At first it seemed a mystery to rank alongside that of the Marie Celeste or other ghost ships. Earlier this month a Chinese fishing crew came across a completely deserted ferry floating in the East China Sea. Wang Weiping, the skipper of the fishing boat that found the liner early on Thursday 300 nautical miles […]

BUDAPEST, HUNGARY – 2018/12/16: A protester seen holding a burning flare during the protest against the new labour law approved by the right wing conservative government lead by Viktor Orban. A US Navy ship had an “unsafe” interaction with a Chinese warship September 30 while the US vessel was conducting a freedom of navigation operation […]

Anyone betting that Chinese President Xi Jinping would back down quickly in a trade war with Donald Trump better think again. Xi told a Beijing crowd including some of China’s most influential political, military and business figures on Tuesday that the country’s growing wealth and power had validated the Communist Party’s — and thus his […]

Beijing appeasing Donald Trump or waiting him out will no longer work, says Financial Times’ Gideon Rachman LONDON: Tell me how this ends? was the despairing question attributed to American generals as they contemplated the quagmires in Vietnam and Iraq. The same question needs to be asked by US policymakers now, as they consider the […]

MANILA – The US envoy to the Philippines has admitted that the early months of the Duterte administration brought challenges to the relationship between Washington and Manila. US Ambassador Sung Kim said he put a lot of effort in building a constructive relationship with President Rodrigo Duterte. Kim and the President met in Malacañang last […]

It is time for Southeast Asian states and ASEAN to think, act and speak consistently and clearly for its own interests—or else court irrelevance and ruin of its own strategic objectives. THE 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) describes China as a revisionist power seeking to displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region. It is […]

MANILA – The United States envoy to the Philippines has dismissed President Rodrigo Duterte’s accusations that Washington failed to stop Beijing from militarizing islands in the South China Sea. Ambassador Sung Kim said the US has been consistent in its calls against aggressive unilateral actions. “China has obviously taken unilateral measures and in fact they […]

2018-12-18 Email story Comment on this story Share Share Comment Email Indonesian troops attend the inauguration ceremony for the Natuna TNI Integrated Unit in Riau Islands province, Dec. 18, 2018. The Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) commander on Tuesday inaugurated a military unit in the Natuna islands near the South China Sea that will be tasked […]

MANILA – It has been just five years since China initiated its major land reclamation in the South China Sea, and the country has already shifted the territorial status quo in its favor — without facing any international pushback. The anniversary of the start of its island building underscores the transformed geopolitics in a corridor […]

MANILA, Philippines—A possible armed confrontation over the disputed maritime areas in the South China Sea is on the top list of security threats concerning the United States in the coming year, according to an annual survey of US foreign policy experts. An assessment conducted by the Center for Preventive Action of the Council on Foreign […]