Beijing will "never" stop building in the South China Sea prematurely, a top military official has vowed, despite an international ruling that its actions were illegal.
The pushback came as China launched war games in waters in the strategically vital region, where diplomatic tensions are high.
"We will never stop our construction on the Nansha Islands halfway," Wu Shengli, the commander of the People's Liberation Army Navy, told US counterpart Admiral John Richardson, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
Nansha is China's name for the Spratlys, where Beijing has rapidly turned reefs into artificial islands with facilities capable of military use, including extensive runways.
The reef system has multiple claimants in the region.
"The Nansha Islands are China's inherent territory, and our necessary construction on the islands is reasonable, justified and lawful," Wu added.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague last week ruled that there was no legal basis for Beijing's claims to much of the South China Sea, embodied in a "nine-dash line" that dates from 1940s maps and stretches close to other countries' coasts.
Its extensive decision also said that China's construction on Mischief Reef had "violated the Philippines' sovereign rights with respect to its exclusive economic zone and continental shelf".
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