China has begun work or completed building infrastructure on about 72 acres (29 hectares) of land on outposts in the South China Sea this year, according to a report by the Washington-based Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative.   While the global focus has been on North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs, China has been […]

  China has created military facilities about four times the size of Buckingham palace on contested islands in the South China Sea, a new report has said, calling the build-up a “slow-moving crisis” in one of the world’s most dangerous flashpoints.   China built about 29 hectares (290,000 square metres) of new facilities on contested […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Tensions over China’s island-building in the South China Sea may have eased in the past year, but Beijing has kept busy.   New satellite imagery shows China has built infrastructure covering 72 acres (28 hectares) in the Spratly and Paracel islands during 2017 to equip its larger outposts to be air and […]

  Despite upcoming talks, Manila’s deferential stance to Beijing, and wider ASEAN disunity, mean no end in sight for China’s island-building in the South China Sea. Yet those islands will destroy the coral reefs they are built on, and the very fish stocks China wants to control in the first place.   China’s provocations and […]

The Chinese bombers and support aircraft aimed to “test real combat capabilities.” The People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) sent two Xian H-6K long-range bombers, two unidentified fighter jets, one Shaanxi Y-8 electronic countermeasures aircraft, and one Tupolev Tu-154MD electronic intelligence plane through international airspace between the Japanese islands of Okinawa and Miyako in the […]

TAIPEI, TAIWAN — China calmed Asia’s biggest maritime sovereignty dispute in 2017 by offering aid, investment and the pledge of negotiations with weaker Southeast Asian countries as Beijing’s chief nemesis, the United States, kept quiet. These shifts in the South China Sea sovereignty dispute involving six governments allow Beijing to minimize public criticism of its […]

  SINGAPORE – The city-state of Singapore has expressed support for a peaceful resolution of the overlapping claims of some areas in the South China Sea.   Although Singapore is not a claimant state, Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan noted that majority of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have trade and economic-related interests, […]

  China has for the first time confirmed the deployment of fighter jets to Woody Island in the disputed South China Sea, state media have reported.   Citing footage aired by the official state broadcaster, the Global Times reported late Friday that China had sent J-11B fighters to the island in the contested Paracel chain. […]

The People’s Liberation Army Air Force announced on its social media account on Saturday that a fleet of the aircraft from the Western Theatre Command flew thousands of kilometres to simulate an airdrop over an island in the contested waters before returning the same day.   The exercise was conducted in mock combat conditions and […]

  BEIJING — When the Australian government set out to write a new foreign policy paper, it faced hotly contested questions shaping the country’s future: Will China replace the United States as the dominant power in Asia? If so, how quickly?   The government’s answers came in a so-called white paper released last month by […]