The Japanese government has lodged a protest over China’s gas field development in the East China Sea after confirming the presence of flares suggesting gas production is under way at two more facilities, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Wednesday. The flares, Suga said, were confirmed in mid-September and add to those already observed at […]

Beijing will never give up its claims to South China Sea islands, its foreign minister insisted Wednesday ahead of a state visit to the US by President Xi Jinping, after a Washington think-tank said it may be building its third airstrip in the area. China claims almost the whole of the sea and over the […]

Recent satellite imagery of Fiery Cross in the Spratly Islands reveals that China’s construction of facilities on the reef is more ambitious than previously appreciated, with one of its building complexes on track to rival the Pentagon in size. The complex, located in the midsection of the manufactured island a thousand kilometers off China’s coast, […]

China appears to be taking new steps to build airfields on two reefs in a disputed area of the South China Sea on the eve of President Xi Jinping’s arrival in Washington for a state visit on 24 September. Commercial satellite photos taken on 8 September for the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) […]

Hong Kong (CNN)China appears to building a third airstrip in disputed waters in the South China Sea, according to new satellite images analyzed by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The images, taken September 8, come after China pledged to bring land reclamation in those waters to a halt, and will make […]

But Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines all lay claim to parts of the disputed waters. What’s in a name? An entire sea, says Chinese Vice Admiral Yuan Yubai. On Sept. 14, at a defense conference in London, Yuan said that “the South China Sea, as the name indicates, is a sea area that […]

China appears to have started building the foundation for a third airstrip in the hotly-contested South China Sea, according to a report Tuesday from Reuters. The airstrip’s construction, according to the report, appears to have started on Mischief Reef, one of seven artificial islands that China has built. The chain of islands, both natural and […]

While Russia has employed “Little Green Men” surreptitiously in Crimea, China uses its own “Little Blue Men” to support Near Seas claims. As the U.S. military operates near Beijing’s artificially-built South China Sea (SCS) features and seeks to prevent Beijing from ejecting foreign claimants from places like Second Thomas Shoal, it may well face surveillance […]

Disputes in South China Sea were a strategic issue given the amount of commercial trade that passes through the region, he said, and should be resolved in a peaceful manner. By 2030 almost 50% of the word’s total GDP will pass through the Indo-Pacific region. Addressing delegates attending the RUSI/1SL Sea Power conference at London’s […]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – China appears to be building a third airstrip in contested territory in the South China Sea, a U.S. expert said on Monday, citing satellite photographs taken last week. The photographs taken for Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank on Sept. 8 show construction on Mischief Reef, one of […]