Last week, Philippine police detained 11 Chinese fishermen and their boat near China's Half Moon Shoal in the South China Sea on the grounds that they poached sea turtles.
But no matter the allegation was true or not, Manila was wrong in the first place because China has indisputable sovereign rights over the Nansha Islands and the adjacent waters, including the Half Moon Shoal, where the incident occurred.
Thus any actions taken by the Philippines against the Chinese fishermen are illegal and invalid and would be regarded as direct infringements of China's sovereignty.
- The timing of the incident is tricky, as it happened not long after U.S. President Barack Obama's recent visit to Manila, during which the two sides reasserted their military alliance.
The Manila-Hanoi cohort evokes reminiscence of a Philippine naval delegation's beer drinking and volleyball playing with Vietnamese sailors in the South China Sea in April, widely read by the media as the two countries' budding nascent partnership amid their growing row with Beijing over contested waters.
But that kind of ill-disposed joint venture is built on shaky grounds and is doomed to fail.
While reiterating calls for peaceful settlement of the dispute and joint development of resources, China has also made it clear that it is confident and capable of countering challenges to its territorial and sovereign integrity.
- All parties should also be reminded that ignorance of China's resolve to defend its sovereign land will induce consequences too severe for certain countries to bear.
The United States, which is strengthening military alliance with Manila and has a huge stake in the region's stability, should comply with its promise to leave the countries concerned to settle their differences through bilateral talks.
Instead of spoiling its increasingly-paranoid junior ally and muddying the waters, Washington should keep Manila within bounds and try not to stir up tensions by backing it in territorial dispute.
After all, it won't serve Washington's interests if the dispute in the South China Sea spins out of control.
by Xinhua Writer Zhu Dongyang[cntv.cn]
14/5/14
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Philippines, U.S. begin military exercises near disputed seas....
ReplyDeleteMANILA - Thousands of Philippine and American soldiers began annual war games on Monday near disputed waters in the South China Sea, testing the readiness of the two oldest security allies in the southeast Asian region to respond to any emergency.
The Philippines has territorial disputes with China over the South China Sea, which is said to be rich in energy deposits and carries about $5 billion in ship-borne trade every year. The Spratlys in the South China Sea are also claimed by Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam.
Nearly 5,000 U.S. and Filipino troops will participate in the 11-day annual exercise, to be held in the Philippines' western island of Palawan, near the Spratlys, and in the northwest province of Zambales on the main island of Luzon, just 100 miles (160 km) off Scarborough Shoal.
The joint air and marine exercises "Philippine Bilateral Exercises," or Phiblex, will focus more closely on maritime security and territorial defense operations as China continues to step up its presence and activities in the region.
"We're hoping to gain new techniques from the U.S. marine corps," Captain Reyson Talingdan, head of the public affairs of the Philippines' 3rd Marine Brigade in Palawan, told reporters.
"If they have new doctrines, we'll be able to learn from them."..............http://www.todayonline.com/world/philippines-us-begin-military-exercises-near-disputed-seas
29/9/14