Vietnam has joined the Philippines in condemning China’s attempts to build islands in the East Sea in what analysts say could be yet another futile verbal effort to stop Beijing. “Vietnam resolutely opposes China’s illegal construction projects that jeopardize the status quo on the Truong Sa Archipelago,” Pham Thu Hang, deputy foreign ministry spokeswoman, said […]
Beijing appears to have made steady advances in the construction of port and other facilities in disputed waters in the South China Sea, according to photographs obtained by The Asahi Shimbun. The aerial photos of the area were taken in October. The Philippines and Vietnam also lay claim to much of the potentially resource-rich Spratly […]
Satellite imagery analysis by IHS Jane’s has confirmed that China is building a military base on islands 300 km away from the dispute Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. The imagery, captured on 13 October 2014 by Airbus Defence and Space’s Pleaides satellite, shows a heliport with 10 landing pads in the centre of Nanji Island, one of a […]
Is war over the festering South China Sea (SCS) maritime dispute between China and the Southeast Asian claimants of Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei Darussalam inevitable in 2015? China’s rising assertiveness, the firmness of claimants like the Philippines and Vietnam and the big powers’ interest in the region, have led to fears that tensions […]
The Philippines is taking steps to mend its relations with China, but emphasized that it will not drop its arbitration case against Beijing, Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario said on Thursday. Relations between the two Asian neighbors plunged to its lowest when the Philippines sought arbitration in January 2013 to try to declare as illegal […]
The United States and not China should write the trade rules for Asia, US President Barack Obama said on Tuesday night as he called on his country to speed up regional trade deals. In his annual State of the Union address in Washington, Obama warned that if China prevailed, American workers and businesses would be […]
Manila: All ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) and China must work together to reduce tension due to the overlapping claims in the South China Sea, an American official said, adding the US and all other countries in the world want to remain as neutral referees who aim to end tension […]
As part of a broader project of land reclamation, beginning in November China started efforts to develop Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratly Islands. As of late November the reef had been built up to 3,000 meters long and between two and three hundred wide. This makes it large enough, in the assessment of analysts […]
From the air, the Spratly Islands, a cluster of miniature rocks and sandbars 425,000 kilometres square in the middle of the South China Sea, are almost imperceptible. Even up close, the Spratlys do not look like much – a few islands have tiny rocky beaches or occasional makeshift buildings. A tiny contingent of Filipino marines […]
There has recently been a touch of disagreement on this site between Linda Jakobson of the Lowy Institute and Bonnie Glaser of CSIS about the motivations for China’s actions in the South China Sea. In short, Jakobson argues that China’s decision-making can be explained by bureaucratic competition between China’s various maritime agencies, whereas Glaser says […]