China on Thursday continued to defy an arbitral tribunal’s ruling against its claims in the South China Sea, landing civilian aircraft on disputed islands in the region while staterun media referred to the US and Japan as “worrying eunuchs”.

REUTERSA Chinese ship and helicopter conduct a rescue exercise near the Paracel Islands in South China Sea on Thursday.

Beijing rejected the ruling by The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) that it has no exclusive rights over islands and resources in the South China Sea, saying it was “null and void”. It also warned it could create an air defence zone over the contested waters.

In what appeared to be planned retaliation, China successfully tested two new airfields on the Nansha (Spratly) Islands with civil flights, state media reported. This took the number of airfields in the archipelago open to civil aircraft to three. “The two flights, an Airbus A319 chartered by China Southern Airlines and a Boeing 737 by Hainan Airlines, both returned to Haikou after a short stay on the reefs,” official news agency Xinhua reported.

“The round trips came one day after a Cessna CE-680 flew to the two reefs to ensure that both airfields are prepared for civil flights,” Xinhua reported.

“Including the airport on the Yongshu Reef opened in January, China now has three functioning airports on the Nansha Islands, which lie under one of the world’s busiest airspaces,” it said. Statecontrolled media continued to castigate the US for purportedly manipulating the Philippines, which had approached the PCA, and for destabilising the region.

An editorial in the nationalist tabloid Global Times stood out for its use of language that usually doesn’t get into print. It said the US and Japan were more worried than the Philippines, whose attitude was “relatively mild” after the tribunal’s ruling on Tuesday.

The editorial said the Philippines had described the ruling as a “milestone decision” and called for restraint.

“An old Chinese saying goes ‘The emperor doesn’t worry but his eunuch does,’ meaning the outsider is more anxious than the player. In this case, Washington and Tokyo are the worrying eunuchs,” it added.