Chinese authorities released a newly drawn map this month that claims ownership of nearly all of the South China Sea, an area larger than India, stretching from China’s shores thousands of kilometres to the territorial waters of the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Vietnam and Taiwan.
The English-language Global Times, which communicates policy of the Communist Party government, described it as a “normal exercise of sovereignty in accordance with the law.”
The Filipino secretary of defence sees it differently, calling the new map “control and occupation over the South China Sea.”
In an exclusive interview with CBC News, Gilberto Teodoro says the move “absolutely proves [China’s] intent of expanding and being more assertive.”
“If that’s not stopped, then the whole international rules-based order is in jeopardy.”
He says Chinese control over the South China Sea could imperil the freedom of movement for nations all over the world.
“For Canada … if sea lanes are blocked, then even your supply chains are going to suffer.”
Longstanding dispute
Now boasting the world’s largest navy, China has been increasingly assertive about its many maritime and territorial claims.
A decades-long dispute over the South China Sea, and the Spratly Islands in particular, recently saw Chinese Coast Guard vessels block and nearly ram Philippine vessels attempting to resupply a small military outpost on the Second Thomas Shoal.
China insists it owns the teardrop-shaped atoll, a claim that prompted Manila to beach a rusting warship on the shoal in 1999. It has kept soldiers aboard since then to maintain its assertion of ownership.
Donated to the Philippines by the U.S. Navy in the 1990s and subsequently beached on the Second Thomas Shoal, this rusting ship is now a military outpost with Filipino soldiers permanently on board to counter China’s claims of ownership. (Philippine Coast Guard)
The land is within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, not China’s. In 2016, an international tribunal ruled overwhelmingly in the Philippines’ favour, determining that major elements of China’s claim were unlawful.
Beijing reacted by deeming the decision “null and void.”
Chinese authorities regularly harass Philippine boats, including with powerful water cannons. Beijing has insisted the Philippines abandon the beached ship. Manila has essentially responded “never.”
Canada’s Navy has two ships currently in the region, sailing through the areas China now claims in its latest map. Canada’s presence is intended to signal to Beijing that the South China Sea is an international waterway, through which ships of any nation may pass.
Chinese destroyers confront Canadian warship in waters off Taiwan
11 days ago
Duration3:09
The Canadian frigate HMCS Ottawa, on a joint patrol mission with U.S. and Japanese warships in the East China Sea, had a tense moment with a Chinese-guided missile destroyer. A CBC News crew with exclusive access caught it on camera.
Teodoro welcomes the Canadian warships, one of which is on a port visit to his country. He says that while Canada is an ocean away, it has a direct stake here.
“If China’s claims are given credence … freedom of navigation and freedom of air traffic is jeopardized,” he said.
Much of Canada’s trade to and from the Indo-Pacific region must pass through the disputed area.
As China grows, allegiances shift
China’s claims to the South China Sea are not new, though the latest map reinforces and expands them.
“China’s position on the South China Sea is consistent and clear,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said after the map was released. “We hope relevant sides can stay objective and calm, and refrain from over-interpreting the issue.”
China is involved in a great power battle with the United States, which has long exerted outsize influence in the Pacific, following the Second World War. As the Americans move more military assets into the region, China is in the midst of a massive buildup of its own armed forces.
The stakes were laid out in a speech last week by the U.S. secretary of the Air Force.
While stressing that “war is not inevitable,” Frank Kendall warned “China has been reoptimizing its forces for great power competition and to prevail against the U.S. in the Western Pacific for over 20 years.”
In June, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, China, in order to stabilize the relationship between the two nations. (Leah Millis/Reuters)
“At present, it is very important to oppose taking sides, block confrontation and a new cold war,” Chinese Premier Li Qiang told ASEAN member states during their summit in September.
China has sought to counter American influence among its neighbours, and had modest success in the Philippines under the previous government led by president Rodrigo Duterte. Manila moved away from its long-standing alliance with the United States and China filled the void, investing in the country through its Belt and Road initiative, paying for infrastructure and gaining influence.
“There was expectation that rapprochement would mitigate Chinese assertiveness and coercion of the South China Sea,” said Renato de Castro, a distinguished professor at Manila’s De la Salle University. “But that never happened.”
U.S. influence
So the new government under President Bongbong Marcos, facing ever more assertive claims and incidents at sea, has nudged Manila back towards Washington.
“China wanted, basically, simple subjugation,” said de Castro. “At the end of the day, China simply pushed the current administration into the waiting arms of the United States. So you have no one to blame but China.”
Chinese warship nearly hits U.S. destroyer in Taiwan Strait
A Chinese warship came dangerously close to the U.S. Navy’s guided-missile destroyer USS Chung-Hoon during a joint Canada-U.S. naval mission in the Taiwan Strait on Saturday. The Canadian frigate HMCS Montreal was nearby at the time. U.S. officials called the move “unsafe,” while China accused the U.S and its allies of “provocation” for holding the exercises.
The Philippines has long focused its military on internal security, whether battling an Islamist insurgency or a vicious and bloody war against drug use. But now it faces a threat from China’s many claims on its territory and waterways.
“It’s an expansionist power at this point in time,” said de Castro.
In March 2023, China welcomed officials from the Philippines to discuss issues in the South China Sea. In a statement issued after the meeting, China said “the two sides had a candid and in-depth exchange of views … and agreed to exercise restraint.”
However, in the months since, there have been multiple incidents on the South China Sea with little sign China will back down, or that the Philippines will relinquish its ownership of disputed lands.
If China claims are left unchallenged, said de Castro, “this will deprive us of 85 per cent of our exclusive economic zone. And, of course the South China Sea acts as a buffer between us and China. So if China controls the South China Sea, there goes our buffer.”
If Taiwan invaded, Philippines key to response
Filipino soldiers routinely train with U.S. troops, and U.S. warships dock at ports in the Philippines. The Americans will also gain access to four new military bases as part of an expanded defence agreement analysts say is aimed at combating China.
Those bases include three on the main island of Luzon, which is close to Taiwan, and one in Palawan province in the South China Sea.
The U.S. maintains its largest forward-deployed naval presence in the Indo-Pacific, with some 70 ships and 27,000 soldiers and sailors.
Japan is the home port for the overwhelming majority of them, many in Okinawa, an island relatively close to Taiwan.
Gilberto Teodoro, the Philippines secretary of defence, told CBC that ‘if China’s claims are given credence … freedom of navigation and freedom of air traffic is jeopardized.’ (Lyzaville Sale/CBC)
For the U.S., having greater access to the Philippines creates a line directly between Taiwan and mainland China. Some analysts have referred to this angled line as a “crescent of containment.”
Should China forcibly reunite Taiwan with the mainland, it could provoke a major battle between the U.S. and its allies. And the Philippines becomes key to that effort.
Teodoro notes that “the phrase often used by China is that we [Filipinos] are U.S. puppets that are being used to contain China … it is to me an insult, but if you use the word containment, do you not implicitly admit that you want to expand?”
NEW YORK (AP) — Teen smoking hit an all-time low in the U.S. this year, part of a big drop in the youth use of tobacco overall, the government reported Thursday.
There was a 20% drop in the estimated number of middle and high school students who recently used at least one tobacco product, including cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, nicotine pouches and hookahs. The number went from 2.8 million last year to 2.25 million this year — the lowest since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s key survey began in 1999.
“Reaching a 25-year low for youth tobacco product use is an extraordinary milestone for public health,” said Deirdre Lawrence Kittner, director of CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health, in a statement. However, “our mission is far from complete.”
A previously reported drop in vaping largely explains the overall decline in tobacco use from 10% to about 8% of students, health officials said.
The youth e-cigarette rate fell to under 6% this year, down from 7.7% last year — the lowest at any point in the last decade. E-cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco products among teens, followed by nicotine pouches.
Use of other products has been dropping, too.
Twenty-five years ago, nearly 30% of high school students smoked. This year, it was just 1.7%, down from the 1.9%. That one-year decline is so small it is not considered statistically significant, but marks the lowest since the survey began 25 years ago. The middle school rate also is at its lowest mark.
Recent use of hookahs also dropped, from 1.1% to 0.7%.
The results come from an annual CDC survey, which included nearly 30,000 middle and high school students at 283 schools. The response rate this year was about 33%.
Officials attribute the declines to a number of measures, ranging from price increases and public health education campaigns to age restrictions and more aggressive enforcement against retailers and manufacturers selling products to kids.
Among high school students, use of any tobacco product dropped to 10%, from nearly 13% and e-cigarette use dipped under 8%, from 10%. But there was no change reported for middle school students, who less commonly vape or smoke or use other products,
Current use of tobacco fell among girls and Hispanic students, but rose among American Indian or Alaska Native students. And current use of nicotine pouches increased among white kids.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
WASHINGTON (AP) — An Alabama man was arrested Thursday for his alleged role in the January hack of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission social media account that led the price of bitcoin to spike, the Justice Department said.
Eric Council Jr., 25, of Athens, is accused of helping to break into the SEC’s account on X, formerly known as Twitter, allowing the hackers to prematurely announce the approval of long-awaited bitcoin exchange-traded funds.
The price of bitcoin briefly spiked more than $1,000 after the post claimed “The SEC grants approval for #Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered national securities exchanges.”
But soon after the initial post appeared, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said on his personal account that the SEC’s account was compromised. “The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products,” Gensler wrote, calling the post unauthorized without providing further explanation.
Authorities say Council carried out what’s known as a “SIM swap,” using a fake ID to impersonate someone with access to the SEC’s X account and convince a cellphone store to give him a SIM card linked to the person’s phone. Council was able to take over the person’s cellphone number and get access codes to the SEC’s X account, which he shared with others who broke into the account and sent the post, the Justice Department says.
Prosecutors say after Council returned the iPhone he used for the SIM swap, his online searches included: “What are the signs that you are under investigation by law enforcement or the FBI even if you have not been contacted by them.”
An email seeking comment was sent Thursday to an attorney for Council, who is charged in Washington’s federal court with conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and access device fraud.
The price of bitcoin swung from about $46,730 to just below $48,000 after the unauthorized post hit on Jan. 9 and then dropped to around $45,200 after the SEC’s denial. The SEC officially approved the first exchange-traded funds that hold bitcoin the following day.
Google, Meta and TikTok have removed social media accounts belonging to an industrial plant in Russia’s Tatarstan region aimed at recruiting young foreign women to make drones for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Posts on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok were taken down following an investigation by The Associated Press published Oct. 10 that detailed working conditions in the drone factory in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, which is under U.S. and British sanctions.
Videos and other posts on the social media platforms promised the young women, who are largely from Africa, a free plane ticket to Russia and a salary of more than $500 a month following their recruitment via the program called “Alabuga Start.”
But instead of a work-study program in areas like hospitality and catering, some of them said they learned only arriving in the Tatarstan region that they would be toiling in a factory to make weapons of war, assembling thousands of Iranian-designed attack drones to be launched into Ukraine.
In interviews with AP, some of the women who worked in the complex complained of long hours under constant surveillance, of broken promises about wages and areas of study, and of working with caustic chemicals that left their skin pockmarked and itching. AP did not identify them by name or nationality out of concern for their safety.
The tech companies also removed accounts for Alabuga Polytechnic, a vocational boarding school for Russians aged 16-18 and Central Asians aged 18-22 that bills its graduates as experts in drone production.
The accounts collectively had at least 158,344 followers while one page on TikTok had more than a million likes.
In a statement, YouTube said its parent company Google is committed to sanctions and trade compliance and “after review and consistent with our policies, we terminated channels associated with Alabuga Special Economic Zone.”
Meta said it removed accounts on Facebook and Instagram that “violate our policies.” The company said it was committed to complying with sanctions laws and said it recognized that human exploitation is a serious problem which required a multifaceted approach, including at Meta.
It said it had teams dedicated to anti-trafficking efforts and aimed to remove those seeking to abuse its platforms.
TikTok said it removed videos and accounts which violated its community guidelines, which state it does not allow content that is used for the recruitment of victims, coordination of their transport, and their exploitation using force, fraud, coercion, or deception.
The women aged 18-22 were recruited to fill an urgent labor shortage in wartime Russia. They are from places like Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, as well as the South Asian country of Sri Lanka. The drive also is expanding to elsewhere in Asia as well as Latin America.
Accounts affiliated to Alabuga with tens of thousands of followers are still accessible on Telegram, which did not reply to a request for comment. The plant’s management also did not respond to AP.
The Alabuga Start recruiting drive used a robust social media campaign of slickly edited videos with upbeat music that show African women smiling while cleaning floors, wearing hard hats while directing cranes, and donning protective equipment to apply paint or chemicals.
Videos also showed them enjoying Tatarstan’s cultural sites or playing sports. None of the videos made it clear the women would be working in a drone manufacturing complex.
Online, Alabuga promoted visits to the industrial area by foreign dignitaries, including some from Brazil, Sri Lanka and Burkina Faso.
In a since-deleted Instagram post, a Turkish diplomat who visited the plant had compared Alabuga Polytechnic to colleges in Turkey and pronounced it “much more developed and high-tech.”
According to Russian investigative outlets Protokol and Razvorot, some pupils at Alabuga Polytechnic are as young as 15 and have complained of poor working conditions.
Videos previously on the platforms showed the vocational school students in team-building exercises such as “military-patriotic” paintball matches and recreating historic Soviet battles while wearing camouflage.
Last month, Alabuga Start said on Telegram its “audience has grown significantly!”
That could be due to its hiring of influencers, who promoted the site on TikTok and Instagram as an easy way for young women to make money after leaving school.
TikTok removed two videos promoting Alabuga after publication of the AP investigation.
Experts told AP that about 90% of the women recruited via the Alabuga Start program work in drone manufacturing.
