MCLC: China's newest city

Sat Aug 4 10:24:54 EDT 2012

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: China's newest city
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Source: Associated Press (7/24/12):
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5is23ZCSnHRP13i8Z5uzsLzg1w
Kmw?docId=a3f881d534e949cb925ea0efe4fcd6e5

China's newest city is on tiny island, has big aim
By ALEXA OLESEN, Associated Press

BEIJING (AP) ‹ China's newest city is a remote island in the South China
Sea barely large enough to host a single airstrip. It has a post office,
bank, supermarket and a hospital, but little else. Fresh water comes by
freighter on a 13-hour journey from China's southernmost province.

Welcome to Sansha, China's expanding toehold in the world's most disputed
waters, portions of which are also claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines and
other neighbors. On Tuesday, as blustery island winds buffeted palm trees,
a new mayor declared Sansha to be China's newest municipality.

Beijing has created the city administration to oversee not only the rugged
outpost with a population of just 1,000 but also hundreds of thousands of
square kilometers (miles) of water where it wants to strengthen its
control over disputed ‹ and potentially oil-rich ‹ islands.

The Philippines said it does not recognize the city or its jurisdiction,
and Vietnam said China's actions violated international law. The United
States also voiced its concern over "unilateral moves" in the South China
Sea where it says collective diplomacy is needed to resolve competing
claims.

The city administration is on tiny Yongxing island, 350 kilometers (220
miles) southeast from China's tropical Hainan Island. The Cabinet approved
Sansha last month to "consolidate administration" over the Paracel and
Spratly island chains and the Macclesfield Bank, a large, completely
submerged atoll that boasts rich fishing grounds that is also claimed by
Taiwan and the Philippines.

Vietnam and China both claim the Paracels, of which Yongxing, little more
than half the size of Manhattan's Central Park, is part. The two countries
along with the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also claim all or
parts of the Spratlys.

China claims virtually the entire South China Sea and its island groups,
and its disputes occasionally erupt into open confrontation. The islands,
many of them occupied by garrisons from the various claimants, sit amid
some of the world's busiest commercial sea lanes, along with rich fishing
grounds and potential oil and gas deposits. China has approved the formal
establishment of a military garrison for Sansha, though specific details
have yet to be released.

Official broadcaster China Central Television aired Tuesday morning's
formal establishment ceremony live from Sansha, with speeches from the new
mayor and other officials.

The Chinese flag was raised and national anthem played before plaques for
the Sansha Municipal Government and the Sansha Municipal Committee of the
Communist Party of China were unveiled on a white-columned government
building.

Mayor Xiao Jie trumpeted Sansha's important role in protecting China's
sovereignty. He said the designation of Sansha as a new city was "a wise
decision made by the party and the government of China to protect the
sovereign rights of China, and to strengthen the protection and the
development of natural resources."

The official Xinhua News Agency reported earlier that Sansha's
jurisdiction covers just 13 square kilometers (5 square miles) of land,
including other islands and atolls in the South China Sea around Yongxing,
but 2 million square kilometers (770,000 square miles) of surrounding
waters.

Sansha means "three sandbanks" in Mandarin and appears to refer to the
Chinese names for the disputed island chains and atoll, known in Chinese
as the West, South and Middle Banks, or Xisha, Nansha and Zhongsha.

A description from a former People's Liberation Army officer who was among
the officials overseeing the island before Sansha was established paints a
picture of a harsh and isolated post where officials rotate staffing for a
month at a time. Though, he said fishermen live there all year round.

"The living conditions are pretty simple," Tan Xiankun, director of the
office in Hainan overseeing Xisha and other South China Sea territories,
told The Associated Press in 2010. "It's very humid and hot, more than 30
degrees, and there's salt everywhere. There's no fresh water, except for
what's shipped in and what's collected from rain water."

Philippines Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman Raul Hernandez said
Manila has expressed its concern and registered a strong protest with
Beijing over the decision to set up a military garrison on Sansha.

"The Philippines does not recognize the Sansha city and the extent of its
jurisdiction and considers recent measures taken by China as
unacceptable," Hernandez told a news conference.

Vietnam's Foreign Ministry spokesman Luong Thanh Nghi said that Vietnam
had protested to the Chinese foreign ministry.

"China's establishment of the so-called 'Sansha City' ... violated
international law, seriously violating Vietnam sovereignty over the
Paracel and Spratly archipelagoes," the statement said.

Asked about the establishment of the city, U.S. State Department
spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told a news briefing Tuesday: "We remain
concerned should there be any unilateral moves of this kind that would
seem to prejudge an issue that we have said repeatedly can only be solved
by negotiations, by dialogue and by a collaborative diplomatic process
among all the claimants."

The United States says it does not take a position on the competing
sovereignty claims over land features in the South China Sea but has a
national interest in freedom of navigation in its busy sea lanes and in
maintenance of peace and stability.

A report released Tuesday by the International Crisis Group think tank
said that although China's large claim to the South China Sea and its
assertive approach has rattled other claimants, Beijing is "not stoking
tensions on its own."

"South East Asian claimants, with Vietnam and the Philippines in the
forefront, are now more forcefully defending their claims ‹ and enlisting
outside allies ‹ with considerable energy," it said, a reference to
Washington's move to influence the Asian balance of power by supporting
China's neighbors.

The report also warned that the risk of escalation was high and urged
claimants to find ways to jointly manage energy resources and fishing
areas while also agreeing on a mechanism for handling incidents.
"In the absence of such a mechanism, tensions in the South China Sea could
all too easily be driven to irreversible levels," it said.

Associated Press writers Charles Hutzler in Beijing, Jim Gomez in Manila,
Tran Van Minh in Hanoi and Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed to
this report.