‘Chinese navy focused on sea row’

By Jose Katigbak 
The Philippine Star 

WASHINGTON – The Chinese navy is focused on war at sea, regularly intruding on the maritime rights of its neighbors in the East and South China Sea and challenging them under the rules of “what’s mine is mine and we’ll negotiate what’s yours,” a senior US Naval intelligence official said.

“They are taking control of maritime areas that have never been administered or controlled in the last 5,000 years by any regime called China,” said Capt. James Fanell, deputy chief of staff for intelligence and information operations at the US Pacific fleet headquarters in Hawaii.

He said China’s navy was using “civil proxy” maritime security ships to advance Beijing’s sovereignty claims.

“They now regularly challenge exclusive economic-zone resource rights that South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and Vietnam once thought were guaranteed to them by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,” Fanell told a defense conference in San Diego last week.

He said China’s seizure last year of Scarborough (Panatag) Shoal, just 115 miles off Zambales province in the Philippines was a clear example of Chinese aggression.

He said China also has eight military installations on seven reefs in the Spratly islands claimed by the Philippines [...]

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