China has for the first time landed strategic bombers on an island in the disputed South China Sea, drawing sharp reaction from the United States which said that the move will “raise tensions and destabilise the region”.

China’s air force said that its fighter jets, including an H-6K bomber, had recently conducted take-off and landing training on an island reef in the resource-rich South China Sea. The training had elevated the air force’s abilities of “reaching its full territory, assaulting in full time and space, and striking in full scope”, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post quoted the People’s Liberation Air Force as saying.

Wang Minliang, a military expert, was quoted as saying that the bombers’ take-off and landing training was “beneficial to enhance the real combat ability against all kinds of security threats in the sea”.

Videos of training

People’s Daily , the Chinese Communist Party’s official newspaper, on Friday posted a video on its Twitter account featuring a series of the H-6K’s training programmes, including take-off, landing and flying.

Reacting to China’s move, a spokesman at the Pentagon, Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Logan, called the exercise an act of “China’s continued militarisation of disputed features in the South China Sea”, The Post report said.

China had established Sansha City, a prefecture-level city of Hainan Province, in 2012 to administer the South China Sea islands identified by China as Xisha, Zhongsha and Nansha island groups and their surrounding waters.