China is "disappointed to the point of despair" with
Japan's conduct in the South China Sea, it said Monday, after Tokyo
announced it may set up training patrols with the US in the contested
region.
China asserts sovereignty over almost all of the
strategically vital waters in the face of rival claims from its
Southeast Asian neighbours, and has rapidly turned reefs in the area
into artificial islands capable of hosting military planes.
In a speech last week Japanese defence minister
Tomomi Inada called China's actions a "deliberate attempt to
unilaterally change the status quo, achieve a fait accompli, and
undermine the prevailing norms", according to a transcript released by
Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International
Studies.
Inada said Japan would increase its engagement in the
South China Sea through joint training cruises with the US Navy,
exercises with regional navies and capacity-building assistance to
coastal nations.
Japan's conduct in the South China Sea "makes one
feel disappointed to the point of despair," foreign ministry spokesman
Lu Kang said at a regular press briefing Monday, before accusing Japan
of meddling in a situation that ought to be resolved via "direct
negotiation between involved parties".
Japan was attempting to confuse the situation in the
region Lu said, adding the island nation had "even resorted to deception
in attempts to impose its own views" on the issue on other countries.
Japan has a separate territorial dispute with China over uninhabited islets in the East China Sea.
Last week, China sailed four coastguard vessels into
that contested region, sparking complaints from Japan that the Asian
giant was escalating tensions.
Japan is a key US ally, and is boosting defence ties
with the Philippines and other Southeast Asian nations that have their
own territorial disputes with Beijing over the South China Sea.
In recent months, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe
has criticised China for rejecting a July ruling by an international
tribunal that found Beijing's extensive claims to the waters had no
legal basis.
But Lu warned:
"China is unwavering in its determination to safeguard its territorial
sovereignty and maritime rights and interests."
In a press conference on Wednesday, Chinese officials appear to
have confirmed what many observers have long suspected: that China is no
longer in control of its space station. China's Tiangong-1 space
station has been orbiting the planet for about 5 years now, but recently
it was decommissioned and the Chinese astronauts returned to the
surface. In a press conference last week, China announced that the space
station would be falling back to earth at some point in late 2017.
Normally, a decommissioned satellite or space station would be retired
by forcing it to burn up in the atmosphere. This type of burn is
controlled, and most satellite re-entries are scheduled to burn up over
the ocean to ...