On Feb. 16, Taiwanese military officials indicated that the Chinese had installed a battery of advanced surface-to-air missiles on the disputed Yongxing Island in the South China Sea. The story got picked up by multiple international media sources, but Beijing, again stressing its “9-Dash-Line” claim, says the attention is unwarranted.
Bashing what it called an overblown notion of the “China Threat” in the West, China’s Ministry of National Defense said that the “sea and air defense facilities on the relevant islands and reefs have been deployed for many years,” as reported in an article published on Feb. 18 by the English edition of China Military Online, a publication sponsored by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
The article refutes the recent Western reporting, according to which the missiles arrived over the course of about a week from Feb. 3 to Feb. 14.
