowed by international law.

Mr. Lu used the word garrison to describe some of the islands. In April, another Foreign Ministry representative used the same term and said military defense would be one of the uses of the sites.

In recent months, American officials have said that China’s land reclamation at seven sites in the region far outpaces similar efforts by other nations. The United States says China has built 2,000 acres of land around reefs and shoals over the last 18 months. American officials and leaders of Southeast Asian nations began criticizing the moves in early 2014, but that has done little to deter China, which foreign officials say has in fact been accelerating construction.

China, Taiwan and several Southeast Asian nations make territorial claims to the South China Sea. The United States has said it does not take sides in the sovereignty disputes, but it insists that all nations must refrain from interfering with freedom of navigation and from raising tensions.

Vietnam and the Philippines have built on pieces of land, but that has largely consisted of putting up buildings rather than land reclamation. Much of it also took place before 2002, when China and several other claimants to territory signed a nonbinding agreement in which each vowed not to act provocatively.

Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing, said on Tuesday that China’s announcement “could greatly reduce its strategic conflicts with the United States, at least at this stage.” He added that it could also “generate an amicable atmosphere” before Xi Jinping, the Chinese president and head of the Communist Party, visits the United States in September.

But Mr. Shi said the announcement did not necessarily mean that China was permanently ending land reclamation efforts and that in any case the United States would remain unhappy with China’s behavior in the South China Sea.

“Despite the fact that China has suspended building on the islands and reefs, the U.S. still sees China’s actions as trying to establish a new status quo, which the U.S. does not intend to accept,” he said.

In late May, the United States military sent a P8-A Poseidon surveillance plane over Fiery Cross Reef, one of the sites of the land reclamation. The Chinese Navy warned the plane eight times to turn back as it approached the reef. A news crew from CNN on the plane recorded the exchange.

Then on May 30, the United States defense secretary, Ashton B. Carter, said at a regional security forum in Singapore that all nations should halt island-building in the South China Sea, but he singled out China. A senior Chinese colonel, Zhao Xiaozhuo, a researcher at the Chinese Army’s Academy of Military Science, publicly rebutted Mr. Carter on major points and said that if anything, “the region has been peaceful and stable just because of China’s great restraint.”

Song Guoyou, a professor at the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, said in an interview on Tuesday that “China has accelerated its reclamation in the South China Sea the last couple of years because the new Chinese leader is much more willing and resolute in safeguarding China’s sovereignty.”

Professor Song continued, “China’s reclamation and patrols are based on its own strategic judgment and needs, and it will not budge to U.S. pressure.”

American officials have also said they are concerned that China will try to declare an air defense identification zone over a portion of the South China Sea, as it did in 2013 over part of the disputed East China Sea. At the Singapore forum, Adm. Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of staff of the People’s Liberation Army, said that China could choose to do that based on an assessment of aerial threats and the maritime security situation.

In the statement on Tuesday, Mr. Lu, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said that China would continue to try to settle disputes with “relevant states” through “negotiation and consultation on the basis of respecting historical facts.” For years, China has said it will negotiate with nations over the territorial disputes in the South China Sea only on a bilateral basis and not in a multinational setting.

Last month, the Chinese military released a broad policy document saying, among other things, that China was placing the projection of naval power in the open ocean on the same priority level as coastal defense.

Foreign analysts of the Chinese military have said for years that one of China’s main aims in modernizing its armed forces was to create a navy capable of carrying out operations far from the mainland. The May paper, the first such policy document in two years, was also the first significant formal statement by the Chinese military of that goal.