After U.S. bases in the Philippines closed in the early ’90s, a lighthouse on Scarborough Shoal was meant to help protect the country from regional aggression. But that project was never completed. RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST: Scarborough Shoal is little more than a bump in the South China Sea. China is eyeing it for an air […]

(CNN)Two Chinese J-11 fighter aircraft carried out an “unsafe” intercept of a United States EP-3E “Aires II” reconnaissance aircraft in international airspace over the South China Sea, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. During the incident, which took place Tuesday, the fighters reportedly came within 50 feet (15 meters) of the Navy plane. Flying […]

“Let us admit it fairly, as a business people should: We have had no end of a lesson: it will do us no end of good,” wrote Rudyard Kipling in 1902 after the Boers humiliated the British Army in the first round of the Boer War. America should express the same gratitude towards China, which […]

The United States will remain the world’s leading power for a long time, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Friday, but he stressed global affairs should not be dominated by one country. Wang made the remarks during an interview with the Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera, ahead of the seventh ministerial conference of the China-Arab States […]

President Duterte has three main priorities: one, kill drug lords and those guilty of heinous crimes like rape and murder; two, extricate something practical and profitable from the Philippine territorial claim in the West Philippine Sea; and three, share power with the communist rebels to bring to an end the longest communist insurgency in the […]

AS PART of its ongoing international blitz to lobby countries to back it, China yesterday called on Trinidad and Tobago to “stand with righteousness” and support its claim to territories in the South China Sea. In a statement published in the print media yesterday, China’s Ambassador Huang Xingyuan argued the issue – which is likely […]

The simmering South China Sea dispute is getting closer to boiling over—with Beijing’s fighter jets buzzing U.S. spy planes and now sightings of a high-tech new surveillance drone. China has dramatically escalated its military expansion into the disputed waters and airspace of the South China Sea. Deploying ships, jet fighters, and, reportedly, a high-tech surveillance […]

This weekend, President Obama will travel to Vietnam, making the third U.S. presidential visit to the country since the end of the Vietnam War. Obama’s trip, which will also include a stop in Japan, will encompass several priorities. He will try to reassure allies that the United States remains committed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, even […]

(UPDATED) TAIPEI–Taiwan swore in Tsai Ing-wen as its first female president Friday ahead of a grand ceremony celebrating the island’s unique identity, likely to raise hackles in Beijing as ties with China rapidly cool. Tsai took office after winning a landslide victory in January to defeat the ruling Kuomintang, ending an eight-year rapprochement with Beijing […]

PHNOM PENH — On the thorny issue of Southeast Asia’s territorial disputes in the South China Sea, Cambodia finds itself caught in the middle. On one side, its fellow members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) say the regional bloc should be central to dealing with the disputes. On the other, China—the world’s […]