Hainan Island News

Every day, nearly 60 fully loaded very large crude-oil carriers sail between the Persian Gulf and Chinese ports, carrying about half of the oil that powers the world's second-largest economy.As the vessels enter the South China Sea, they ply waters increasingly controlled by China's growing military, from the missile batteries and airfields at its bases on disputed islands to its stealthy Type 055 destroyers.But when crossing the Indian Ocean, joined by others headed to China from Africa and Brazil…

CMA-CGM, the world's fourth-largest container shipping line, has told customers it will not take bookings for cargo due to arrive at ports in southern China over several weeks in early 2021 due to a suspension of service by feeder operators.Feeders collect containers from smaller ports and take them to terminals where they can be loaded onto large vessels.CMA-CGM's move comes amid a global shortage of containers that is likely to hamper surging exports from China as the world…

The United States on Wednesday blacklisted 24 Chinese companies and targeted individuals it said were part of construction and military actions in the South China Sea, its first such sanctions move against Beijing over the disputed strategic waterway.The U.S. Commerce Department said the two dozen companies played a “role in helping the Chinese military construct and militarize the internationally condemned artificial islands in the South China Sea.”Separately, the State Department said it would impose visa restrictions on Chinese individuals “responsible for…

The Philippines has lodged a diplomatic protest over what it said was China’s illegal confiscation of fish aggregating devices from Filipino fisherman in a disputed lagoon held by Beijing in the South China Sea.The Philippine foreign ministry said the incident happened three months ago at the Scarborough Shoal, a prime fishing site seized by Beijing in 2012 after a standoff that prompted an unprecedented international legal challenge by Manila.In a statement late on Thursday, it gave no other details about that incident…

China's offshore oil and gas producer CNOOC has started developing a new gas field in the South China Sea, the official Xinhua News Agency reported on Tuesday.The Lingshui 17-2 gas field is the first deep sea gas block fully operated by a Chinese company, Xinhua said citing CNOOC officials.The deep sea project, which was discovered in 2014, is 150 km (94 miles) south of China's southern Hainan island, with an average operational depth of 1,500 metres, according to a Reuters report from that year.CNOOC is ready to start building a subsea level platform used for drilling, Xinhua said.(Reporting by Meng Meng and Aizhu Chen; Editing by Tom Hogue)

China's Defence Ministry said on Thursday the military was carrying out routine training in the South China Sea, but would not comment on the presence of China's sole operational aircraft carrier there. Dozens of Chinese naval vessels are exercising this week with an aircraft carrier in a large show of force off China's Hainan island in the South China Sea, satellite images obtained by Reuters show. The images, provided by Planet Labs Inc, confirmed a Chinese carrier group had entered the important trade waterway as part of what the Chinese navy earlier described as combat drills that were part of routine annual exercises. The Liaoning carrier group last week traversed the Taiwan Strait, according to the Taiwan defence ministry.

Dozens of Chinese naval vessels are exercising this week with an aircraft carrier in a large show of force off Hainan island in the South China Sea, satellite images obtained by Reuters show. The images, provided by Planet Labs Inc, confirm a Chinese carrier group has entered the vital trade waterway as part of what the Chinese navy earlier described as combat drills that were part of routine annual exercises. The Liaoning carrier group last week traversed the Taiwan Strait, according to the Taiwanese defense ministry.

A unit of China's State Oceanic Administration (SOA) on Friday issued a blue alert for sea ice in a key port area in the north of the country, potentially disrupting commodities shipments, as temperatures in the region plummet. Sea ice in the Liaodong Bay, the northern arm of China's Bohai Sea, now extends 67 nautical miles (124 km) from the shoreline, the North China Sea Marine Forecasting Center said in an 0700 GMT alert. Ice also extends 18 nautical miles out in the northern part of the Yellow Sea, the Center said.

Destructive winds, waves batter Hong Kong, south China. Typhoon Hato, a maximum category 10 storm, slammed into Hong Kong on Wednesday lashing the Asian financial hub with wind and rain that uprooted trees and forced most businesses to close, while in some places big waves flooded seaside streets. There were reports of 34 people injured in Hong Kong while in the city of Macau, across the Pearl River estuary, three people were killed, authorities there said. In Hong Kong, more than 450 flights were cancelled, financial markets suspended and schools closed as Hato bore down, the first category 10 storm to hit the city since 2012. "I've never seen one like this," Garrett Quigley, a longtime resident of Lantau island to the west of the city, said of the storm.

China's sole aircraft carrier conducted drills in the South China Sea, the navy said, days after neighbouring Taiwan said the carrier and accompanying ships had passed 90 nautical miles south of the island amid renewed tension between the two sides. The Soviet-built Liaoning aircraft carrier and accompanying warships sailed round the east coast of Taiwan in what China called a routine exercise complying with international law. The carrier's J-15 fighters conducted flight exercises in "complex sea conditions" on Monday, the People's Liberation Army Navy said on its official microblog late the same day. The carrier group also ran helicopter exercises, it said, but did not give details on the exact location.

China’s maritime safety administration announced China’s military's plans exercises in the disputed South China Sea this week, adding to tensions ahead of an international tribunal’s ruling that is expected to challenge Beijing’s maritime claims in the area. The naval drills, which will cover the area east of China’s Hainan Island all the way to and including the Paracels, will be held on July 5-11, Reuters reports, citing a brief statement published online. The drills will be ending July 11, the day before the United Nations-backed tribunal in The Hague is expected to issue its ruling. China has repeatedly said it will ignore the verdict despite pressure from the U.S. and its allies to comply.

Chinese maritime officials on Friday removed an online notice giving the location of a $1-billion deepwater oil rig in the South China Sea two days after issuing it, following a warning from Vietnam about drilling in disputed waters. Vietnam closely tracks the movement of the oil rig, which in mid-2014 caused the worst diplomatic rift between the neighbours in decades, when China parked it for 10 weeks in waters Vietnam considers its own. Annual trade between the communist neighbours exceeds $60 billion but anti-China sentiment is strong in Vietnam, where people are embittered over what many see as a history of Chinese bullying and territorial infringements in the South China Sea.

In mid-2014, rig caused worst breakdown in ties in decades. China's Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that a $1-billion deepwater oil rig was not drilling in disputed territory in the South China Sea, in response to a warning from Vietnam against such activity. Vietnam closely tracks the movement of the oil rig, which in mid-2014 caused the worst diplomatic breakdown between the neighbours in decades, when China parked it for 10 weeks in waters Vietnam considers its own. This week Vietnam said Beijing had steered the rig, the Haiyang Shiyou 981, into a stretch where jurisdiction is unclear. "According to what is understood, China's Haiyang Shiyou 981 drilling platform is operating in Chinese-controlled waters that are completely undisputed…

Malaysia and China are working to boost connectivity between their sea ports to raise bilateral trade to achieve a trade volume of $160bn by 2017, says a report in the Star. Transport Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai said  the two countries were also exploring the introduction of more flight routes between the two countries to promote tourism and strengthening trade ties. "We are working towards increasing efficiency and effectiveness of the ports in order to achieve a trade volume of US$160bil (RM662bil) by 2017," he said. In September 2015 China's Guangxi Beibu Gulf International Port Group bought a 40% stake in Kuantan Port Consortium for approximately USD94 million for expansion works on the biggest port in the east coast of Malaysia.

The Chinese navy played down recent military drills in the South China Sea and criticised other countries for "illegally" occupying islands in the area, the official Xinhua news service reported on Saturday. China has launched a naval drill in waters to the east of Hainan island, a largely unpopulated region of reefs and shoals in which a number of countries maintain contradictory and overlapping territorial claims. "Holding sea drills is a common practice for navies with various countries. The annual drill by the Chinese navy aims to test the troops' real combat abilities, boost their manoeuvrability, search and rescue power and the abilities to fulfil diversified military missions," Xinhua quoted Chinese navy spokesperson Liang Yang saying.

The Chinese navy has announced 10 days of military training in the waters near eastern Hainan Island in the South China Sea starting on Wednesday, amid heightened tensions in the region. Playing down the significance of the exercises, the Chinese military said the drills, started yesterday in the east of Hainan Province, are not directed against neighbours. "The drills are regular military exercises scheduled in the annual plan, without targeting any other country," the Ministry of National Defence said. During the training, 'no vessel is allowed to enter the designated maritime areas', according to China's Maritime Safety Administration, which released the drill plan on Monday.

China and the United States appear headed for a damaging confrontation over the extent of China's territorial claims in the South and East China Seas. Now that China has become the world's largest importer of oil, and energy more generally, the country's need to develop more indigenous energy supplies has become urgent. Expecting China to put the South and East China Seas off limits to exploration and production until disputes over sovereignty can be resolved through some undefined legal or diplomatic process is unrealistic. Part of the problem is that western analysts and policymakers still fail to appreciate the strategic importance of these areas.

U.S. and Chinese military officials will hold talks on rules of behavior at the Pentagon on Tuesday and Wednesday, a U.S. official said, days after the United States denounced a "dangerous" Chinese jet intercept of a U.S. Navy patrol plane. Last Tuesday, a Chinese fighter pilot flew acrobatic maneuvers around the U.S. Navy's P-8 Poseidon antisubmarine and reconnaissance plane, crossing over and under it in international airspace over the South China Sea, the Pentagon said. At one point, the jet flew wingtip-to-wingtip about 10 yards (9 meters) from the Poseidon, then performed a barrel roll over the top of it. The U.S. defense official said other close intercepts occurred in March, April and May.

Six Vietnamese fishermen have been detained by the crew of a Chinese vessel in the South China Sea, officials of both countries said on Friday, the latest in a two-month fracas between the Communist neighbours over maritime sovereignty. Authorities from the two countries disagreed on where the boat was detained Thursday morning. Vietnamese officials said it was in disputed waters 56 km (35 miles) off the coast of China's Hainan Island and 290 km off Vietnam. The arrests risk escalating the biggest breakdown in ties between Vietnam and China in three decades. China's top diplomat met Vietnam's leadership last month to try to defuse tensions, but talks ended in stalemate.

Chinese patrols enforcing disputed new fishing rules in the South China Sea are apprehending foreign boats on a weekly basis, Communist Party officials said on Thursday. In comments that provide the first window on how China is enforcing new rules criticized by Washington, the party secretary for Hainan Island said Chinese patrols attempted to peacefully negotiate with vessels that initially ignored warnings to leave Chinese waters. "First of all we would try to dissuade them, tell them to get out, this is our area, and then we negotiate and dissuade as much as possible," Luo Baoming, party secretary for Hainan province, said on Thursday.

The submerged reef would be easy to miss, under turquoise seas about 80 km (50 miles) off Malaysia's Borneo island state of Sarawak. But two Chinese naval exercises in less than a year around the James Shoal have shocked Malaysia and led to a significant shift in its approach to China's claims to the disputed South China Sea, senior diplomats told Reuters. The reef lies outside Malaysia's territorial waters but inside its 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone. The latest incident in January, in particular, prompted Malaysia to quietly step up cooperation with the Philippines and Vietnam, the two Southeast Asian nations most outspoken over China's moves in the region, in trying to tie Beijing to binding rules of conduct in the South China Sea, the diplomats said.

Pressure is mounting on China and Southeast Asia to agree a code of conduct to keep the peace in the disputed South China Sea, but Beijing is warning of a long road ahead. Only last week, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged China and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) to work out rules to ease tensions after a fresh Chinese campaign of assertiveness in the region. "The longer the process takes, the longer tensions will simmer and the greater the chance of a miscalculation by somebody that could trigger a conflict," Kerry said in Indonesia during a visit to Asia.

1965-A commercial DC-7 with 84 persons on board exploded in midair off Jones Beach, Long Island. Despite an extensive search by seven Coast Guard cutters, six Coast Guard aircraft, and a US Navy tug, no survivors were located. Only nine bodies and various pieces of debris were located and recovered. 1968-CG cutters Androscoggin, Minnetonka, and Winona, along with 82 footers and Navy assets, on patrol in Vietnamese waters, thwarted a Communist attempt to run four trawlers through the Market Time blockade off the coast of South Vietnam. The cutters sank three of the trawlers and forced the fourth to return to Hainan Island without landing her cargo.