China urges caution on anti-missile system

Foreign ministry calls for nations to maintain global strategic balance

China on Monday called on the U.S. and Japan to deal with anti-missile issue with "great care" as the two countries jointly launched a missile on Friday, a move Chinese experts said will break global strategic balance and trigger arms race.

"China always believes that the anti-missile issue bears on global strategic stability and mutual trust among major powers, and therefore shall be approached with great care," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a press briefing on Monday.

Lu said that "All countries, while preserving their own security interests, shall also respect the security concerns of others, follow the principle of maintaining global strategic stability and compromising security of no other nations."

Lu called for all countries to "jointly build a peaceful and stable international security environment where everyone enjoys equality, mutual trust, and win-win cooperation." He also reiterated China's firm opposition to the deployment of the U.S.-backed Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea.

The U.S. and Japan successfully conducted a missile test on Friday near the Kauai island, Hawaiian - making the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IIA interceptor take out the target ballistic missile, CNN reported, citing the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.

The SM-3 Block IIA interceptor will be deployed before 2020, to prevent possible missile attacks from North Korea, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported on Monday.

Major General Yao Yunzhu, a senior researcher at the People's Liberation Army's Academy of Military Science, told the Global Times on Tuesday that "the deployment of the missile is part of the U.S.'s anti-missile system in East Asia."

Yao added that the successful missile test not only posed threat to China's military security and but also breaks the global strategic balance, including the balance between the U.S. and Russia.