South China Sea and China (2011-2017)

[Ray]

Indian-Vietnam naval exercise launched in S China Sea

A joint naval exercise was launched by India and Vietnam together in the disputed South China Sea on June 8 as a challenge to the growing influence of China in the region, according to the state-run Global Times.

After premier Li Keqiang's visit to India, four warships from the Eastern Fleet of the Indian Navy, including two frigates, one destroyer and one supply ship, began their voyage on May 30 for Vietnam, reports the Calcutta-based Telegraph. The Indian warships arrived at Tien Sa Port in the city of Da Nang on June 4.

The Indian fleet commander said that the government respects the administration and control of all nations over the islands within the disputed region. Rear admiral Ajit Kumar, however, pointed out that peace and stability of the South China Sea is crucial as well to the national interests of India.

http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-s...00067&cid=1101

[davidbfpo]

I overlooked posting this National Interest article 'Did China Blink in the South China Sea' published on the 27th July 2014:http://nationalinterest.org/feature/...hina-sea-10956

It starts with:

For seventy-five days starting from May 2, China unilaterally deployed its US$1 billion oil rig HYSY-981 to drill in waters lying within Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The platform was originally scheduled to stay until August 15, but on July 15, China announced that the rig had completed its work and would be relocated to Hainan Island. The removal of the drilling rig is as unilateral and unexpected as its deployment. When the platform was parked in the contested area, it sparked the worst crisis since 1988 in Sino-Vietnamese relations.

The author offers three plausible explanations why China blinked. He ends with:

The outcome of this crisis suggests that China is not much different from other actors—it also has its own fear of escalation.

[AdamG]

VOA News

September 29, 2014 1:40 AM

The Philippines and the United States have launched an annual military exercise in the South China Sea, near waters where China is engaged in bitter territorial disputes with its neighbors.

Around 5,000 sailors and Marines from both countries began 11-days of maritime maneuvers on Monday. The Philippine Bilateral Exercises, or "Phiblex" is designed to test the readiness of the two allies to respond to emergencies of any kind.

The two countries will practice boat raids, beach landings, live fire exercises and armored maneuvers near the Spratly islands and Scarborough Shoal, where China has been involved in a string of tense confrontations with rival claimants.

http://www.voanews.com/content/us-ph...s/2465762.html

Vietnam has yet again condemned China after the latter completed a runway for military aircraft on an island in the East Sea (the Vietnamese term for the South China Sea) over which Hanoi claims sovereignty.
“Vietnam has incontestable sovereignty over the Hoang Sa Islands,” Le Hai Binh, the Vietnamese foreign ministry spokesman, said at a press briefing Thursday, using the Vietnamese name for the Paracel chain.
The building of the new facility stretching across Woody Island, part of the Paracels, violates the resolution on China-Vietnam maritime issues signed in October 2011 and the Declaration on the Conduct of the Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) in 2002, Binh said.
He dismissed the building of the military airstrip as "invalid".

http://www.thanhniennews.com/politic...and-32306.html

[Bob's World]

No sovereignty is "incontestable."

The contest is only just beginning. The relative power between sovereigns is shifting, and those who perceive their sovereignty to be illegitimate (imposed upon them by others), outgrown (relative power shifts make them reasonably perceive they deserve a larger slice of the pie), or simply see opportunities to expand in some way, are already working to do so.

This is how it has always been, and how it will always be. We have a false sense of what "right" looks like due to the artificialities of the post-WWII stand off between East and West. The reality is that what "right" looks like is an ever-changing thing and that nothing in nature is more unnatural than stasis.

[AdamG]

Chinas appears to have made headway in the so-called ‘reclamation’ of disputed areas in the South China Sea, a project to create new land masses using reefs in areas claimed by both Beijing and its neighbors. According to Taiwan and Hong Kong news sources, China’s naval chief has been surveying islands located in disputed maritime territories, angering nations locked in territorial disputes with China such as the Philppines.

http://www.ibtimes.com/chinese-navy-...slands-1706473

[AdamG]

In a dramatic display of strategic naivet, the Philippines decided (early-October) to suspend the repair and upgrade of its age-old airstrip on the Spratly island of Thitu (Pagasa to the Filipinos), among the biggest and most prized land features in the South China Sea, which can generate its own 200-nautical-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). The airstrip is critical to the Armed Forces of Philippines (AFP) ability to project power and defend its maritime claims beyond its immediate territorial waters.

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/...pines-vs-11534

[AdamG]

OKINAWA, Japan—Swooping down to 500 feet over the western Pacific, Cmdr. Bill Pennington pilots his U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft toward an unidentified vessel off southern Japan.

In the back of the plane, a heavily modified Boeing 737, the crew homes in on the vessel using a barrage of surveillance equipment, including radar, GPS and infrared cameras.

Further down the fuselage stand rows of tube-shaped sonar buoys that the crew can catapult into the sea and that float for up to eight hours as they track objects underwater.

This is a dummy run: Today’s target is a Singaporean container ship, and the P-8 roars by without dropping the buoys. But the aircraft is designed to hunt a far more elusive, and potentially dangerous, quarry: Chinese submarines.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/as-ch...6?mod=yahoo_hs