“This is a routine exercise between the two armed forces, aimed at strengthening the developing China-Russia strategic cooperative partnership”, China’s defense ministry spokesman Yang Yujun told a regular monthly news conference.
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China’s defence ministry said September’s drills would be “routine” and would not “target any third party”.
Flight display screens at Vietnam’s two largest airports were hacked to show messages criticising Vietnam’s claims of territory in the South China Sea.
The announcement comes after a tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled that there was “no legal basis” to Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea, embodied in a “nine-dash line” dating from Chinese maps of the 1940s and extending nearly to the coasts of other countries, which have competing claims.
Major General Wang Xiaojun – the Military, Naval and Air attache at the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi, articulated his country’s tough dispute on the South China Sea dispute.
The Chinese government has vowed to ignore the ruling.
Hanoi has welcomed the verdict, although it has been reluctant to rebuke China.
China’s territorial claims, which overlap with Vietnam’s, were recently rejected by an global tribunal. China rejects the decision that threw out its argument for control over nearly all of the South China Sea but, as we hear from Neal Conan in the Pacific News minute, so far all sides have tried to restrain tensions.
Chinese and Russian marines pose during Joint Sea 2015 exercise in the Mediterranean on May 20, 2015. “Experts believe that the military drill in the SCS in September is an action based on that statement”.
“These drills are not targeted against any specific country”.
During the foreign ministers’ meeting between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the Lao capital of Vientiane this week, China and ASEAN have agreed the South China Sea disputes should be resolved peacefully through dialogue between directly concerned countries.
A Chinese woman visiting Vietnam was shocked to discover a border official had written the words “f. you” in her passport, Chinese media reports.
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Analysis at The Diplomat notes that, geographically, Russian Federation has little to gain in intervening in the South China Sea dispute: “Russia enjoys good relations with countries bordering the South China Sea and does not need to offend Southeast Asia for the sake of China”.
