China warned the Philippines not to accept the deployment of a United States missile system, claiming this could result in a higher risk of conflicts in the South China Sea.
This came amid the Philippine defense secretary, Gilberto Teodoro, saying earlier this month that Manila, which has territorial disputes with Beijing in the South China Sea, was mulling over the purchase of the Mid-Range Capability missile system from Washington.
During a press conference on Thursday, Senior Colonel Wu Qian, a spokesperson for the Chinese Defense Ministry, said the deployment of this offensive missile system, also known as Typhon, in the Philippines has intensified confrontation and escalated tensions.
"History and reality have repeatedly proven that where there are U.S. weapons deployed, there will be higher risk of conflicts, inflicting underserved sufferings on the local people," he added, urging the U.S. and the Philippines to withdraw the missile system immediately.
Newsweek has reached out to the Pentagon and the Philippine military for comment.
In April, the U.S. Army sent a Typhon launcher to northern Luzon in the Philippines for drills, which can launch two types of anti-surface and anti-air munitions, the Tomahawk cruise missile and the Standard Missile 6, with respective ranges of 1,000 and 290 miles.
The Associated Press previously reported that the American missile launcher was planned for departure from the Philippines in September, but the allies decided to keep it in the archipelagic country "indefinitely," allowing them to jointly train for its potential usage.
The U.S. military will send the Multi-Domain Task Force, a unit hosting the Typhon, to the Philippines should a contingency over the self-ruled Taiwan, which China has long viewed as its territory, become "highly imminent," according to Japan's Kyodo News.
If Washington and Manila insist on deploying the Typhon in the Southeast Asian nation, China will take "resolute countermeasures," Wu warned without elaborating.
This is not the first time Beijing has issued a warning to Manila regarding the U.S. missile deployment. Earlier this month, the Chinese Foreign Ministry urged the Philippines not to be "extremely irresponsible" by buying the offensive missile system from Washington.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Army is interested in having the Multi-Domain Task Force "operate out of Japan" as well. Japan and the Philippines are the treaty allies of the U.S., forming the first island chain with Taiwan to constrain Chinese naval and air activity in wartime.
The potential deployment of the Typhon in Japan has caught the attention of Russia, of which China and North Korea are its quasi-allies. The Russian Far East region and Japan are separated by the Sea of Japan and the La Pérouse Strait, also known as the Sōya Strait.
Earlier this week, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov warned that should the U.S. station medium- and shorter-range missiles in Asia, the Kremlin is considering deploying similar armaments to the region as "a military and military-technical response."
English (US) ·