China is deploying more surveillance and paramilitary ships to the South China Sea without a clear legal framework to assert its ambiguous territorial claims, risking more confrontations, a report said yesterday.
The bigger patrol ships sent by Chinese maritime surveillance and fisheries agencies have figured in major flare-ups, including an ongoing standoff with a Philippine Coast Guard vessel over a disputed shoal off the western Philippine coast.
At the same time, the nearly dozen Chinese government agencies handling Beijing’s claims compete over budget and power and operate with conflicting mandates and lack of coordination, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said in its report.
Six countries — including Taiwan — are engaged in territorial rifts in the South China Sea, crossed by one of the world’s busiest commercial sea-lanes and accounting for about 10 percent of the annual global fisheries catch.
A map China submitted to the UN in 2009 claims virtually the entire area, but Beijing has so far refused to define the exact extent of its claims, causing confusion and fostering potential conflicts, the ICG said.
Some Chinese ships, according to the ICG, were unaware of the limits of the areas where they were supposed to assert sovereignty.
ICG said it interviewed an official with the Maritime Safety Administration in China’s Hainan Province who said he did not know what area to defend. The official was not further identified.
The China Marine Surveillance, an agency patrolling the South China Sea, plans to increase its personnel from 9,000 to 15,000 and the number of ships from 280 to 520 by 2020, the ICG said. Another agency, the China Fisheries Law Enforcement Command, plans to acquire more helicopter-carrying patrol ships. Such buildup is separate from the strengthening of China’s navy, according to the Brussels-based group.
Manila has asked Beijing to bring their disputes to the UN for arbitration, a process that will require both to delineate their claims. However, Chinese officials have insisted on negotiating with other claimants individually.
The latest confrontation erupted on April 10 when a Filipino warship attempted to arrest Chinese fishermen, who were accused of illegally entering and poaching endangered species at Scarborough Shoal (黃岩島). Two Chinese surveillance ships prevented the arrests and the fishermen slipped away.
Also yesterday, the Philippines warned that China’s sweeping territorial claims in the region may eventually threaten freedom of navigation in the busy region and called on Western and Asian countries to take a stand against any such potential threat.
Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman Raul Hernandez said China has claimed virtually the entire South China Sea for years. Now, they can aggressively assert its claims as shown by its actions at Scarborough Shoal, he told reporters.
“This is a manifestation of a potential threat to freedom of navigation as well as unimpeded commerce in the area,” he added.
Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs Albert del Rosario said that with Beijing claiming almost everything in the South China Sea, “the message is [Beijing] can set the rules for anybody.”
“I think the current standoff is a manifestation of a larger threat to many nations,” Del Rosario told a local TV network in an interview. “They should be concerned if they’re interested in maintaining the freedom of navigation and unimpeded commerce.”
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
RSS