09/01/2014
In a broadening campaign to enforce its territorial claims, China says it’s beefing up its police powers in the disputed South China Sea and requiring foreign fishermen to ask Beijing’s permission to operate within most of the vast, strategic waterway.
The move, which took effect this month, comes on the heels of the late November announcement of a new air defense zone requiring foreign planes to notify Beijing of flights over a huge swath of the East China Sea, where China is locked in a bitter territorial dispute with Japan.
The steps are prompting concerns that President Xi Jinping’s push to assert China’s role as a regional power could spark a confrontation with neighbors.
“These sort of assertions of sovereignty, or territorial claims, will continue. Xi believes he can’t afford to be seen as soft,” said City University of Hong Kong China politics expert Joseph Cheng.
Read more at The Washington Post
Click here for updated South China Sea news
In the past few years, the United States Coast Guard (USCG) has been expanding its activities in the South China Sea in particular and the Indo-Pacific in general.
On July 5, a week before hosting the 2023 NATO Summit, Lithuania released its own Indo-Pacific Strategy, becoming the 6th European country to devise such document (after France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and the Czech Republic, if not including the EU). A few observations could be made from a...
On the 7th anniversary of the final ruling rendered by the Arbitral Tribunal in the arbitration between the Philippines and China concerning the South China Sea (July 12, 2016 - July 12, 2023), some countries, including claimants and non-claimants, issued statements expressing their positions regarding...
On 28 April, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) issued its final Judgment on the dispute concerning the delimitation of the maritime boundary between Mauritius and the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, finally ending the dispute that had lasted for over three years. Both Mauritius...
Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu officially visited Russia from April 15th to April 17th, 2023. The visit was closely monitored by the West due to their belief that the increasingly closer relationship between China and Russia, both politically and militarily, may result in China’s decision to provide...