A large airborne military exercise is underway in China’s central and eastern provinces and seas.
Fighter jets, spy planes and helicopters, along with 12,000 soldiers, are taking part in the drill.
It is one of several announced in official media in recent weeks.
The exercise follows verbal sparring between the US and China over conflicting territorial claims by China and many South East Asian nations in the South China Sea.
It also comes after China protested against major US-South Korea military exercises last month in the Sea of Japan.
Military message
China’s five-day exercise, called Vanguard 2010, is taking place over the central province of Henan and the eastern coastal province of Shandong, which borders the Yellow Sea, China’s state news agency Xinhua reported.
The Chinese army-run Military Weekly newspaper said the exercises, though “low-key”, carried a message.
“If other people threaten our interests, we have enough military means and technological methods to keep them in check,” the newspaper said.
That message follows several weeks of diplomatic jousting over the South China Sea, and over North Korea.
At a meeting of foreign ministers hosted by the Association of South East Asian Nations in Hanoi, Vietnam, in July, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said a peaceful resolution of overlapping territorial claims in the South China Sea was a “national interest” of the US.
“The US supports a collaborative diplomatic process by all claimants for resolving the various territorial disputes without coercion,” she said. “We oppose the use or threat of force by any claimant.”
This runs counter to China’s re-stated “indisputable” claim to the entire South China Sea, and its desire to reach bilateral deals with each South East Asian claimant, rather than a multilateral agreement.
Mrs Clinton’s comments backed a recent letter from Indonesia to the United Nations which called for a resolution of the region’s territorial disputes to be settled according to the Law of the Sea.
China was also angry at US-South Korean military drills in late July which the US described as a show of strength to North Korea.
China, a close ally of Pyongyang, said the exercises – initially planned for the Yellow Sea – were a threat to regional security.
Đọt Chuối Non 
Looks like China is getting very uneasy about the international efforts involved in the East Sea.
The Vietnamese government should be given credits for doing all the right things–maintaining a territory claim on the disputed Paracels and Spratlys, using diplomatic talks with China, ratifying United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and submitting the dispute to UNCLOS (which started the process of internationalizing the issue).
Now that the US has entered the case, to protect the US interest in the disputed waters, the dispute becomes a multilateral issue, against China’s wishes to deal bilaterally with each contestant (so that it would break each little nation at will!).
So, now China starts to flex its muscle, to threaten who? Vietnamese? Well, since when we Vietnamese are afraid of fighting? We all have been annoyed enough with all the harassments that Chinese authorities and “unknown vessels” have dumped on the heads of our poor fishermen. We all are itching for a fight. And we have enough brainpower globally to outwit China in a major global conflict too.
If China is intelligent, it should behave like a gentleman of the modern time.
Below, FYI, is summary of the history of the dispute, by Reuters.
Hoanh
Factbox: South China Sea’s disputed maritime borders
Tue Jul 27, 2010 7:33am EDT
(Reuters) – China responded angrily to a U.S.-led confrontation over the disputed South China Sea at a security summit in Hanoi last week.
Here are some facts on the South China Sea, the maritime rules governing its waters, and major players embroiled in disputes within it.
GEOGRAPHY:
The South China Sea covers an area of more than 648,000 sq miles (1.7 million sq km), containing more than 200 mostly uninhabitable small islands, rocks and reefs. It borders China and Taiwan to the north, Vietnam to the west, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, and Singapore to the south and southwest, and the Philippines to the east.
STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE:
The shortest route between the Pacific and Indian oceans, it has some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. Over half the globe’s oil tanker traffic passes through it. Most shipping is of raw materials, such as crude oil from the Gulf to East Asian countries. The sea holds valuable fishing grounds, and as-yet largely unexploited oil and natural gas fields.
DISPUTES:
Six parties are involved in a complex set of historically based territorial disputes in the sea — Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. China’s claims, the broadest, cover all of the Spratly and Paracel islands and most of the South China Sea.
China’s military occupies all of the Paracel Islands, and some nine reefs in the Spratly Islands, including Johnson South Reef, Hughes Reef and Subi Reef.
Vietnam occupies dozens of Spratly atolls and reefs and has military bases on several more.
Taiwan holds Itu Aba island and Ban Than Reef in the Spratlys. Its former president Chen Shui-bian visited Itu Aba in 2008, with a naval flotilla. Taiwan has built an airport there.
Malaysia has built an air strip and diving resort on Layang Layang, also known as Swallow’s Reef. The Malaysian navy maintains a base here too. The other atolls it occupies are Ardasier Reef, Marivales Reef, Erica Reef and Investigator Shoal.
The Philippines occupies several Spratly islands, most significantly Thitu island, which it renamed Pagasa (Hope).
Brunei occupies none of the islands.
RESPONSES:
The biggest military skirmishes occurred in 1974, when China attacked and captured the western Paracels from Vietnam, and in 1988, when China and Vietnam fought a brief naval battle near the Spratly reefs, in which more than 70 Vietnamese sailors died.
Vietnam recently ordered six Kilo-class diesel submarines from Russia as part of a major arms purchase that analysts see as an attempt to counterbalance China’s growing naval reach.
Vietnam and China have competing claims over undeveloped oil and gas blocks. Businessmen and diplomats say China has pressured foreign firms in deals with Vietnam not to develop those blocks.
In 2007, BP Plc (BP.L) halted plans to conduct exploration work off the southern Vietnamese coast due to the territorial dispute between Hanoi and Beijing.
Vietnamese fishing boats are frequently halted and the fishermen detained by Chinese patrol vessels in disputed waters, to Hanoi’s displeasure. In many cases reports say they are freed only after the Vietnamese government pays China.
In 2002, the member states of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China signed a non-binding Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, urging the claimant-states to exercise restraint and avoid activities that might escalate tension, such as construction of military facilities and holding war games.
Most claimants are developing tourism on or around some of the islands they hold, to bolster their claims.
INTERNATIONAL LAW:
The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea allows coastal states to establish sovereignty over two areas: 1. Territorial seas — adjacent waters spanning a maximum of 12 nautical-miles from their coastlines, including the coastline of offshore islands, and 2. Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) — extending 200 nautical miles from the coast.
UNCLOS says overlapping claims should be resolved through ad hoc arbitration or submission to international courts.
THE UNITED STATES:
The U.S. has not ratified UNCLOS, objecting to a clause on seabed mineral exploration. But when accused by China of illegal trespass, it has referred to its provision for states to conduct intelligence-gathering activities in EEZ’s. U.S. surveillance aircraft and ships have long conducted surveys in the sea. The country’s main security concern in the area is keeping open the sea routes that are vital for commercial shipping and warships.
CHINA:
China has signed and ratified UNCLOS. It says all the islands have been Chinese since ancient times.
MALAYSIA:
Malaysia says that its claims to territories and maritime areas in the South China Sea are in accordance with principles of international law and as depicted in a map it published in 1979 which defined the country’s continental shelf boundaries.
PHILIPPINES:
In 1978, former president Ferdinand Marcos issued a decree claiming the entire territory as part of the Philippines, redrawing the country’s map. Manila is a signatory to UNCLOS and has passed a law asserting its claims on the Spratlys.
TAIWAN:
Taiwan claims the Spratly, Paracel and Pratas islands in its constitution.
VIETNAM:
Hanoi has ratified UNCLOS. Last year, Vietnam and Malaysia presented a joint submission to UNCLOS on their claims which underlines the point that while China prefers to deal with the competing claimants on a bilateral basis, others have been pushing for a multilateral approach to the South China Sea maritime disputes.
BRUNEI:
Brunei claims part of the South China Sea as its Exclusive Economic Zone, a section of which includes Louisa Reef.
(Reporting by Beijing, Hanoi, Manila, Taipei and Kuala Lumpur bureaus; Writing by Ben Blanchard. Editing by Miral Fahmy)
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