China may up patrols amid South China Sea disputes
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By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN – 49 minutes ago
BEIJING (AP) — China plans to boost patrols in the South China Sea to deal with the growing threat of illegal fishing and sharpening territorial disputes, a Chinese official was quoted as saying by state media Thursday.
The report in the China Daily newspaper follows China's dispatch last week of a converted naval vessel to patrol fishing grounds surrounding the disputed Paracel Islands, about 400 miles (640 kilometers) south of Hong Kong.
Fisheries department director Wu Zhuang was quoted as saying that additional patrols were needed to handle new "challenges and complications" in overseeing the 1.16 million square miles (3 million square kilometers) of ocean China claims in the South China Sea.
"Faced with a growing amount of illegal fishing and other countries' unfounded territorial claims of islands ... it has become necessary to step up the fishery administration's patrols to protect China's rights and interests," Wu said.
Last week's dispatch of the converted naval vessel China Yuzheng 311 was given unusually heavy coverage in Chinese media, an apparent high-profile response to reassertions of sovereignty claims to islands in the area by the Philippines and Malaysia, two of the six nations that say all or some of the South China Sea archipelagos belong to them.
That also followed a confrontation between a U.S. Navy survey vessel and Chinese boats earlier this month about 75 miles (120 miles) off China's southern island province of Hainan, in which the U.S. boat said it was harassed, threatened, and its way blocked by a pair of Chinese-flagged fishing trawlers.
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AP News Source
Is this a continuation of the test it has been making of the new Administration, or is this unrelated and a continuation and extention of its claims on the South China Sea as its own?
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