China has said it will continue to build up military structures on atolls in the sea despite continued protests by Asean nations and the United States.
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Richardson’s comments Wednesday, July 20, 2016, follow several fractious encounters between the two sides’ ships and planes in and over the disputed South China Sea.
“This will not change”, said Richardson, who visited the Chinese North Sea Fleet headquarters in Qingdao and met with fleet commander Vice Adm. Yuan Yubai, the Navy said.
“To be sure, Indonesia will always make every effort to maintain the issue of the South China Sea, particularly how to maintain a peaceful, stable and conducive situation in the region”, the Director of Inter-Regional Dialog Partners of the ASEAN Cooperation Directorate at the Foreign Ministry Derry Aman said on Thursday.
“I am supportive of a continued and deepening navy-to-navy relationship, but I will be continuously reassessing my support conditioned on continued safe and professional interactions at sea”, Richardson said, according to a Navy news release.
This will further strain its relationship with the US and Japan in particular, and Australia is entering murky waters, too.
To the challenges facing KFC and Apple in China, add a surprise backlash from Beijing’s spat with the Philippines over the South China Sea.
Apple has also run into recent roadblocks there.
Dong Liwan, a shipbuilding industry professor at Shanghai Maritime University, said market promotion of tailor-made services such as island tours, marine tourism, cruise vacations and island-themed honeymoons are certainly needed to develop the travel business in the South China Sea.
China justifies its claims by saying it was the first to have discovered, named and exploited the sea, and outlines its territory using a vague map made up of nine dashes that emerged in the 1940s.
After almost four years of deliberation, the Court ruled on several South China Sea issues, based on a case filed by the Philippines against the People’s Republic of China.
It did appear that Apple manage to find stable ground in China over the March quarter as a Neilsen Device Share report suggested that the iPhone maker only gained 0.94% market share, compared to more than 2% in the same period previous year.
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China’s navy is now taking part for the second time in the Rim of the Pacific, or RIMPAC, the world’s largest naval drills, hosted by the USA off Hawaii and including military forces from 26 nations.
