Region unsettled as China, Taiwan stir

TAIWAN aims to build a wharf and China is laying blocks on islands they claim in the South China Sea, increasing regional tensions.

TAIWAN has revealed plans to build a new wharf and China is laying concrete blocks on islands they claim in the South China Sea, at a time of confusingly mixed signals over Asia's most fiercely disputed area.

China has simultaneously signalled a shift towards a more accommodative policy on its islands and sea zones, and moved to consolidate its hold on territory it claims.

As a result of the Chinese block-laying on a shoal, The Philippines has recalled its ambassador from Beijing for consultations.

At the same time, Taiwan has budgeted $116.5 million over the next three years to build a wharf on Taiping, one of the hotly contested Spratly islands in the South China Sea, 1600km from Taiwan's southernmost city of Kaohsiung.

This risks stirring strong responses. The construction of the wharf will enable Taiwan to land heavy equipment to extend the runway there, so that large military transports, including Hercules, can land on the island.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, five of whose 10 members have claims in the South China Sea, has for years urged that all claimants should sign a code of conduct that would limit the range of behaviour in the sea zone - through which most of Australia's trade flows.

China has resisted, instead seeking resolution through bilateral negotiations in which it will always be the dominant participant.

On Tuesday, however, China's Premier Li Keqiang said at a China-ASEAN trade fair at Nanning, the capital of Guangxi, the area of China that borders Vietnam, that the country "would proceed systematically, and soundly push forward talks on the code of conduct for the South China Sea."

He told the audience, which included the Vietnamese and Thai prime ministers: "The Chinese government is willing and ready to assume a policy of seeking an appropriate resolution through friendly consultations."

Mr Li said China respected both historical reality and international law.

Its claims are rooted in its accounts of historical patterns of use of the South China Sea.

But The Philippines' foreign affairs spokesman Raul Hernandez accused China of laying 75 large concrete blocks on the disputed Scarborough Shoal.

The shoal is about 220km from the largest Philippine island of Luzon and is about 650km from Hainan island, the nearest part of China.

Mr Hernandez said that the blocks could be a prelude to the construction of buildings there - a claim that was denied by China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei.