ISTANBUL

China on Wednesday strongly objected to a news report that Beijing was engaged in fresh construction activities in the contested South China Sea.

“The news from Bloomberg is purely fabricated,” said Mao Ning, spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, responding to the report that claimed Beijing was “building up several unoccupied land features in the South China Sea.”

“Not to take action against uninhabited islands and reefs in the Nansha Islands is a solemn consensus reached by China and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries in the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DoC), and China has always strictly abided by it,” Mao stressed.

Quoting unnamed “Western officials,” the report had used “images of what they called the first known instances of a nation doing so on territory it doesn’t already occupy.”

“New land formations have appeared above water over the past year at Eldad Reef in the northern Spratlys, with images showing large holes, debris piles and excavator tracks at a site that used to be only partially exposed at high tide,” the report said.

The mineral-rich warm waters of the South China Sea have been the subject of a persisting dispute between China, and some regional countries where the US has taken sides with those opposing China’s claims.

Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam are all members of the ASEAN with coasts to the South China Sea. Taiwan, which Beijing says is a part of China, is also a claimant.

The Declaration on the Conduct is an agreement on South China Sea signed by ASEAN and China in November 2002, marking the first time China had accepted a multilateral agreement on the issue.

China’s assertions are based on its “nine-dash line” – purple dashes on official Chinese maps that denote Beijing’s historical claims over the South China Sea.

However, the Philippines won a case in 2016 at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague, which invalidated China’s expansion claims over the South China Sea.

On the latest developments as claimed by the unnamed Western officials, Manila said: “Any reclamation activities by China on unoccupied features would contravene agreements between Beijing and Southeast Asian nations.”

“We are seriously concerned,” the Foreign Ministry of the Southeast Asian nation said, adding, it was verifying the claims made by Bloomberg.

Beijing, however, said its relations with Manila were “developing well.”

“At present, China-Philippines relations are developing well, and the two sides will continue to properly handle maritime issues through friendly consultations,” Mao said, according to a transcript of a daily news briefing by the Chinese Foreign Ministry.