China will go after “looters” who look for treasure from sunken ships in the disputed South China Sea without permission, but will face a tough job in doing so as the waters are so extensive, state media said on Friday.
Some treasure seekers have used explosives to get at the porcelain, gold and silver contained in ships which have sunk around the Paracel Islands (西沙群島), which lie on the maritime route of the old Silk Road, Xinhua news agency said.
“All the 48 cultural relics sites on the Xisha Islands [the Paracels] have been looted to various degrees,” it quoted Hainan Provincial Administration of Cultural Heritage Director-General Wang Yiping as saying. “Of those, 26 sites were seriously looted.”
Chinese authorities seized six small boats “hired by looters” in April near the Paracels, confiscating more than 1,400 pieces of porcelain, Wang added. However, three larger boats fled.
“It remains a tough job to enforce the law in such a huge area, but we will not relent,” added Wen Li, an official with the provincial marine environment monitoring team.
“Various agencies and government departments are discussing measures to strengthen supervision to ensure the safety of the relics in the South China Sea,” he said.
China, Taiwan and four Southeast Asian states, including the Philippines and Vietnam, have conflicting claims over the islets and atolls in the South China Sea, an area believed to have rich deposits of oil and gas. It is also a rich fishing ground.
Claimants to the sea have been trying to cool tensions after a series of disputes this year, including an incident when Chinese patrol boats threatened to ram a Philippine-contracted survey ship in the Reed Bank in March.
China has the most extensive claims and says it has had sovereignty since ancient times.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
RSS