Vietnam said yesterday China was increasing regional tensions and said its navy would do everything necessary to protect its territorial integrity after Chinese patrol boats interfered with a Vietnamese oil and gas survey ship in the South China Sea.
The remarks appeared to raise the stakes in the latest row over long-simmering conflicting maritime claims just days before a regional defense summit in Singapore and highlight nervousness about China’s growing assertiveness in the region.
In a rare weekend news conference, Vietnamese officials rejected China’s claims that the Vietnamese ship conducting a seismic survey was in Chinese waters. The incident happened about 120km off the south-central coast of Vietnam and about 600km south of China’s Hainan Island.
“The Vietnamese navy will do everything necessary to firmly protect peace and the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Vietnam,” Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Nguyen Phuong Nga said.
Do Van Hau, deputy chief executive of state oil and gas group Petrovietnam, which was operating the ship, said one of three Chinese patrol vessels on the scene intentionally cut a submerged cable towed by the ship, the Binh Minh 02. It was not the first time Chinese ships had cut cables of Vietnamese survey boats, he said.
The Chinese boats then threatened the Vietnamese ship with violence, he added without elaborating.
Taiwan, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei all claim territories in the South China Sea, which cover an important shipping route and are thought to hold untapped oil and gas reserves.
China’s claim is by far the largest, forming a vast U-shape over most of the sea’s 1.7 million square kilometers, including the Spratly Islands (南沙群島) and Paracel Islands (西沙群島).
China blamed Vietnam on Saturday for the incident, saying such Vietnamese oil and gas operations undermined China’s interests and jurisdictional rights.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Jiang Yu (姜瑜) said the behaviour of “the relevant Chinese departments” in the incident was normal.
LIMITS: While China increases military pressure on Taiwan and expands its use of cognitive warfare, it is unwilling to target tech supply chains, the report said US and Taiwan military officials have warned that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could implement a blockade within “a matter of hours” and need only “minimal conversion time” prior to an attack on Taiwan, a report released on Tuesday by the US Senate’s China Economic and Security Review Commission said. “While there is no indication that China is planning an imminent attack, the United States and its allies and partners can no longer assume that a Taiwan contingency is a distant possibility for which they would have ample time to prepare,” it said. The commission made the comments in its annual
DETERMINATION: Beijing’s actions toward Tokyo have drawn international attention, but would likely bolster regional coordination and defense networks, the report said Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s administration is likely to prioritize security reforms and deterrence in the face of recent “hybrid” threats from China, the National Security Bureau (NSB) said. The bureau made the assessment in a written report to the Legislative Yuan ahead of an oral report and questions-and-answers session at the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The key points of Japan’s security reforms would be to reinforce security cooperation with the US, including enhancing defense deployment in the first island chain, pushing forward the integrated command and operations of the Japan Self-Defense Forces and US Forces Japan, as
IN THE NATIONAL INTEREST: Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu said the strengthening of military facilities would help to maintain security in the Taiwan Strait Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi, visiting a military base close to Taiwan, said plans to deploy missiles to the post would move forward as tensions smolder between Tokyo and Beijing. “The deployment can help lower the chance of an armed attack on our country,” Koizumi told reporters on Sunday as he wrapped up his first trip to the base on the southern Japanese island of Yonaguni. “The view that it will heighten regional tensions is not accurate.” Former Japanese minister of defense Gen Nakatani in January said that Tokyo wanted to base Type 03 Chu-SAM missiles on Yonaguni, but little progress
NO CHANGES: A Japanese spokesperson said that Tokyo remains consistent and open for dialogue, while Beijing has canceled diplomatic engagements A Japanese official blasted China’s claims that Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has altered Japan’s position on a Taiwan crisis as “entirely baseless,” calling for more dialogue to stop ties between Asia’s top economies from spiraling. China vowed to take resolute self-defense against Japan if it “dared to intervene militarily in the Taiwan Strait” in a letter delivered Friday to the UN. “I’m aware of this letter,” said Maki Kobayashi, a senior Japanese government spokeswoman. “The claim our country has altered its position is entirely baseless,” she said on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Johannesburg on Saturday. The Chinese Ministry
RSS