Chinese President Xi Jinping has sent a message to President-elect Rodrigo Duterte following the latter’s proclamation on Monday afternoon.
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China’s takeover of the South China Sea is almost complete and Beijing is now stepping up its sophisticated information warfare campaign in preparation for an expected unfavorable ruling from an worldwide tribunal affecting its island claims.
Maintaining and strengthening Sino-Philippine friendship is a shared responsibility between the leaders of both countries, according to the statement.
“[The new ship] will enable more Chinese nationals to view the scenery in the South China Sea”, Cai Chaohui, vice president of the Port Affairs Center in Sanya, was quoted saying.
Chinese-Philippine ties soured during the six-year term of outgoing President Benigno Aquino, whose government sued China before a United Nations tribunal over its claims to most of the South China Sea.
“It’s likely that hundreds of thousands of species are still undiscovered in the reefs of the South China Sea”, reported Time.com’s Hannah Beech from Tanmen, China.
Duterte’s pick for foreign secretary, Perfecto Yasay, has sounded a conciliatory note.
However, some USA experts told a recent forum at the East-West Center in Hawaii that coral reefs in the South China Sea are being destroyed on a large scale, which was mainly caused by China’s massive land reclamation activities.
“China takes the approach of “natural simulation”.
A report in Canada-based Kanwa Defence Review said Beijing had defined the area of the ADIZ in the South China Sea, and the timing of the announcement would be a political decision.
Local fishermen had been barred from entering the waters around the shoal since China seized it from the Philippines in 2012. “That only works if you have a big coalition that can keep this in the public eye”, said Greg Poling, director the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. There are over 200 kinds of biological resources in the Nansha Islands, said Wang Xiaoqiang, a deputy director at the State Oceanic Administration.
As the publication noted, the US” interference into the South China Sea is unlawful and can never serve to cover up “gross violations of other countries’ sovereignty and territorial integrity’.
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Sun is in charge of worldwide relations for the People’s Liberation Army.
