The Philippines, Japan and the U.S. completed their latest round of joint defense exercises in the South China Sea as tensions between Manila and Beijing escalate in the contested waterway.<\/p>\n
In a statement on Sunday, the Armed Forces of the Philippines said the three countries had deployed naval vessels and aircraft as part of the drill from July 21 to July 25. The exercises \u201cunderscore the enduring partnership among the partner nations in promoting peace, stability, and security in the Indo-Pacific region,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
The armed forces said the joint drills show the Philippines\u2019 commitment to ensuring freedom of navigation and overflight in the West Philippine Sea, Manila\u2019s term for the South China Sea portion that it claims.<\/p>\n
The joint activity happened as the Philippines and China reported several clashes over recent days that further heightened longstanding tensions. The Philippines, Japan and the U.S. have been stepping up joint military exercises in recent months as they seek a stronger alliance.<\/p>\n
China\u2019s People\u2019s Liberation Army said in a statement that it\u2019s organized air and naval forces to patrol the South China Sea on Sunday, and that the joint exercises initiated by the Philippines \u201cdamage regional peace and stability.\u201d China has been asserting its claims to large swathes of the South China Sea despite a 2016 ruling by an international tribunal that rejected them. Beijing argues the ruling was \u201cillegal\u201d as the court doesn\u2019t have jurisdiction over sovereignty issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Philippines, Japan and the U.S. completed their latest round of joint defense exercises in the South China…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64108,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12,360,8,14553,23,245,84],"class_list":["post-64107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-china","tag-defense","tag-japan","tag-msdf","tag-philippines","tag-south-china-sea","tag-u-s"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}