A Chinese provincial official says the country is planning for tourism development on a set of islands in the South China Sea that are claimed by both China and Vietnam.
The tourism plan, announced by Hainan provincial Vice-Governor Tan Li, comes as tensions continue to rise across Southeast Asia over competing maritime claims to vast areas of the sea thought to be rich in oil and gas reserves.
China and Vietnam lay claim to the cluster of islets, known in China as the Xisha Islands, and elsewhere as the Paracels. To the south, China and five other nations hold competing claims to another area of the South China Sea.
Details of the tourism plan were not reported, and Vietnam has not commented on Tan's announcement. But China's official Xinhua news agency quotes Tan as saying “Xisha must be opened for tourism within this year.” He also said that plans are built around that timetable.
Five nations – the Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan – claim parts of the South China Sea, while China insists the entire 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea is an indisputable part of its territory.
The competing claims have triggered recent faceoffs between Chinese naval and Philippine research vessels, and a series of confrontations involving fishing trawlers and naval craft from the competing countries.
China last month arrested 21 Vietnamese fishermen near the Paracels. The Vietnamese were released earlier this week, but only after Beijing said they signed pledges “not to infringe on China's maritime rights, especially fishing in its territorial waters.”
Meanwhile, as regional tensions rise, the U.S. and Philippine militaries are conducting naval drills in the South China Sea. Separately, the U.S. and Vietnamese navies are holding annual salvage and disaster training, while the Chinese and Russian navies conduct maneuvers in the nearby Yellow Sea. China state television says 4,000 Chinese and Russian military personnel are participating in the joint maneuvers, which include live-fire exercises.
All of the countries deny links between the drills and the territorial disputes.
