WASHINGTON/MANILA — US President Barack Obama sought to reassure allies in Asia last month that the United States would support them in the face of a more assertive China. But after one of Beijing’s boldest moves in years to lay claim to contested waters off Vietnam, some Asian countries are asking a simple question: Where […]
China’s current behaviour vis-à-vis its South China Sea neighbours is aggressive, arrogant and smacks of Han chauvinism and ethnocentrism. Far from being an expression of national pride, it is giving patriotism a bad name. Patriotic Hongkongers should recognise it for what it is: a dangerous ploy. Not only has Beijing bared expansionist teeth to Vietnam […]
The first ship departed Sunday morning from the southern island of Hainan, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. It also said that 16 critically injured Chinese were airlifted from Vietnam early Sunday aboard a chartered medical flight. More than 3,000 Chinese have already been pulled out from Vietnam following the riots this past week […]
HANOI — Vietnam insists that China stops offshore oil exploration in the South China Sea within Vietnam’s territorial waters, the country’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh told Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the phone on Thursday. The Vietnamese Foreign Ministry said on Friday the minister had criticized Beijing’s installation of […]
Violence against Chinese-owned factories in Vietnam has spread to mayhem at factories run by South Korean, Taiwan and Singapore companies as well. It’s as though Vietnamese were protesting not only the heavy-handed construction by China of an oil rig within Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea but also giving voice to a long […]
China claims sovereignty over almost 80 percent of the South China Sea, which is rich in oil and gas and fisheries and is a busy waterway for world trade. Territorial disputes there as well as in the East China Sea have pitted China against several neighboring countries. Although China has avowed a desire to have […]
UNTIL this month relations between Vietnam and China seemed only to be improving. Business deals were being done and trade was humming. The Communist neighbours were discussing the possibility that they might jointly prospect for oil in the South China Sea, where they have long disagreed over conflicting territorial claims. But the calculus changed abruptly […]
The spilling of blood and burning of factories by anti-Chinese rioters sweeping across Vietnam reinforces Beijing’s message to other countries claiming territory in the South China Sea: resistance is costly and ultimately futile. But a region in which anti-Chinese sentiment grows and where sovereignty disputes disrupt trade and economic growth will burn Beijing as well. Over […]
MANILA – (11:31PM) Several hundred Filipino and Vietnamese protesters united in a march on Friday, demanding that China stop oil drilling in disputed South China Sea waters, as a Filipino lawmaker revealed Hanoi officials were mulling over filing a separate case against China – similar to what Manila filed in 2013 – over their maritime […]
MANILA, Philippines — What used to be a mere rock formation in the Philippine-claimed waters in South China is now expanding to become an island alongside existing buildings and facilities nearby. The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) recently sighted new conversion activities conducted by China on Mabini (Johnson South) Reef, located 118 nautical miles off […]