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 […]
Under the leadership of the Communist party, China is building what an American admiral, Harry Harris, calls a “great wall of sand” in the strategically important waterways of the South China Sea. The Chinese are dredging the sea bed to transform a few reefs and rocks in the Spratly group of islands and atolls – […]
Beijing has hit back at US criticism of its land reclamation operations around the Nansha Islands (Spratly Islands) in the South China Sea (West Philippine Sea), saying, “No one has the right to instruct China (on) what to do.” Observers warned that Washington is playing with fire as it has adopted an increasingly high profile […]
U.S. State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke says China is “out of step with the regional consensus” over its actions in the South China Sea. The U.S. State Department on Thursday condemned China’s actions in the disputed West Philippine Sea (South China Sea0, saying it was “out of step with the regional consensus”. “First, we want […]