In Orwellian totalitarianism, two plus two can equal five. But with American hegemony, things can be A and not A at the same time. Earlier this month, Washington declared war on the International Criminal Court (ICC), whose very existence, it claims, poses an “intolerable” challenge to America’s sovereignty. But, citing an international maritime law, it also led a coalition of 14 mainly Western countries in issuing a joint statement in support of a 10-year-old South China Sea arbitration ruling...
China, Philippine coastguard vessels clash in South China Sea.
The Philippine Coast Guard says 12 China Coast Guard vessels and three Chinese maritime militia vessels were involved.
China-Philippine clashes continued near the hotly contested Scarborough Shoal for the second day on Friday, as Beijing started military drills in the South China Sea that are expected to run until the end of the month. “On July 24, the China Coast Guard took control measures in accordance with the law toward multiple Philippine vessels engaged in illegal activities in waters under China’s jurisdiction off Huangyan Island,” the coastguard said in a statement on Friday, referring to Beijing’s name...
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Wednesday warned his Philippine counterpart that Manila would “bear the bitter consequences” if it tried to provoke Beijing with the help of other countries. Wang made the remark as he lodged a “strong protest” during talks with Theresa Lazaro, the Philippines’ top diplomat, in Manila over what he called an “aggressive act of ramming a Chinese law enforcement vessel” at a disputed reef in the South China Sea on Monday. It was the third day Beijing has...
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met his Philippine counterpart in Manila on Wednesday, with both sides highlighting the need for “reducing the risk of miscalculation” and maintaining stability in the South China Sea. The meeting on the sidelines of the Asean foreign ministers’ gathering marked the first formal talks between the top diplomats since Maria Theresa Lazaro assumed office in July last year. It also came days after fresh tensions in the disputed waters, with Chinese coastguard and...
The top Chinese and American diplomats discussed President Xi Jinping’s planned visit to the US later this year and the dispute between Beijing and Manila in the South China Sea during their bilateral meeting on Wednesday. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio are in Manila for a series of Asean meetings from Monday to Thursday, including the Asean foreign ministers’ meeting which brings together 11 member states, along with ministers from Russia, Japan,...
Chinese researchers have called for more coordination among the country’s maritime authorities to counter an American strategy that has put pressure on Beijing across three critical waterways in the first island chain. By synchronising operations across flashpoints in the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, Washington’s “three seas linkage” strategy aimed to force Beijing into multi-front operations and strategic overextension, warned Yue Shengsong, an associate professor...
New findings on Chinese financing in the Philippines are challenging the assumption that Beijing reduced its funding under President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr because of worsening tensions in the South China Sea. Instead, Chinese capital had continued to support Filipino businesses in recent years, including a US$3.9 billion syndicated loan to telecommunications company Dito Telecommunity in 2023, the largest ever China-backed private-sector loan to the Philippines, AidData, a US-based research...
Dispute erupts in South China Sea after incident near Second Thomas Shoal involving Chinese and Philippine vessels.
Malaysia is stepping up surveillance on its eastern flank, pushing ahead with plans for a long-range radar at a frontline South China Sea outpost and launching newly operational drones. The upgrades reflect Kuala Lumpur’s bid to improve its ability to detect threats as the Philippines revives its claim over Sabah state in Malaysian Borneo and Chinese patrols persist near its offshore energy fields. Defence Minister Mohamed Khaled Nordin said on Sunday that the radar would be installed on Swallow...
The Philippines protests China Daily videos depicting Filipinos as monkeys amid South China Sea tensions.
China Daily posted a video of a monkey being forced to sing its claims to the South China Sea.
A US decision to redeploy half a dozen small coastguard ships from the Middle East to the South China Sea is unlikely to alter the balance of power in the disputed waters, Chinese analysts said. In a statement on Wednesday, the US Coast Guard said it had moved its Expeditionary Cutter Squadron to the western Pacific to conduct “maritime security operations and cooperative maritime activities with allies and partner nations in the region, in response to national security...
On July 12, a coalition of 14 nations – the United States, Philippines, Australia, Canada, Britain, Japan, New Zealand, and seven European states including Germany, Italy and the Baltic nations – issued a statement marking the 10th anniversary of the South China Sea ruling at The Hague in 2016. The document recycled familiar arguments, urging compliance with the ruling and framing it as a cornerstone of the rules-based international order. But beneath it lies a fundamental disconnect from...
A decade after Beijing rejected the ruling by The Hague’s Permanent Court of Arbitration on its South China Sea claims, rival nations continue to manoeuvre for control. In the third of our series on the anniversary, Laura Zhou looks at why the gap between international law and geopolitical reality on the water has never been wider. On a scorching morning this summer, more than a hundred Chinese tourists stepped ashore on Tree Island in the hotly contested Paracels. They were greeted not only by...
A decade after a South China Sea ruling, analysts said Beijing should continue engaging in good-faith diplomacy and explore international mediation, arguing that the unenforced ruling had failed to curb rising regional maritime tensions. The observations came after a weekend of fresh accusations over the 2016 decision by an international tribunal in The Hague ruling that most of China’s claims to historical and economic rights in the South China Sea were invalid. Beijing firmly rejected the...
A decade after Beijing rejected the ruling by The Hague’s Permanent Court of Arbitration on its South China Sea claims, rival nations continue to manoeuvre for control. In the second of our series on the anniversary, Alyssa Chen explores how deepening maritime cooperation between the Philippines and Vietnam could affect China’s regional strategy. With Vietnamese President To Lam by his side in Manila late last month, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr sent a clear message of...
A decade after a tribunal in The Hague ruled on July 12, 2016, that China’s sweeping South China Sea claims had no legal basis, Philippine officials and analysts say Manila remains heavily outmatched at sea but has begun turning its landmark legal victory into a more credible form of deterrence. The Philippines brought the case in 2013 under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos), challenging Beijing’s nine-dash line and other claims. The tribunal ruled that China’s...
A prominent Chinese maritime analyst has sounded the alarm over Japan’s increasing military presence in the South China Sea, warning it has a “destructive potential” that could ultimately surpass that of the United States. Speaking on Monday at a round table event in Hong Kong discussing security in the region, Wu Shicun, the founding president of China’s National Institute for South China Sea Studies, said “unilateral infringements” in the disputed waters were becoming “normalised”. He told the...
New satellite images suggest China’s land reclamation at Antelope Reef in the South China Sea is nearly finished, according to researchers. One image taken on June 22 showed that dredgers within the lagoon of the teardrop-shaped coral atoll in the Paracel Islands had been replaced by cargo barges, an indication that land reclamation was near completion, London-based research group the Open Source Centre (OSC) said on social media on Friday. Meanwhile, four large, blue cylindrical storage silos...
Wu Shicun is the founding president of China’s National Institute for South China Sea Studies and chairman of the Huayang Centre for Maritime Cooperation and Ocean Governance. In this interview, the first in a series about the South China Sea dispute, he discusses ways Beijing can respond to rival claimants. This interview first appeared in SCMP Plus. For other interviews in the Open Questions series, click here. With Manila intensifying its “transparency” campaign, how does China view the...
Beijing has denounced a “thoroughly illegal” international tribunal that ruled against its expansive claims in the South China Sea, with a senior diplomat describing it as a “thorn” in the side of its relationship with the Philippines on the 10th anniversary of the decision. In an article published in People’s Daily on Sunday, Jing Quan, the ambassador to the Philippines, said clearing its “lingering toxic legacy” was a matter of the utmost urgency. “The most important task for Manila today is...
For a man sanctioned by Beijing, barred from visiting China and accused of damaging bilateral ties, Gilberto Teodoro Jnr sounded remarkably composed. Composed, that is, until the conversation turned to the South China Sea – the very subject that landed him in hot water in the first place. In an interview this week, the Philippines’ defence chief said that Manila would keep only limited military communication channels open with Beijing, while ruling out broader engagement unless China changed its...
Wu Shicun is the founding president of China’s National Institute for South China Sea Studies and chairman of the Huayang Centre for Maritime Cooperation and Ocean Governance. In this interview he discusses ways Beijing can respond to rival claimants in the disputed waters. SCMP Plus readers get early access to articles in the Open Questions series. With Manila intensifying its “transparency” campaign, how does China view the current situation and what challenges does it face? Manila’s so-called...
China’s flagship Communist Party newspaper has joined a sweeping rhetorical offensive against rival maritime claimant the Philippines, days ahead of the 10th anniversary of a South China Sea arbitration ruling rejected by Beijing as “illegal”. In twin commentaries published on Friday, the People’s Daily branded the July 12 decision of 2016 a “destabilising force” and demanded that Manila pivot to direct talks. The commentaries from official media cap a multi-agency initiative from Beijing in...
Beijing has issued a lengthy critique of the Philippines’ territorial claims in the South China Sea, condemning its actions as “unlawful” expansions that pose a “grave threat” to the post-war global order. Wednesday’s report by a Ministry of Natural Resources think tank – its third within days – marks the latest move in China’s campaign to reinforce its position in the disputed waters. The push underlines Beijing’s rejection of the Philippines’ stance just days before the 10th anniversary of a...
China has issued a legal warning to Japan and the Philippines over their planned maritime border talks, calling the move “internationally wrongful” and saying it had the right to hold both nations accountable. It is the latest protest from Beijing after Manila and Tokyo agreed in May to launch formal negotiations to delimit the maritime boundary of the exclusive economic zones and continental shelf between the two countries, which overlap with areas claimed by China. “The announcement,...
The People’s Liberation Army said it dispatched vessels and aircraft to the South China Sea in response to a joint US-Philippine maritime drill in the waters near Scarborough Shoal over the weekend. The PLA’s statement came a day after Manila said four Chinese vessels monitored a US-Philippine maritime exercise near the disputed shoal, which was reported by Philippine media on Monday. A week ago, a rare stand-off between Chinese and Philippine navies took place near the atoll. Over the weekend,...