Vietnamese border officials are refusing to stamp new Chinese passports featuring the nine-dash line that represents China’s claim on most of the South China Sea.
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The June survey was part of SWS’s public trust survey in which President Rodrigo Duterte obtained a +84 percent, or excellent, trust rating.
Pro-Beijing protesters shout slogans against the United States supporting an worldwide court ruling of the South China Sea outside the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong.
Beijing claimed the Philippines, which brought the case, had “distorted facts, misinterpreted laws and concocted a pack of lies”.
Last week The China’s maritime administration said that four out of five lighthouses built atop islands and reefs in the sea have been activated and a fifth would be put into use soon.
Zheng Yongnian, director of the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore, told the seminar Beijing hoped Washington would have played a positive and neutral role in the South China Sea disputes, not seeing China as its rival. “China neither accepts nor recognises it”.
In Hanoi, about 20 people were detained yesterday while protesting against China’s rejection of the worldwide tribunal’s decision.
Adm. Wu Shengli, head of the Chinese navy, said Monday that Beijing would continue to assert its territorial claims in the South China Sea, but that the military has been communicating with Richardson.
Reiterating Beijing’s stance, Mr Zheng said maritime disputes between the Philippines and China should be resolved bilaterally. Brunei, Taiwan, Malaysia, Philippines and Vietnam have competing claims over the maritime territory.
China has announced that it is closing off part of the South China Sea for military exercises this week, and warned that the freedom of navigation patrols by the foreign navies could end “in disaster”, Russia Today channel reported. It has turned reefs into artificial islands that can support military bases.
The rally was organized by No-U, a Hanoi group that opposes China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea.
China has repeatedly blamed the United States for stirring up trouble in the South China Sea, a strategic waterway through which more than $US5 trillion ($6.6 trillion) of trade moves annually.
In a further development, Chinese air force spokesman Shen Jinke was quoted by state media as saying that air force fighters and bombers had recently conducted patrols over the South China Sea and would make that “a regular practice” in future.
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Richardson, who arrived in China on Sunday and leaves tomorrow, is expected to visit the navy’s submarine academy and tour the Liaoning aircraft carrier in Qingdao in Shandong province.
