China on Monday accused the U.S. of purposefully delaying the release of information detailing a mysterious collision by one of its nuclear submarines with an unknown object in the South China Sea on October 2, claiming Washington seeks to “cover up” the incident, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported Wednesday.
The USS Connecticut, a Seawolf-class fast attack submarine, struck an unidentified underwater object in the South China Sea on Saturday. The U.S. Navy confirmed the incident on Thursday and said there were several injuries, none of them life-threatening.
Kuala Lumpur summoned China’s ambassador to Malaysia on Monday to protest a recent violation of its South China Sea maritime territory by Chinese vessels off the coast of Borneo.
The UK continues to strengthen bonds with allies with a rare example of “quad carrier operations” on China’s doorstep.
President Joe Biden’s address to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday was remarkably conciliatory toward China, and included a brief but bold outreach to Iran for restoring the JCPOA nuclear deal. Both China and Iran quickly slapped Biden’s olive branches aside, pushing for nothing less than Biden’s complete submission to their demands.
France has pulled out of a planned defence summit with Britain amid an ongoing row between Paris, London, Canberra, and Washington D.C. over submarines.
The French government is seething over Australia’s decision to drop a troubled multi-billion French submarine deal in favour of collaboration with Britain and America, describing it as “treason”.
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) – France would have known Australia had “deep and grave concerns” that a submarine fleet the French were building would not meet Australian needs, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Sunday after the contract’s cancellation set off a diplomatic crisis.
Japan is committed to providing a “necessary response” to China if it continues to ramp up its military aggression toward Taiwan and spark a legitimate conflict, Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi told CNN on Thursday.
Australia’s next submarine fleet will be nuclear-powered under an audacious plan revealed Wednesday that will see Canberra end a $90 billion program to build 12 French-designed boats.
China’s state-run Global Times on Monday had some fun at the expense of Vice President Kamala Harris, mocking her for flying to Singapore in an allegedly doomed effort to rally Asian powers against mighty China while her administration presides over a humiliating debacle in Afghanistan.
The U.S. State Department announced on Wednesday that Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman will visit China on July 25 and 26.
The United Kingdom has the right to sail its latest aircraft carrier anywhere in the world international law permits and will do so, it said.
Hundreds of Chinese fishing vessels illegally occupying the Philippines’ Spratly Islands are allegedly dumping vast amounts of human waste into the surrounding South China Sea causing an ecological “catastrophe” that threatens the health of local marine ecosystems and fishing stocks, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
Former Vice President Mike Pence, while speaking at the Heritage Foundation’s annual B.C. Lee lecture on international affairs on Wednesday, took aim at the Biden-Harris administration for already “rolling over” for “Communist China.”
The U.S.-based streaming platform Netflix removed an Australian television show from its Vietnamese service after the Vietnamese government complained that a South China Sea map depicted in the series violated Vietnamese sovereignty, the Hanoi Times reported on Friday.
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.
