Clifford Coonan in Beijing
China and Russia are co-operating to counter the United States' Thaad missile defence system, which Seoul says it needs to target North Korea's nuclear threat but which Beijing and Moscow see as targeting their military assets.
The Terminal High Altitude Area Defence system will be deployed on the Seongju golf course in the southeast by the end of next year and the Americans and the South Koreans say it is to combat the growing nuclear threat from North Korea and Iran.
The deployment comes against a backdrop of escalating tensions between Moscow and Washington, and has been instrumental in forging a growing closeness between China and Russia.
“The US and South Korean decision to deploy Thaad is not conducive to resolving the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula or to its peace and stability,” said Maj Gen Cai Jun, vice head of the warfare bureau of China’s Central Military Commission Joint Staff Department.
He was addressing a joint news conference with Lieut Gen Viktor Poznikhir of Russia's General Staff at a security conference in Beijing.
"It severely damages the national security interests of China and Russia. China firmly opposes it and strongly urges the US and South Korea to reconsider their options," Maj Gen Cai said.
Nuclear strike
The “blind deployment” of the US’s anti-missile system could lead to a heightened arms race, or even expand its scope to include outer space, he said.
Lieut Gen Poznikhir accused the Pentagon of developing the shield as part of planning for a possible first nuclear strike and believed the US hoped to gain the ability to strike anywhere in the world with nuclear weapons with impunity.
“If one of the gladiators takes up a shield, it will give him a marked advantage and make him think that he would be able to win, particularly if he strikes first,” he said. “What would another gladiator do? Naturally, he also would pick up a shield and also a longer and stronger sword.”
Ties between China and South Korea had grown warmer, particularly in the light of worsening ties between Beijing and Tokyo over regional territorial disputes, but since the Thaad deployment, they have become noticeably chilly.
China is also keen to find a counterweight to US influence in the region, after the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea tribunal in The Hague ruled against China’s claims over most of the South China Sea.
"If Seoul persists in deploying the system, it is believed that the Chinese government will be bound to carry out countermeasures," said an editorial in the Global Times newspaper, which is published by the Communist Party organ People's Daily. "Yet careful consideration is needed in whether it's necessary to extend such countermeasures to economic and people-to-people exchanges between the two nations."
Beijing and Moscow also said they would hold their second anti-missile drills next year.
