China has conducted military \u201ccombat patrols\u201d in the disputed South China Sea, raising the stakes in the disputed seas on the same day as the United States holds the first joint military exercises with the Philippines, Japan and Australia. Beijing\u2019s surprise announcement of a naval drill on Sunday came a day after defence chiefs from the four countries said the Philippines would host joint drills in the same area on the same day. Beijing\u2019s People\u2019s Liberation Army (PLA) Southern Theater Command said it was organising \u201cjoint naval and air combat patrols in the South China Sea\u201d. \u201cAll military activities that mess up the situation in the South China Sea and create hotspots are under control,\u201d it said in a statement in an apparent swipe at the US-led drills being held in the same waters. The Chinese army gave no further details about its activities in the waterway on Sunday. The exercises took place days before US President Joe Biden was due to hold the first trilateral summit with the leaders of Japan and the Philippines. Top US officials have repeatedly declared the US\u2019s \u201cironclad\u201d commitment to defending the Philippines against an armed attack in the South China Sea \u2013 to the consternation of Beijing. China claims territorial sovereignty over nearly all of the South China Sea and has been increasingly assertive in the region in recent years. On Saturday, China\u2019s coastguard also traded accusations with the Philippines. It said it had \u201chandled\u201d a situation on Thursday at Iroquois Reef, where several ships from the Philippines were engaged in \u201cillegal\u201d operations. \u201cUnder the guise of \u2018protecting fishing\u2019, Philippine government ships have illegally violated and provoked, organised media to deliberately incite and mislead, continuing to undermine stability in the South China Sea,\u201d spokesman Gan Yu said. \u201cWe are telling the Philippines that any infringement tactics are in vain,\u201d Gan said, adding that China would \u201cregularly enforce the law in waters under [its] jurisdiction\u201d. The Philippines insists that, under international law, the area is within its 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone. Philippine coastguard spokesman Jay Tarriela also accused China of conducting \u201cillegal enforcement operations\u201d. The joint drills, hosted by the Philippines on Sunday, are intended to \u201c[ensure] that all countries are free to fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows,\u201d US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a joint statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
China has conducted military \u201ccombat patrols\u201d in the disputed South China Sea, raising the stakes in the disputed seas on the same day as the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16054,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}