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The Maritime Executive: China May be Finished with Island-Building Campaign
On Tuesday, Philippines defense minister Delfin Lorenzana announced that Manila has reached an understanding with Beijing about Chinese expansion in the South China Sea, and that China has promised not to seize any additional land features in the region. "The Chinese will not occupy new features in the South China Sea nor they are going to build structures in Scarborough Shoal," he told a congressional hearing.
China has built a string of seven artificial islands in the Spratly chain, all of them on land features claimed by the Philippines and other nations. The government of former Philippine president Benigno Aquino opposed Chinese expansion in the region, but under the current leadership of President Rodrigo Duterte, Manila has downplayed the dispute in favor of strengthening economic ties.
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WNU Editor: It looks like China is now shifting from building islands to enforcing it's claims.
3 comments:
WNU,
Yes, of course, Chinese's are very methodical and they are working step by step. Why not? Nobody is opposing it enough. FONOPS are the very, very small step against that. Occupying one of these island would be much stronger, but we didn't have the motive and the spirit for that. Now we will go to accept, little bit after little bit what the Chinese want. Usually we call that a defeat.
America made the Chinese more bold thanks to the illegal Iraq war (for oil, obviously) that no one opposed enough, so they got away with it.
The Chinese are doing the same and the Russians did the same with Crimea. I don't condone them but It's eye for an eye.
They're working on their "vacation in the south china sea islands" advertising campaigns.
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