Beijing, Manila and allies, launch drills near South China Sea flashpoint
- August 8, 2024
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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Beijing, Manila and allies, launch drills near South China Sea flashpoint
Subject: IR
Sec: Places in news
Context:
China’s military has launched military drills near disputed waters in the South China Sea. The Southern Theatre Command it had carried out air and sea combat patrols “near Huangyan Island” the Chinese name for the Scarborough Shoal – to test “strike capabilities”. The exercises appeared to be a response to same-day military manoeuvres by the United States, Australia, Canada and the Philippines.
More on News:
- All military activities that disrupt the South China Sea, create hotspots, and undermine regional peace and stability are all being controlled to the best extent.
- Beijing and Manila have been locked in a tense standoff in recent months, as China continues to press claims to almost the entire South China Sea, despite a 2016 international tribunal ruling that its assertion has no legal basis.
- China seized the shoal, a triangular chain of reefs and rocks that form part of a rich fishing ground, after a months long stand-off in 2012. The shoal had long served as a safe harbour for Filipino fishermen.
- There have also been confrontations at Second Thomas Shoal where the Philippines makes regular resupply missions to sailors living on board a warship that Manila grounded there in 1999.
- Second Thomas Shoal, which lies about 200 kilometres (124 miles) from the western Philippine island of Palawan, and more than 1,000 kilometres (621 miles) from China’s southern Hainan island.
- Beijing blamed the escalation on Manila and maintained its actions to protect its claims were legal and proportional.
- China and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also claim parts of the sea, which is regarded as a potential flashpoint and a delicate fault line in the US-China regional rivalry.
- The US military has deployed navy ships and fighter jets for decades in what it calls freedom of navigation and overnight patrols, which China has opposed and regards as a threat to regional stability.
South China sea :
- The South China Sea is a marginal sea that is part of the Pacific Ocean that extends from the Strait of Malacca in the southwest, to the Strait of Taiwan in the northeast.
- The littoral countries of the South China Sea are China, Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, Singapore, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam.
- The South China Sea is a busy international waterway, one of the main arteries of global trade worth more than $5 trillion and is growing year on year.
- It is a rich source of hydrocarbons and natural resources.
The islands of the South China Sea can be grouped into two island chains:
- The Paracels Islands: These are clustered in the northwest corner of the Sea.
- The Spratly Islands: These are located in the southeast corner.
- The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which came into force in 1994, established a legal framework intended to balance the economic and security interests of coastal states with those of seafaring nations.
- While UNCLOS has been signed and ratified by nearly all the coastal countries in the South China Sea, based on their own interpretation of the UNCLOS, claimant countries started to legitimize their claims.
- In 2002, ASEAN and China came together to sign the Declaration on the Code of Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea to keep disputes away. However, it didn’t achieve the desired outcomes.