SUMMARY MANILA, Philippines  – The Philippines and the United States are discussing conducting joint coast guard patrols, including in the South China Sea, a Manila official said on Monday, February 20. With overlapping sovereign claims in the strategic waterway, the Philippines has ramped up rhetoric against what it describes as China’s “aggressive activities” in the South China Sea, which has […]

SUMMARY MANILA, Philippines –  At a premier security conference in Munich, Germany, Philippine Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo drew attention to China’s increasing harassment of Philippine vessels in the South China Sea, describing it as an occurrence that now formed part of the “daily situation” in the volatile waterway. “On a day-to-day basis, there are still […]

SUMMARY MANILA, Philippines – The Philippine Coast Guard has stepped up its presence in the disputed South China Sea by deploying additional vessels and conducting more sorties and overflights to protect maritime territory and the country’s fishermen, its chief said on Monday, February 6. Beijing’s sweeping claims of sovereignty over the waterway have drawn repeated complaints from […]

SUMMARY This paper was presented by Retired Justice Antonio T. Carpio at the South China Sea Contemporary Issues Workshop organized by St. Anthony’s College of the University of Oxford on November 9, 2022. There are two recent significant developments in the South China Sea maritime dispute.  The first significant development is the enactment by China of […]

SUMMARY This paper was presented by Retired Justice Antonio T. Carpio at the South China Sea Contemporary Issues Workshop organized by St. Anthony’s College of the University of Oxford on November 9, 2022. There are two recent significant developments in the South China Sea maritime dispute.  The first significant development is the enactment by China of […]

SUMMARY MANILA, Philippines – President Rodrigo Duterte and Chinese President Xi Jinping held an hour-long telephone summit where they discussed the South China Sea issue and the situation in Ukraine, and reviewed the bilateral relations between their countries during the Duterte administration, Malacañang said on Saturday, April 9. Malacañang said the “open, warm, and positive” […]

When I was growing up in Tondo, this was a common scene: A tough guy commits a crime and is brought to trial. In Tondo at that time, it was almost impossible to get witnesses to testify in a criminal trial, particularly if the accused was a tough guy. In the few times some witnesses […]

Pentagon strategists are preparing for a potential confrontation with China over the fate of Taiwan, senior administration officials told lawmakers. “The PRC is the Department of Defense’s pacing challenge and a Taiwan contingency is the pacing scenario,” Assistant Secretary of Defense Ely Ratner, the lead Pentagon official for the Indo-Pacific, told the Senate Foreign Relations […]

A Chinese government survey ship, Da Yang Hao, has been accused of illegal activities in Palau’s waters. Palau is a small island nation, strategically located between the Philippine Sea and the North Pacific. Using ship tracking data provided by MarineTraffic.com we can confirm that the Chinese vessel was operating in Palau’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). […]

Chinese hackers this year targeted military and civilian organizations in several Southeast Asian nations, particularly those with similar territorial claims or strategic infrastructure projects, suggesting the involvement of the state, a U.S.-based cybersecurity firm said in new research released late Wednesday. Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam were the top three targeted countries over the past nine […]