Taiwan and the Philippines are arguing again about fishing rights in overlapping waters of the Western Pacific. But the dispute that netted three Taiwanese boats in the 250-kilometer-wide Luzon Strait last month will stop short of a flare-up like that of two years ago when Manila’s coast guard shot a Taiwanese fisherman to death at […]
The US secretary of defense, Ashton Carter, has said the US will continue to patrol the South China Sea and fly across the Spratly reefs occupied by China as international waters. It’s clear that the US has determined to push for the “two-state theory” in the region. The US has always tried to avoid touching […]
Ever since last year when satellite imagery confirmed that China was constructing artificial islands in the South China Sea, journalists, security specialists and even government officials uncritically have adopted terminology that obfuscates rather than clarifies the issues at stake. No term has been so abused as “land reclamation” both in its everyday usage and legal […]
As China reemerges as one of the globe’s leading powers, just what type of actor it will be on the world stage has become a subject of intense debate among China watchers and the broader public. With tensions rising to what one eminent China scholar has called a “tipping point” in U.S.-China relations, the Chinese […]
Washington has made its point loud and clear in the South China Sea. But it is likely to be lost on Beijing. “There should be no mistake: the United States will fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows,” Defense Secretary Ashton Carter declared at a late May gathering of Asia Pacific’s top defense officials in Singapore. […]
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS The South China Sea is the cockpit of geopolitics in East Asia. Five countries – Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam – plus Taiwan have substantial and competing territorial and maritime claims in a body of water that is both an important source of hydrocarbons and fisheries and a vital […]
SAN FRANCISCO — It’s time for countries threatened by China’s belligerent claims of sovereignty over most of the South China Sea to push back with a maritime coalition that has “enforcement capabilities,” a strategic analyst urges in a recent article in the New York-based Journal of Political Risk. With joint enforcement capabilities — backed by […]
A militant group denounced Saturday the latest incident where a Chinese coast guard allegedly fired flares at a Philippine fishing boat over the disputed islands in the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea). Bayan Muna Representative Neri Colmenares slammed China’s aggressive actions and urged Filipinos to unite to pressure China and counter its moves over […]
In the dock for its aggressive expansionism in the South China Sea, China seems undeterred THE Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual powwow in Singapore for Asia-Pacific defence chiefs, has begun to follow a pattern: America and its friends in Asia line up to criticise China for its alleged transgressions in the seas around its coast; China […]
US RATCHETS UP PRESSURE ON CHINA The U.S. military has begun actively — and more publicly — challenging China’s sovereignty claims over half a dozen artificial islands Beijing has been rapidly constructing through massive land reclamation. On May 22, a U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft — a militarized version of the Boeing 737 — […]