MANILA, Philippines — BBC journalist and book author Bill Hayton, urged the Philippine government to raise the arbitral ruling before the United Nations (UN). In an exchange on Twitter with Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr., Hayton, who authored the book The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia, said the options […]
WASHINGTON – What happens to small states on the front lines of a decaying international order? We can get a good sense by looking at the Philippines. The last three years have seen a depressing erosion of Manila’s relationship with the United States and a weakening of its resistance to Chinese expansionism in the […]
MANILA, Philippines—Malacañang said Monday that it was “objectionable” that a Chinese warship blocked Philippine vessels on a resupply mission to BRP Sierra Madre in Ayungin (Second Thomas) Shoal in the West Philippine Sea. The Department of National Defense (DND) last week submitted a report to Congress during its budget deliberations, revealing that a Chinese […]
MANILA criticized China on Monday after a coast guard ship allegedly blocked three Philippine civilian vessels trying to bring supplies to a navy ship that was deliberately run aground at the Second Thomas Shoal in 1999. “Of course, it’s objectionable,” presidential spokesman Salvador S. Panelo said in mixed English and Filipino at a briefing. […]
THE UK will send its new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth to the volatile South China Sea region, while France has already sent its Frigate, Dixmude, to the Spratly islands, which are a contested group of islands within the Nine Dash Line. China hit back at the news of the European nations ordering key […]
Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific is hardly a new development. But what was once confined to the construction of artificial islands in the hotly contested waters of the South China Sea near the Philippines has expanded into new fronts as China eyes Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, where America’s day begins. Even American […]
MANILA, Philippines — Member states of the United Nations will “trash” the Philippines’ arbitral award, Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. said yesterday, as he called the statements of support of the European Union (EU) and G7 for maritime rules to be respected a “scrap of paper.” “UN numbers will trash our Arbitral Award; […]
MORE in wonder than criticism, we want to file this comment on a recent development in China that imposes a strange requirement on the practice of journalism in that country. The Guardian, the UK-based daily newspaper, published on September 20 a news report that caught our eye as a professional media organization. The news […]
The Trump administration is confronting China in a manner that may be unlikely to advance U.S. competitiveness or enlist much support abroad. President Donald Trump issued a bold declaration late last month: “We don’t need China and, frankly, would be better off without them.” Most U.S. observers agree that Washington needed to recalibrate its […]
In the tunnels of the “Underground Great Wall” are stacked hundreds of nuclear ICBMs, hidden from the eyes of the world. This 5,000 kilometer passageway is just one part of China’s plan to modernize and increase the size, power, and efficiency of its already gargantuan military. In 2019, the People’s Liberation Army’s annual defense […]