South China Sea

The Taiwanese Defense Ministry reported the largest incursion of Chinese warplanes into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) to date on Tuesday.

Chinese officials and state media boiled with outrage Tuesday over a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) statement describing China as an “assertive and authoritarian power.”

China’s state-run Global Times on Monday heaped scorn upon the tepid statement by the Group of Seven (G7) nations against China’s human rights abuses and strategic aggression, judging it barely provocative enough to be insulting, but not forceful enough to disturb Beijing’s agenda.

A discussion at the Wikipedia Reddit community yesterday noted that Google searches asking if China owns the disputed South China Sea prominently featured a result from the online encyclopedia parroting the Chinese government position that it “enjoys indisputable sovereignty” over the sea. Reddit users noted the line appeared to be taken from a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement quoted in the article, a fact not included in the Google snippet. The line was removed after the reddit discussion brought it to attention.

Malaysia’s air force scrambled fighter jets to intercept 16 Chinese military aircraft off the coast of Sarawak state on the island of Borneo on Monday after they intruded into Malaysian maritime airspace and “refused to communicate with local air-traffic controllers,”

Rep. Scott Franklin (R-FL) will introduce a bill this week to ban China from participating in the world’s largest naval exercise, hosted by the United States Navy, until it stops committing genocide against its Uyghur minority, Breitbart News has exclusively learned.

The Chinese military has been ignoring requests from the Pentagon for its top leaders to speak for the first time since taking office.

A U.S. Navy spokeswoman confirmed on Monday that USS Independence and USS Freedom, the Navy’s first two Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), will be decommissioned in July and September of this year, respectively.

Julian Felipe Reef is not part of the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s spokesman, Harry Roque, claimed Tuesday.

Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin, Jr., the nation’s most powerful diplomat, told Beijing to “get the fuck out” of Manila’s sovereign territory within the South China Sea on Sunday.

The Philippines cannot retake parts of the West Philippine Sea illegally occupied by China without going to “war,” Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said this week.

The Philippine military recently deployed nearly a dozen ships and five aircraft to protect Manila’s assets from ongoing encroachments by Beijing in the disputed South China Sea, a Philippine government task force said Wednesday.

China recently completed deep-sea drilling to obtain sediment core in an undisclosed location in the South China Sea.

Philippine Senator Manny Pacquiao on Thursday urged China to halt its “creeping occupation” of the Philippines’ Juan Felipe Reef in the South China Sea and recall a fleet of Chinese fishing vessels moored near the structure since early March.

The Philippine military has discovered new structures “illegally” built by China on some of its reefs in the South China Sea, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) said on April 1.

Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana confirmed this weekend that Philippine fighter jets have been flying over Julian Felipe Reef in the South China Sea daily to monitor a 220-strong Chinese fishing boat fleet illegally moored there.

The Philippines ordered its navy to increase “maritime sovereignty patrols” in the waters surrounding a disputed South China Sea reef after Beijing refused to obey an order from Manila to recall a fishing boat fleet from the area last week.

The Philippines urged China on Sunday to call back a 220-strong fleet of fishing boats moored near a disputed South China Sea reef claimed by Manila.

The communist government of Vietnam has rapidly accelerated the construction of facilities that appear military in nature in the South China Sea, Voice of America observed Wednesday, citing satellite image studies.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will begin military exercises in the South China Sea — which China illegally claims is entirely within its territory — on Monday, in a move Chinese social media framed as a message to the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden.

A non-governmental organization called South China Sea Chronicle Initiative (SCSCI) published satellite photos on Wednesday that show China building a surface-to-air missile base near the Vietnamese border.

The Chinese Communist Party continued to expand its illegal construction on Philippine territory in the South China Sea throughout the coronavirus pandemic, satellite images published this week indicated.

The U.S. Navy announced its latest Freedom of Navigation Operation (FONOP) in the South China Sea on Friday, as the guided missile destroyer USS John S. McCain “asserted navigational rights and freedoms in the vicinity of the Paracel Islands, consistent with international law.” China claimed air and naval units of its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) “tracked, monitored, and warned off” the American ship.

China announced on Tuesday that it will hold military exercises in the South China Sea this week, providing few details of the operation beyond roughly where it will be staged. An American carrier battle group is currently conducting a freedom of navigation patrol in the area. Meanwhile, Taiwan held an air defense exercise after a record number of menacing Chinese military incursions into its air defense zone over the weekend.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China sent a record number of warplanes into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) on Saturday and Sunday, an intimidating display staged only a few days after the inauguration of President Joe Biden in the United States.

An underwater drone recovered within Indonesian waters last month is of Chinese origin, defense analytics firm Janes confirmed Sunday.

China’s state-run media made numerous demands of President-Elect Joe Biden on Wednesday, demanding changes to U.S. policy on the South China Sea, the Indo-Pacific region, and Taiwan.

Indonesia’s navy said this week that it plans to move its combat squad’s headquarters to the Natuna Islands in the South China Sea to defend Jakarta’s territorial interests from incursions by Chinese vessels.

President Donald Trump talked about China a great deal during his 2016 campaign. His first term featured some very high-profile economic, security, and diplomatic conflicts with Communist China, culminating in the biggest event of 2020, the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. How well does his first-term scorecard on China line up with his 2016 campaign promises?

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, in an address on Friday to commemorate the 70th anniversary of China’s entry into the Korean War, quoted Chinese Communist godfather Mao Zedong to threaten war against China’s adversaries.