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MANILA, Philippines – The Chinese have taken over another traditional Filipino fishing ground near Palawan where they have stationed up to five ships to keep local fishermen at bay, sources said. Now effectively under Chinese control is Quirino or Jackson Atoll, which has been a rich source of catch for a long time for fishermen from Palawan, Southern Luzon, Western Visayas and even Manila. Gray and white Chinese vessels have not left the atoll, which Filipino fishermen also call Jackson Five, because of the existence of five lagoons in the area. The Chinese are claiming almost the entire South China...

China's Foreign Ministry reacted angrily Tuesday after a U.S. Navy ship passed within 12 nautical miles of disputed islands in the South China Sea late Monday in an apparent challenge to Beijing's territorial claims in the region. The ministry said that authorities monitored and warned the guided missile destroyer USS Lassen as it moved inside what China claims as a 12-mile territorial limit around Subi Reef in the Spratly Islands archipelago, a disputed group of hundreds of reefs, islets, atolls and islands in the South China Sea that is also claimed by the Philippines.

Chinese officials have condemned a US ship's passage near disputed islands in the South China Sea as "illegal". The guided-missile destroyer USS Lassen breached the 12-nautical mile zone China claims around Subi and Mischief reefs in the Spratly archipelago. The freedom of navigation operation is a serious challenge to China's claims over the artificial islands. Its foreign ministry said the ship had been warned and characterised the act as a "threat to China's sovereignty". Lu Kang, the spokesman, added that Beijing would "resolutely respond to any country's deliberately provocative actions" and that the ship had been "tracked and warned" while...

For anyone who might still be somehow unaware, the US is currently in a superpower staring match with both Russia and China. The conflict in Syria has put Moscow back on the geopolitical map (so to speak), creating an enormous amount of tension with Washington whose regional allies have been left to look on in horror as Russian airstrikes and an Iranian ground incursion dash hopes of ousting President Bashar al-Assad. Meanwhile, in The South China Sea, Beijing has built 3,000 acres of new sovereign territory atop reefs in the Spratlys and although the reclamation effort itself isn’t unique, the...

China will never "recklessly" resort to the use of force in the South China Sea, a senior Chinese general said on Saturday, amid tensions over Beijing's building of islands in the disputed waters. China's relations with several Southeast Asian countries, especially the Philippines and Vietnam who have competing claims in the South China Sea, have been strained over Beijing's increasingly assertive tone on territorial claims in an area through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes annually. Beijing's move last year to step up the creation of artificial islands, which it says are mostly for civilian purposes, has drawn strong...

When we read the papers or turn on the television (for those of us who have television), hardly a day or two passes by without the mention of new (or ongoing) actions by the Chinese government in a military capacity. Within the past year alone, China has extended her reach steadily beyond her own territorial waters and nearby sea-lanes. She has participated in numerous exercises, some of them jointly with foreign nations. Anyone can clearly witness her aggressive, outwardly expanding policies regarding territory and flexing her muscle. The most recent maneuver comes on the heels of the Russian actions in...

Just as China celebrates the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II with an extravagant parade designed to showcase the country’s military prowess and project Xi Jinping’s power to nervous onlookers in the West, the Pentagon says it has spotted five Chinese Navy ships in the Bering Sea, just off the coast of Alaska. Here’s WSJ: Five Chinese navy ships are currently operating in the Bering Sea, off the coast of Alaska, the first time the U.S. military has seen such activity in the area, Pentagon officials said Wednesday. The officials said they have been aware in recent...

A Chinese admiral said on Sunday that Beijing could set up an air defense zone above disputed areas of the South China Sea if it felt it was facing a large enough threat, according to Chinese news media. Adm. Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of staff of the People’s Liberation Army, told a regional security forum in Singapore that China had not said it would defintely create a so-called air defense identification zone, but that any decision would be based on an aerial threat assessment and the general security situation. He also said other nations should not overemphasize the issue.

China’s ambassador to the U.S. warned Washington against “anti-China” alliances and a “Cold War mentality” as Beijing continued to ramp up its objections to U.S. military activity in the South China Sea in advance of a weekend meeting of defense chiefs from the U.S. and Asia.

(Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said Washington is concerned China is using its "sheer size and muscle" to push around smaller nations in the South China Sea, just hours after Beijing gave a detailed defense of its creation of artificial islands in the contested waterway.

Email Print 0Comments An estimated 93,000 people have died in Syria's metastasizing civil war. Hundreds of thousands of that conflict's refugees strain resources and stability in neighboring countries. Iran continues its steady march toward nuclear weapons development. North Korea menaces its neighbors and episodically threatens to launch nuclear missiles at Los Angeles. Turkey, long lauded by Obama as a model for the region, is violently cracking down on peaceful demonstrators. Slow growth and high unemployment hobble the world's most advanced economies as growing bureaucracy and crippling debt take their toll. Islamist movements are making gains in Mali, Indonesia, Pakistan and...

China Now Claims Japan’s Okinawa 25 July 2012 The Global Times, the newspaper run by China’s Communist Party, ran an editorial this month suggesting that Beijing challenge Japan’s control of Okinawa, part of the Ryukyu island chain. Why would China want to start a fight over Okinawa? At the moment, China, Taiwan, and Japan are engaged in a particularly nasty sovereignty dispute in the East China Sea over five islands and three barren rocks called the Senkakus by the Japanese and the Diaoyus by the other claimants. The disputed chain is north of the southern end of the Ryukyus and...

MAY/JUNE 2013 Historical Fiction: China’s South China Sea Claims Mohan Malik The Spratly Islands—not so long ago known primarily as a rich fishing ground—have turned into an international flashpoint as Chinese leaders insist with increasing truculence that the islands, rocks, and reefs have been, in the words of Premier Wen Jiabao, “China’s historical territory since ancient times.” Normally, the overlapping territorial claims to sovereignty and maritime boundaries ought to be resolved through a combination of customary international law, adjudication before the International Court of Justice or the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, or arbitration under Annex VII...

Confrontation in the South China Sea 19 April 2012 A tense standoff between China and the Philippines continued this week, as Beijing demanded that Manila withdraw a coast guard vessel from the waters around Scarborough Shoal, which both countries claim. China maintains that the entire South China Sea is an internal Chinese lake and asserts sovereignty over all the islands, islets, and rock outcroppings in that massive waterway through which one third of the world’s trade passes. Scarborough, which Beijing calls Huangyan Island and Manila has renamed Panatag Shoal, is about 125 nautical miles off the Philippine coast but at...

HANOI, Vietnam — The day after tough talks between Vietnam and China that made no progress over a Chinese oil rig in the South China Sea, the Chinese government said Thursday it was sending a second rig to waters close to Vietnam.