“China was, is, and will always be a good neighbor,” China’s leader Xi Jinping told ASEAN representatives in a November 2021 virtual meeting, after a series of conflicts over Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea had raised tensions...
Over the past few years, Europe and the United States have each approached China’s rise differently. Washington has moved to reduce its economic reliance on Beijing while castigating its increasingly assertive global stance. Brussels, on the...
In 2019, Depth of Field showcased stories covering a range of topics: Shi Yangkun’s nostaglic exploration of China’s last collective villages, Zhu Lingyu’s...
Shi points to two important turning points in China’s shift to a more assertive foreign policy: the 2008 global financial crisis, which made it clear that China’s economic development was an important engine for global growth; and Xi Jinping’s...
Yan asserts the U.S.-China relationship is experiencing structural disruptions, the resolution of which will have a lasting impact on the two countries. He says the tensions in the U.S.-China relationship are primarily due to the narrowing gap...
In the first three installments of this series, I've explored the changing nature of China's challenge to U.S. interests and the existing international order, with a particular focus on three issues: China’s progressively more global military...
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Tuesday that he rescinded China’s invitation to take part in a multinational Pacific Rim military exercise because Beijing is “out of step with international law” in how it has militarized the islands and reefs...
Disputed territories including south Tibet, Taiwan and the South China Sea were omitted.
Weekly look at the South China Sea, the location of several territorial conflicts that have raised tensions in the region.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull asserted the right of the Australian navy to travel the South China Sea, after local media reported three Australian warships were challenged by the Chinese navy earlier this month.
China will have a chance to showcase warmer ties with the Philippines if it wins a contract to rebuild a city ravaged by Islamic State-inspired terrorists last year, a cabinet member said.
China has installed equipment on two of its fortified outposts in the Spratly Islands capable of jamming communications and radar systems, a significant step in its creeping militarization of the South China Sea, U.S. officials say.
China needs fuel to grow the world’s second-largest economy by 6.5% this year as established this week at annual legislative sessions.
Generally speaking, a sovereign nation dislikes it when a foreign power establishes new military bases within striking range of its capital. But when it comes to China doing just that to the Philippines in the South China Sea, Rodrigo Duterte, it...
China is seeking to “undermine” the international order in the Asia Pacific, Adm. Harry Harris, US President Donald Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Australia, said in Washington on Wednesday.
Anti-submarine frigate to sail through contested waters of South China Sea.
Beijing has been accused of building “island fortresses” in the South China Sea after a newspaper in the Philippines obtained aerial photographs offering what experts called the most detailed glimpse yet of China’s militarisation of the waterway...
In a move presaging tougher policies towards China, the Department of Defense’s National Defense Strategy announced that the “revisionist powers” China and Russia are the “central challenge to U.S. prosperity and security.” And on January 22,...
Beijing has a message for the Trump administration: The more ships you send to the contested waters of the South China Sea, the more we will bolster our presence there.
The United States has criticized China’s build-up of military facilities on the artificial islands and is concerned they could be used to restrict free movement along the key trade route.
When it comes to territorial disputes in Asia, the South China Sea typically commands the bulk of attention.
China’s increasingly assertive attitude in the South China Sea has its neighbors worried.
On December 18, U.S. President Donald J. Trump announced the United States’ new national security strategy. He called China a “strategic competitor,” and, along with Russia, called it a “revisionist power.” Those two nations, Trump said, are...
An Australian senator has been stripped of his senior duties after a recording revealed he had contradicted his party's policy on the South China Sea.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he was prepared to mediate between claimants to the South China Sea, where five countries contest China’s sweeping claims to the busy waterway.
President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines has ordered military officials to stop construction work on a sandbar in a disputed area of the South China Sea after Beijing complained, the country’s defense chief said on Wednesday.
You know those boyfriend-girlfriend relationships that break up, get back together, and break up again? Maybe the two viscerally don’t get along but need each other for some indispensable reason. That pattern describes ties between China and...
China and Vietnam have reached an agreement on managing their dispute in the South China Sea through friendly talks, a senior Chinese diplomat said on Friday, following an ugly spat over the summer between the two communist neighbors.
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong may have been in Washington on Monday to consolidate his country's economic and political partnerships with the US, but he appeared to dedicate much of his time concentrating on another nation whose...
In a rare pressure campaign, the Chinese government is demanding that the U.S. Congress back off passing new laws that would strengthen the U.S. relationship with Taiwan. Beijing’s efforts are the latest sign that it is stepping up its campaign...
China warned self-ruled Taiwan on Wednesday that it would “reap the consequences” of promoting formal independence, a red line for Beijing which claims the island as its own.
China on Wednesday dismissed Vietnamese condemnation of its military live-fire exercises in the disputed South China Sea, saying it was acting within its sovereign rights.
In late August, a U.S. destroyer collided with an oil tanker—the fourth such accident for the U.S. Navy in Asia since January....
Several industries are trying to assess what open confrontation in the South China Sea would cost them, and a lot of them don't like what they’re finding. The world’s second–largest economy is getting more wary — and more vocal in its opposition...
The U.S. navy’s latest collision at sea, the fourth in its Pacific fleet this year, shows it is becoming an increasing risk to shipping in Asia despite its claims of helping to protect freedom of navigation, an official Chinese newspaper...
Top US and Chinese military commanders have signed a deal to improve communications between the two forces amid ongoing disputes in the South and East China seas.
When it comes to the disputed waters of the South China Sea, Vietnam’s leaders must feel very lonely these days.
...A U.S. warship sailed close to a Chinese man-made island in the disputed the South China Sea in an operation that challenged China’s vast territorial claims in busy international waters, a U.S. Navy official said Thursday.
Despite assertions from a former top diplomat, an ambassador-at-large says the Lion City will always speak up when its interests are at stake
At an ocean research center on Hainan Island off China’s southern coast, officials routinely usher visitors into a darkened screening room to watch a lavishly produced People’s Liberation Army video about China’s ambitions to reassert itself as a...
“China,” Napoleon once remarked, “is a sleeping lion. Let her sleep, for when she wakes she will shake the world.” In 2014, President Xi Jinping triumphantly declared that the lion had awoken. Under his leadership, China is pursuing a dream to restore its historical position as the dominant power in Asia.
Mr. Trump’s assertion that China had failed to pressure North Korea into curbing its nuclear and ballistic missile program means that Beijing must now confront the prospect of a stormier relationship ahead — not just over North Korea but also...
Analysts, citing government sources, said that the Chinese delegation had unexpectedly cut short a trip to Vietnam after tempers flared during a closed-door discussion on disputed territories in the South China Sea.
Professors, pundits, and journalists weigh in on a heated topic.
The U.S. military conducts such "freedom of navigation" patrols to show China it is not entitled to territorial waters there, U.S. officials said at the time.
Beijing says it is “firmly opposed” to a Pentagon report that highlighted China's construction of military facilities in the South China Sea and speculated that Beijing would likely build more bases overseas.
Although China attempted to strike a more conciliatory tone in this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue, a major Asian security forum held here through Sunday, officials’ uncompromising comments on Taiwan and the South China Sea only highlighted its rifts...
On Wednesday, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc will be the first ASEAN leader to visit the White House since President Donald Trump’s election and the U.S. may look to tap into the emerging market’s friction with China.
A U.S. Navy destroyer has sailed close to a disputed South China Sea island controlled by China for the first time under U.S. President Donald Trump.
The Philippines and China played down on Monday a warning by President Rodrigo Duterte that China would go to war if the Philippines drilled for oil in the disputed South China Sea.
China will eventually become the world’s No 2 aircraft carrier power, trailing only the United States, but its carrier strike group air crews are still far below international standard, military experts say.
China’s aggression in the Asia-Pacific region has been met with little tangible response from the United States and other countries. China’s neighbors have acquiesced to Beijing’s claims to the airspace above the East China Sea and have stood by...
China’s decision not to invite Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to last weekend’s Belt and Road Forum highlights the still-strained ties between the two countries, observers say, though officials in the Lion City have tried to shrug off...
The meeting will take place in the southern Chinese province of Guizhou, which is also hosting talks on Thursday between China and member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations on establishing a framework for a code of conduct in...
China and the Philippines will start bilateral consultations on the disputed South China Sea this week, the Philippine ambassador to Beijing said, as Manila looks to ease tensions with Asia’s top economic power.
A river is born high in the Tibetan Plateau, before snaking its way 3,000 miles south and emptying itself into the South China Sea.
Across Asia, more and more countries are being pulled into Beijing’s orbit, with the timid stance adopted by Southeast Asian nations on the South China Sea at a weekend summit a clear sign this fundamental geostrategic shift is gathering momentum...
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Thursday (Apr 27) there was no point protesting Chinese artificial island building in disputed areas of the South China Sea because it could not be stopped.
