http://www.smh.com.au/world/chinese-warship-stranded-as-summit-hits-rocks-20120713-221by.html
Chinese warship stranded as summit hits rocks Date July 14, 2012 a.. John Garnaut John Garnaut is The Age and Sydney Morning Herald's China correspondent. a.. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the ASEAN conference said that diputes should be resolved "without coercion, without intimidation". Photo: AFP A CHINESE warship has run aground while patrolling contested waters adjacent to the Philippines in the South China Sea. The frigate pinned itself to a reef last night at Half Moon Shoal, on the southeastern edge of the Spratly Islands, and remains ''thoroughly stuck'', according to Western diplomatic sources yesterday. Salvage operations could be diplomatically challenging, given the ship appears to have run aground within 200 kilometres of the Philippines coast. The stricken vessel is squarely within what the Philippines claims to be its exclusive economic zone. The stranded People's Liberation Army Navy boat, believed to be No 560, a Jianghu class frigate, has in the past been involved in aggressively discouraging Filipino fishing boats from the area. The accident could not have come at a more embarrassing moment for the Chinese leadership, which has been pressing territorial claims and flexing the country's muscle ahead of a leadership transition later this year. Yesterday's meeting of the Association of South-East Asian Nations in Cambodia ended in disarray, without a code of conduct for resolving conflicts in the South China Sea, following robust intervention from China. The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who met foreign ministers at the ASEAN conference, said in remarks clearly aimed at China, that it was important that the disputes be resolved ''without coercion, without intimidation, without threats and without use of force.'' The influence of China, represented in Phnom Penn by the Foreign Minister, Yang Jiechi, hung over the behind-the-scenes deliberations on the South China Sea, dividing countries that were beholden to China and those that were willing to stand up to the Chinese. The host of the meeting, Cambodia, which receives large amounts of assistance from Beijing, failed to play the expected role of intermediary in ironing out differences, leaving it to Indonesia to try hurriedly to piece an accord together. Indonesia has no territorial claims in the South China Sea. The Indonesian Foreign Minister, Marty Natalegawa, praised Mrs Clinton for ''showing interest but giving space'' in the effort to reach an agreement. On Thursday, China dispatched one of its largest ever fishing expeditions from Hainan Island to another disputed archipelago in the South China Sea. Earlier in the week PLA generals and top foreign policy advisers urged China to do more to press its claims as its relative power grows. Cui Liru, the president of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a leading think tank that reports to the main intelligence department, said Beijing had previously focused too much on shelving disputes and seeking common grounds with its neighbours. ''In the foreseeable future, say at least in five years, the Asia-Pacific region will still be showing every feature of a transitional period, which is characterised by a certain level of chaos,'' he said. Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/chinese-warship-stranded-as-summit-hits-rocks-20120713-221by.html#ixzz20e1KUkdH [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
