In an appearance on Tuesday before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, Admiral Harry Harris, Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command stated: “I believe China seeks hegemony in East Asia.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Vietnam this week, the first by a Chinese president in ten years, drew mixed reaction among the Vietnamese.
Local fishermen in the South China Sea have long gone unprotected when fishing in their own waters or in waters claimed by other countries. But this may soon change, following attacks this year on Vietnamese fishing boats.
Beijing attempted to quash any mention of the South China Sea dispute prior to Tuesday’s meeting in Kuala Lumpur of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Just when the memories of anti-Chinese protests and rioting have started to fade among the Vietnamese, the Chinese are stoking the fires again with another salami-slicing maneuver.
Last Friday, eight Indonesians were arrested by a Vietnamese coast guard patrol off the southern coast of Vietnam.
Here in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), the local government last week ordered its travel and tourism departments to draw up a feasibility study for tours to the Truong Sa (Spratly) islands, which Vietnam currently occupies.
On Saturday in Singapore, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter addressed the attendants at the 14th Shangri-La Dialogue, a high-level security forum, asserting China’s recent land reclamation in the South China Sea was “out of step” with international norms, and adding his opposition to “any further militarization” in the region.
On Mischief Reef, in the South China Sea just off the coast of the Philippine island of Palawan, Chinese workers are busy dredging sand and creating an island on top of partially-submerged coral reefs.
Last Thursday, a Vietnamese wooden fishing boat returning to the central province of Quang Ngai was badly damaged following attacks from three Chinese vessels near the Paracel Islands, which the Vietnamese call the Hoang Sa.
Lately, it seems China’s aggressive foreign policy stance toward territorial disputes in the South China Sea is backfiring, especially in Vietnam. Last month, Vietnamese officials offered India two oil-exploration blocks in the disputed South China Sea waters, which Vietnam calls the East Sea, which drew strong condemnation from Beijing. In turn, India promised to sell […]
In a time of heightened tensions between Asian nations with claims to the waters of the East and South China Seas, the deployment of an offshore oil rig back in May by Beijing in disputed waters with Vietnam was not going to be an event without ramifications. The rig’s deployment by the Chinese National Offshore […]
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