China steps up military drills in disputed waters

A cruise liner docks at Sanya’s Phoenix Island.

Group and China Communications Construction, will buy between five and eight ships, the official China Daily reported.

Liu Junli, chairman of Sanya International Cruise, said the company is already operating Dream of the South China Sea, a brand new cruise ship.

The ships will travel to the Crescent group of islands, part of the Paracels, and is also “considering a cruise around the South China Sea at the appropriate time”, it added. His comments, made Wednesday, July 20, 2016, follow several fractious encounters between the two sides’ ships and planes in and over the disputed South China Sea.

Hotels, villas and shops will all be built on the Crescent group, the report said.

In a bid to distance himself from the Philippines’ previous administration, and avoid retaliation from Beijing for the ruling, the country’s new president, Rodrigo Duterte, has indicated that he might be willing to make concessions on the South China Sea issue, explained Malcolm Cook, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.

China has clearly refused to recognise the ruling and this week it continued combat exercises off the east coast of Hainan island province.

The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled last week that there is no legal basis to Beijing’s territorial claims in the disputed waters.

The Court went on to determine that, as some areas of the South China Sea are within the Philippines EEZ (measured from the main Philippine archipelago), Chinese activities had violated Philippine sovereign rights.

Dong Liwan, a shipbuilding industry professor at Shanghai Maritime University, said market promotion of tailor-made services such as island tours, marine tourism, cruise vacations and island-themed honeymoons are certainly needed to develop the travel business in the South China Sea.