Amid its continuing territorial dispute with its neighbors in South East Asia, China has updated its old map by including 130 islands and islets in the South China Sea. Sinomaps Press chief editor Xu Gencai told Xinhua News Agency on Saturday that Beijing decided to come with a new official map to inform Chinese nationals […]
The Chinese are taught from grade school that the entire South China Sea is theirs. Textbooks carry an “ancient map” with nine dashes in a U-shape denoting the outer limits of the sea, skirting the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, some islands of Indonesia, and Vietnam. Thirteenth-century-old, the Chinese map purportedly proves that “we were there first.” […]
News reporters, sometimes, incompletely report or misinterpret statements by people they cover resulting in confusion or making their subject look like bearers of bad news. As I was reading back issues of the Standard Today, after my return from a trip abroad, a news article on May 24 caught my eye. It was titled “Bringing […]
MANILA, Philippines – About 18 Chinese vessels are intruding into Philippine territory, raising the need to pour more resources to defense spending, a security official said Thursday. Vicente Agdamag, Deputy Director-General of the National Security Council Secretariat, said the deployment of the ships is in line with China’s aim to consolidate its control over the […]
The twenty-third Meeting of States Parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea will be held at Headquarters from 10 to 14 June. Often referred to as “the constitution for the oceans”, the landmark Convention was adopted on 10 December 1982 and entered into force on 16 November 1994. Its 320 articles and […]
From January through May, the South China Sea dispute continued to trend in a negative direction. Consistent with the pattern of developments over the past several years, the dispute continued to be characterized by an action-reaction dynamic in which attempts by one or other of the claimants – most notably, China, the Philippines and Vietnam […]
The twenty-third Meeting of States Parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea will be held at Headquarters from 10 to 14 June. Often referred to as “the constitution for the oceans”, the landmark Convention was adopted on 10 December 1982 and entered into force on 16 November 1994. Its 320 […]
June 25, 2012: Henry Bensurto of the Department of Foreign Affairs presentation of Philippine position. Download PDF: Bensurto_Presentation
The Shangri-La Dialogue (SLD), launched by the Institute of International Strategic Studies (IISS) in 2002, brings together Asia-Pacific defense ministers and experts from around the world to discuss regional security challenges and opportunities for cooperation. The 12th SLD convened in Singapore from May 31 to June 2. IISS Director General and Chief Executive John Chipman […]
Yesterday, the New York Times reported that China’s mapping authority, Sinomaps Press, issued a new map of the country showing 80% of the South China Sea as internal Chinese water. What’s at issue? Each year, more than half of the world’s annual merchant tonnage passes through the South China Sea as well as a third […]