Why China’s Latest Missile Test Is Drawing Anger: “Unwelcome and Concerning”
Despite prior notification, the response from neighboring nations was one of heightened alarm.
Winston Peters, New Zealand’s Foreign Minister, said in a statement that the test was an “unwelcome and concerning development.”
“We, like our neighbors in other Pacific countries, have no interest in China using the South Pacific as a testing site for missile capability,” he said.
Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara criticized China at a press conference in Tokyo, saying it is “continuously increasing its defense spending at a high rate without sufficient transparency and expanding its nuclear missile capabilities, including intercontinental ballistic missiles, rapidly and extensively.”
Australia’s Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, said the test was “destabilizing” for the region.
Xinhua called Monday’s exercise a “routine arrangement of the annual training” of the navy, but its long-range ballistic missile tests are rare. The most recent was two years prior; before that, it had been about four decades.
