Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations.
The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening.
It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin.
Photo: AFP
State-run Vietnam News reported that the baseline was in compliance with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and would provide “a robust legal basis for safeguarding and exercising Vietnam’s sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction.”
Vietnam had not publicly responded to the Chinese drills.
China and Vietnam have long had a maritime agreement governing the Gulf of Tonkin, but have been locked in competing claims in the nearby South China Sea over the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島) and Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), and other areas.
China has been been growing aggressive in pursuing those claims, and in October last year assaulted 10 Vietnamese fishers near the Paracel Islands, three of whom suffered broken limbs.
China claims almost the entire South China Sea as its own, although it has not publicly released exact coordinates of its claim other than a map with 10 dashed lines broadly demarcating what it calls its territory.
In addition to Vietnam, China’s claims overlap with those of Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia and0 Brunei, while Indonesia has also figured in violent confrontations with the China Coast Guard and fishing fleets in the waters around the Natuna Islands (納土納群島).
Tensions have been particularly high with the Philippines, with regular confrontations between the two nations.
A Chinese navy helicopter last week flew within 3m of a Philippine patrol plane over the South China Sea, near the hotly disputed Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島).
Leaders in Australia and New Zealand also said that China should have given more warning before its navy conducted an unusual series of live-fire exercises in the seas between the two nations.
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