Ramos revealed that the people he want to first meet with during his trip is is Wu Shicun, president of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, a major think tank based China’s southern island of Hainan Province.
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Analysts opine the Su-34 aircraft would dominate the skies in the South China Sea as countries such as Vietnam, Philippines and Malaysia which are opposed to China claiming the whole of the South China Sea, have poorly equipped air forces.
The worldwide tribunal ruled last month that Beijing’s claims to most of the disputed waters had no legal basis.
China is still bristling at the arbitration case out of The Hague, which called its claims in the South China Sea baseless.
The report said that an unprecedented 230 Chinese fishing vessels and seven coast guard ships, four apparently armed, sailed into waters close to the disputed island on Sunday.
Former Philippines President Fidel Ramos said he was optimistic about what he has described as an ice-breaking trip to Hong Kong during which he hoped to meet experts and officials in an effort to rekindle ties with China soured by the dispute.
Last month, China participated in Rim of the Pacific, or RIMPAC, a training exercise in conjunction with the USA and 24 other countries held in Hawaii and off the coast of Southern California.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Japan filed multiple protests with China, one of them concerning a powerful radar and camera surveillance system installed on an offshore gas-drilling platform in the East China Sea.
Aircraft hangars seen in the disputed South China Sea in this July 24, 2016 satellite image released by the Asian Maritime Transparency Initiative at CSIS. They show construction work on man-made islands at Fiery Cross, Subi and Mischief reefs. China has used archaeological finds to support its claim to have mapped and named the sea’s features from ancient times and therefore to have a historical right to sovereignty.
“They are far thicker than you would build for any civilian goal”, Gregory Poling, director of CSIS’s Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, told the Times.
China also says that the islands should be able to defend themselves, and that it is entitled to build whatever structures it wishes on them.
TOKYO (AP) Japan’s foreign minister summoned China’s ambassador Tuesday and lodged a protest over the increased number of Chinese vessels in waters near disputed islands in the East China Sea.
He also said any decision by China to declare an air defense identification zone over the strategic water body would be “very destabilizing from a military perspective”.
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China, and other counties in Asia, in particular South Korea, feel that Japan has never properly atoned for its aggression before and during World War Two.
