China ‘will not allow US to violate its territorial waters in the South China Sea’

Chinese vessels in the waters near the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. Photo: Reuters

 

China on Friday said it would not stand for violations of its territorial waters in the name of freedom of navigation, as the United States considers sailing warships close to China’s artificial islands in the South China Sea.

A US defence official said Washington was mulling sending ships within the next two weeks to waters inside the 12-nautical-mile zone that Beijing claims as territory around islands it has built in the Spratly chain.

China Completes Island Construction, Will Now Build Military Facilities

 

“I’m an amateur student of history and I’m reminded of … how Germany was testing the waters and what the response was by various other European powers… But unfortunately, up to the annexation of the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, the annexation of the entire country of Czechoslovakia, nobody said stop. If somebody said stop to Hitler at that point in time, or to Germany at that time, would we have avoided World War II.”

That piece of revisionist history is brought to you by Benigno Aquino and is excerpted from a speech the Philippine President gave to the Japanese parliament earlier this month. 

Athens will turn to Moscow rather than bow to Berlin, says minister

London: Greece’s Defence Minister has warned that his country will seek money from Russia and China to avert a financial crisis rather than yield to austerity demands from Europe, risking a dangerous political rift with the leading European Union powers.

Panos Kammenos, head of the Independent Greeks party in the ruling coalition, said Greece would rather leave the euro if membership means submitting to a “Europe under German domination.”

From reef to biggest island in Spratlys, and China’s not done yet at Fiery Cross

China has turned a strategically important reef into probably the biggest island in the Spratlys, Chinese scholars say, and the expansion is expected to continue.

Analysts said the continued expansion of Fiery Cross Reef, which China calls Yongshu Reef, is expected eventually to provide a vital outpost for Chinese military and civilian commercial activities in disputed areas of the South China Sea, many of which are closer to other claimants’ coasts than to China’s.

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Beijing has yet to openly admit its plans to artificially expand reefs in the sea into islands.