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China's military "drove away" a US warship that illegally entered Chinese waters near the Paracel Islands on Monday, the country's armed forces said. "We urge the United States to immediately stop such provocative actions," the People's Liberation Army Southern Theatre Command said in a statement.

China has again put its military in a “high state of alert” after two US Navy warships recently sailed through the Taiwan Strait. Late last week the US destroyer John McCain sailed near the disputed Paracel Islands administered and militarized by China, upon which the PLA military warned the US to “halt its provocations”. The latest incident was Wednesday, when the Arleigh Burke class guided-missile destroyer USS Barry passed through the strait. Washington was quick to emphasize that it was a “routine transit” like others toward the purpose of peaceful ‘freedom of navigation’ operations, while Beijing once again denounced the...

he Chinese military has said it chased off a U.S. warship near a disputed set of islands in the South China Sea, but the Navy contended the vessel was acting within international law. Senior Colonel Li Huamin, the spokesman for the Chinese People's Liberation Army's Southern Theater Command, said in a statement Thursday by official military outlets that the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Mustin "illegally intruded" into territorial waters near the Paracel Islands, known to China as the Xisha Islands, earlier that day. As a result, Li said Chinese sea and air units were dispatched to "warn off" and...

The Vietnamese ship was sunk near the disputed Paracel Islands, an island chain which has been one of the hot points of tension in the area.

The missile destroyer USS Curtis Wilbur sailed within 12 nautical miles (22 kilometers) of Triton Island in the Paracel chain "to challenge excessive maritime claims of parties that claim the Paracel Islands," without notifying the three claimants beforehand, Defense Department spokesman Mark Wright said Saturday in Washington.. China, Taiwan and Vietnam have overlapping claims in the Paracels and require prior notice from ships transiting what they consider their territorial waters. The latest operation was particularly aimed at China, which has increased tensions with the U.S. and its Southeast Asian neighbors by embarking on massive construction of man-made islands and airstrips...

The power vacuum created by the Obama administration’s withdrawal from world leadership and resistance to tyranny is not only being filled by the Islamic State and its terrorist affiliates like Boko Haram and state sponsors of terror like soon-to-be nuclear Iran but also by an increasingly belligerent and resurgent China. China’s State Council, the Communist giant’s version of our cabinet, has issued a policy paper declaring that Beijing is facing “a grave and complex array of security threats” that forces it to switch its strategy from defense to offense and that as a result China will increase its “open seas...

Arms Buildup: A senior weapons developer tells Congress that Beijing's massive defense buildup, emphasizing precision-guided and other advanced weapons, has placed the U.S. and its shrinking military at serious risk. 'I am very concerned about the increasing risk of loss of U.S. military technological superiority," Frank Kendall, deputy undersecretary for acquisition, said Wednesday. "We're at risk, and the situation is getting worse." He was testifying before the House Armed Services Committee at a hearing on the subject of defense and technological change. The Chinese were paying attention to U.S. military dominance in the early 1990s after we won the arms...

Defense: War clouds gather in the East China Sea as China, in one of a series of territorial claims against its neighbors, builds a helicopter base within attack range of Japan's Senkaku Islands, which Beijing claims as its own. When President Obama traveled to China last November, we don't suppose that he discussed with his Chinese counterparts their military buildup in the East and South China Seas and their ambitious territorial claims on island chains such as the Spratly, Paracel and Senkaku. As Bill Gertz reports in the Washington Free Beacon, commercial satellites observed construction of a Chinese military helicopter...

Military Spending: In the face of an expansionist China seeking to dominate the East and South China Seas, Tokyo has set its largest defense budget ever to help defend islands that it rightfully considers Japanese territory. As its military, economy and ambitions grow, so too does China's assertiveness about control of the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea and the larger South China Sea. Chinese military doctrine refers to establishing dominance over what it calls the "first island chain," which encompasses the East China Sea. Beijing has long declared the South China Sea to be its territorial waters and has...

A large number of People’s Liberation Army troops have reportedly been spotted heading towards the China-Vietnam border as tensions between the two countries continue to escalate, reports Hong Kong’s Sing Tao Daily. Sing Tao Daily is generally considered to be aligned to Chinese state media. Thousands of Chinese nationals living or on business in Vietnam have already fled the country amid anti-China riots, which were sparked by a tense standoff between Chinese and Vietnamese naval ships near a Chinese oil rig in disputed waters off the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea on May 4. The Chinese foreign ministry...

James Webb, the outgoing Democratic Senator from Virginia, is sounding the alarm about the next big world crisis taking place in the South China Sea. Naturally, the Obama administration is doing nothing about it in hopes the crisis will go away. Beijing has, in effect, laid sovereign claim to much of the South China Sea, including the Paracel Islands. China is also clashing with the Philippines over the Spratley Islands and with Japan over the Senkaku Islands. China is prepared to back up these claims by establishing a small colony on Woody Island in the Paracels with a military garrison...

July 23, 2010 Offering to Aid Talks, U.S. Challenges China on Disputed Islands By MARK LANDLER HANOI, Vietnam — Opening a new source of potential friction with China, the Obama administration said Friday that it would step into a tangled dispute between China and its smaller Asian neighbors over a string of strategically significant islands in the South China Sea. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking at an Asian regional security meeting in Vietnam, stressed that the United States remained neutral on which regional countries had stronger territorial claims to the islands. But she said that the United States...

BEIJING (Reuters) - China chided its neighbour Vietnam on Tuesday, saying the Southeast Asian country was straining ties by asserting claims to a chain of islands that may be rich in oil. Vietnamese protested in front of the Chinese embassy in Hanoi and the consulate in Ho Chi Minh city over the weekend, proclaiming that the disputed Spratly and Paracel islands belonged to their country. The Vietnamese Foreign Ministry said the protests were spontaneous and quickly ended by officials, the Vietnam News Agency reported. But China's Foreign Ministry responded with a warning that the quarrel could harm ties. "China has...