Australia has urged China and south-east Asian countries squabbling over territory in the South China Sea to sign a code of conduct immediately. The defence minister, Kevin Andrews, issued a veiled swipe at China during a speech to an Asia Pacific security summit in Singapore on Sunday. “We are particularly concerned at the prospect of […]
Is China starting down a path similar to that followed by Japan and Germany before 1945, when nationalism backed by new economic clout led to overconfidence and adventures which eventually proved disastrous? The question needs asking in the context of China’s latest moves ultimately aimed at making the South China Sea into a Chinese lake. […]
SINGAPORE — China’s land reclamation in the South China Sea is out of step with international rules, and turning underwater land into airfields won’t expand its sovereignty, Defense Secretary Ash Carter told an international security conference Saturday, stepping up America’s condemnation of the communist giant as Beijing officials sat in the audience. Carter told the […]
SINGAPORE – Vietnam’s deputy defence minister said on Saturday that reports China had placed mobile artillery weapons on a reclaimed island in the disputed South China Sea were, if true, a very worrying development. “If it has actually happened it is a very bad sign for what is already a very complicated situation in the […]
Japan’s Minister of Defense has warned that land reclamation projects in the South China Sea risked plunging the region into disorder and has urged nations, including China, to behave responsibly. Gen Nakatani said “If we leave any unlawful situation unattended, order will soon turn to disorder, and peace and stability will collapse,” “I hope and expect […]
The drumbeat of war on distant horizons is reverberating through Southeast Asia with increasingly strong declarations of U.S. determination to stop the Chinese from expanding their writ over the South China Sea, notably islands claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei. While Defense Secretary Ashton Carter was in Singapore vowing that U.S. planes and […]
SINGAPORE – (UPDATE, 2:11 p.m.) The United States on Saturday vowed to keep sending military aircraft and ships to disputed parts of the South China Sea and called for an immediate halt to reclamation works by Beijing in the tense region. US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told a high-level security conference in Singapore that Beijing’s […]
Countries with competing territorial claims in the South China Sea — including China — should carry out joint “peace patrols” there to reduce the risk of conflict, Indonesia’s defense minister said. Senior U.S. military officials have recently urged Southeast Asian countries to jointly patrol the waters as it seeks to reassure its allies it will […]
SINGAPORE – China has always been a defender of world peace and the South China Sea issue has been sensationalised to a certain extent by some nations in and outside of the region, experts and officials said. Huang Jing, director of the Centre on Asia and Globalisation at the National University of Singapore, said there […]
Dozens of long, flat boats swarm across turquoise waters, inside the pale, curving arc of a new island they have created from open sea in just a few months. The Chinese dredger barges can reach up to 30 metres below the surface, cutting out and scooping up huge quantities of sand and coral for land […]