adminSingapore – Asia’s largest defence summit concluded yesterday amid growing fears of a legal and military showdown in the South China Sea over China’s rapid construction of artificial islands with ports, airstrips and helipads in one of the world’s most bitterly contested waterways.
At the weekend-long Shangri-La Dialogue, Chinese military officials vowed to ignore a legal ruling expected in the next few weeks by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague on a Philippines’ challenge to China’s growing assertiveness in the key sea route between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. “We don’t make trouble, but we’ve no fear of trouble,” said Admiral Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of staff of the People’s Liberation Army, who led the Chinese delegation at the summit.
Sun added: “China will not bear with the arbitration award, nor will it allow any infringement of its sovereignty.”
The Hague court is expected to rule on the legality of the so-called “nine-dash line”, China’s cartographic marker that it uses to claim territorial rights over most of the resource-rich sea. China’s claimed sovereignty stretches hundreds of kilometres to the south and east of its most southerly province of Hainan, covering hundreds of disputed islands and reefs. The nine-dash line, first shown on a 1947 Chinese map, carves out an area that runs deep into the maritime heart of Southeast Asia, and overlaps claims from Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. China has boycotted The Hague tribunal’s proceedings and instead wants bilateral talks with rival claimants, all of which lack China’s economic and military prowess.
Meanwhile, the US has stepped up military patrols and exercises in the South China Sea, and pledges to ensure freedom of navigation and flight – acts that China considers provocative and targeted at its sovereignty and security interests. The increased patrols of US littoral combat ships, jet fighters, and surveillance planes near Chinese-held islands come as China is reportedly close to imposing an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ), which would require civilian aircraft to identify themselves to military controllers in the region. – AFP
derick.khumalo