Free Republic

China has “enforced maritime management and exercised sovereign jurisdiction” over an uninhabited reef in the disputed South China Sea, planting the country’s flag on the tiny sand bank just kilometers from a key Philippine military outpost. Photographs released by Chinese state-run media on Saturday showed China Coast Guard officers unfurling the flag as part of an effort to effectively seize Sandy Cay reef, which Beijing calls Tiexian Jiao, earlier this month. The reef, located in the flash point Spratly Island chain, is also claimed by Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines. Sandy Cay also sits just over 3 kilometers from Thitu...

This weekend, a U.S. satellite intelligence firm Simularity released a report connecting the movements of more than 200 suspected Chinese vessels in the South China Sea with massive deposits of human waste.From May 14, 2016 to June 17, 2021, Simularity tracked clusters of anchored ships operating around the Spratly Islands and matched them with concentrations of Chlorophyll-a, indicative of the ships dumping raw sewage.While Chlorophyll-a deposits can happen near shorelines due to runoff from fertilized agricultural areas, erosion of riverbanks and land clearing, Derr said the Chlorophyll-a deposits this far out in the ocean are due entirely to “ship wastewater...

Defense Intelligence Agency worker arrested on charges of leaking top secret information to reporters An employee of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency was arrested on federal charges that he leaked classified information, including details of a foreign country’s weapons systems, to two reporters in 2018 and this year.The worker, Henry Kyle Frese, 30, held top-secret clearance at the DIA.The Justice Department said that it appears that Frese and one of the reporters “were involved in a romantic relationship for some or all of that period of time” in which Frese allegedly leaked the information. A counter-terrorism analyst for the U.S....

The missile destroyer USS Curtis Wilbur sailed within 12 nautical miles (22 kilometers) of Triton Island in the Paracel chain "to challenge excessive maritime claims of parties that claim the Paracel Islands," without notifying the three claimants beforehand, Defense Department spokesman Mark Wright said Saturday in Washington.. China, Taiwan and Vietnam have overlapping claims in the Paracels and require prior notice from ships transiting what they consider their territorial waters. The latest operation was particularly aimed at China, which has increased tensions with the U.S. and its Southeast Asian neighbors by embarking on massive construction of man-made islands and airstrips...

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...

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.

The U.S. Navy plans to send a ship to within 12 nautical miles of disputed islands in the South China Sea, a U.S. official confirmed to Fox News -- in an apparent challenge to Beijing's territorial claims. Reuters first reported that the Navy planned within 24 hours to send a destroyer near the Spratly Islands, an archipelago that China aggressively has laid claim to by building airstrips and other features on top of reefs. Reuters reported that the ship probably would be joined by a surveillance plane. U.S. military officials were angry over the leak, but one official reluctantly confirmed...

BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Friday it was "extremely concerned" about a suggestion from a top U.S. commander that U.S. ships and aircraft should challenge China's claims in the South China Sea by patrolling close to artificial islands it has built. China's increasingly assertive action to back up its sovereignty claims in the South China Sea have included land reclamation and the construction of ports and air facilities on several reefs in the Spratly Islands. The work has rattled China's neighbors, in particular U.S. ally the Philippines, and raised concern in the United States. China says it has irrefutable...

In the ongoing dispute over the Spratly Islands claimed by China and Vietnam, the latest development is that China is opening up 3G services on the islands, not only to Chinese soldiers but also for the country’s fishermen. The development will be yet another drop of lemon in the souring of Sino-Vietnamese relations in the past year. The Vietnamese government even voiced its complaint on nguyentandung.org, the Vietnamese Prime Minister’s website. The island disputes recently ignited with anti-China protests in May 2011 after Chinese patrol boats attacked two Vietnamese oil exploration ships near the Spratly Islands. Chinese soldiers and fishermen...

Too often, we see East Asia only from an economic perspective, marveling at the undeniable success of China, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, and South Korea. Yet these nations have another story to tell, one that owes less to current economic performance than to much older instincts: nationalism and ethnic resentment, the forces that kindled World War I in Sarajevo. Today, those forces underlie disputes in places that we ignore or know nothing about, such as the Senkaku Islands, the Dokdo Islands, and the Spratly archipelago. And those disputes may spark military conflicts between rival Asian countries. Such thinking goes against...

James Webb, the outgoing Democratic Senator from Virginia, is sounding the alarm about the next big world crisis taking place in the South China Sea. Naturally, the Obama administration is doing nothing about it in hopes the crisis will go away. Beijing has, in effect, laid sovereign claim to much of the South China Sea, including the Paracel Islands. China is also clashing with the Philippines over the Spratley Islands and with Japan over the Senkaku Islands. China is prepared to back up these claims by establishing a small colony on Woody Island in the Paracels with a military garrison...