This marked the first time a foreign military has boarded a Philippine vessel within its territorial waters and confronted Filipino troops by grabbing their firearms.

A reliable source said that Filipino troops on a resupply mission maintained "utmost restraint," averting a potential violent confrontation.

"The firearms taken by the Chinese were not recovered. Our soldiers left Ayungin Shoal without their guns, which remain in Chinese possession. The narrative that the firearms were returned is false," the source stated.

"Our soldiers were manhandled the Chinese forces were extremely aggressive. Our troops showed tremendous restraint to avoid escalating the situation, but the Chinese were relentless, and we did not fight back," the source added.

China included the death penalty for "particularly serious" cases among judicial guidelines on criminal punishments for "diehard" supporters of Taiwanese independence published on June 21, state media reported.

Beijing views democratic Taiwan as part of its own territory and has refused to renounce using force to unify with the self-ruled island one day.

It has stepped up pressure on Taipei in recent years and held war games around the island last month following the inauguration of its new leader Lai Ching-te.

State news agency Xinhua said on Friday Beijing had released a notice about punishing "Taiwan independence' diehards for splitting the country and inciting secession".

It said the notice specified the death penalty for "ringleaders" of independence efforts who "cause particularly serious harm to the state and the people".

Other leading advocates could face jail terms ranging from 10 years to life imprisonment, the notice said, according to Xinhua.

Taipei hit back swiftly, saying Beijing "has no legal jurisdiction at all over Taiwan" and that the rules "had no binding force on our people".

"The actions of the Beijing authorities will only provoke confrontation between the peoples across the Taiwan Strait... and are not conducive to positive developments in cross-Strait ties," the island's Mainland Affairs Council said in a statement.

A day after the Chinese Foreign Ministry objected to an exchange of congratulatory messages between Taiwanese President William Lai Ching-te and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi reiterated Beijing's objection and declared Taiwan is an "inalienable part" of China. The protest by the Chinese mission came two days after Taiwan's President congratulated Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"There is no such thing as 'president' of the Taiwan region. Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's territory. The Government of the People's Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China. This is an undeniable fact, a universal consensus of the international community and a basic norm in international relations," said the Spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy in India in a social media post on X.

Responding to the message, Mr. Modi thanked the Taiwanese leader and expressed hope for "closer ties" that would enhance "mutually beneficial economic and technological partnership." The Prime Minister did not address Mr. Lai as 'President'.

The guidelines detail what is considered a crime worthy of punishment, including promoting Taiwan's entry to international organisations where statehood is a condition, having "external official exchanges" and "suppressing" parties, groups and people that promote "reunification".

The guidelines add a further clause to what could be considered a crime   "other acts that seek to separate Taiwan from China"   meaning the rules can be broadly interpreted.

'One China' recognition no longer sufficient when meeting Beijing's top leaders

WASHINGTON -- When Chinese Premier Li Qiang visited Malaysia last week, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said that his country firmly supports China in "achieving national reunification."

Support for China's "reunification" with Taiwan was not a phrase that Anwar used when he met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing in March 2023, at least according to the Chinese readout. But Anwar joins a list of Global South and other leaders who have recently mentioned "reunification" in their meetings with Li or President Xi Jinping -- a trend that has not gone unnoticed by Western analysts.

BEIJING/TOKYO, June 24 (Reuters) - Chinese and Japanese coast guard vessels engaged in a stand off in around a group of disputed islands in the East China Sea on Monday, according to statements from both countries.

The islands, referred to as the Senkakus in Japan and the Diaoyus in China, are claimed by both countries. Coast guard vessels from both nations frequently patrol the contested waters.
Beijing on Monday said it took "necessary control measures" and "drove away" four Japanese fishing vessels and several patrol boats between June 20-24.

"We urge Japan to immediately cease all illegal activities in the area and ensure similar incidents do not recur," a spokesperson from China's coast guard said in a statement.

In a separate news release late Monday, the Japan Coast Guard said two of four Chinese coast guard ships in the area on Monday headed for Japanese fishing vessels operating in the territorial waters around the islands, but were "warned not to approach" and "repeatedly ordered to leave".

TOKYO (AP)   Chinese coast guard vessels have been passing by Japanese-claimed waters for weeks in the East China Sea and China's warships have been edging near Japan's southwestern islands in recent days, Japanese officials said.

A fleet of four Chinese coast guard vessels on Thursday passed just outside of the territorial waters of Japan-controlled islands, which Beijing also claims, for the 49th day in a row, the Japanese Coast Guard said.

It warned China's vessels against further approaching the islands, called the Senkaku in Japanese, while Beijing calls them the Diaoyu. China's Coast Guard on Tuesday acknowledged that it was patrolling waters off the Diaoyu Islands, which are also claimed by Taiwan.

China routinely sends coast guard vessels and planes into waters and airspace surrounding the islands to harass Japanese vessels in the area and force Japan to scramble jets in response.

Japan Coast Guard Commandant Shohei Ishii said last month that Chinese Coast Guard activity in infiltrating Japanese territorial waters violates international law, and that the "situation is extremely serious and is unpredictable."

A fleet of four Chinese coast guard vessels sailed into territorial waters off the disputed Senkaku Islands on Wednesday, after Japan's Defense Ministry highlighted China as the country's most pressing national security threat in an annual white paper 24 hours earlier.

A spokesperson for the Japanese Embassy called recent Chinese actions in the East China Sea "extremely regrettable," adding that Tokyo intended to continue responding firmly but calmly.

On Tuesday, Japan's Ministry of Defense white paper devoted a chapter to Chinese coast guard activities in the East China Sea. In the preface of the report, Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi called attention to "problematic provisions" in Beijing's new Coast Guard Law, which was enacted in February.

The law was inconsistent with international law, Kishi wrote. "Sources of inconsistency include, among others, ambiguity as to geographical areas the CCG Law applies and how the rules governing the use of weapons are implemented."

"The CCG Law must not be allowed to infringe on the legitimate interests of the relevant countries including Japan. Furthermore, the raising of tensions in the East China Sea and other sea areas is completely unacceptable," he added.

A total of 1,161 Chinese maritime patrol ships spent some 333 days around the disputed Senkaku Islands in 2020, according to the ministry's white paper. Observers expect the annual figure to be broken this year.

The defense report leaves little doubt about China's role as Japan's biggest national security threat, necessitating not only a bolstering of Tokyo's alliance with the United States, but also an increase of Japan's own defense capabilities.

TAIPEI (Taiwan News)   A U.S.-based consultant on Thursday (June 27) pointed out that China has sent over 100 military aircraft into Taiwan's air defense identification zone (ADIZ) over the past week.

Ian Ellis, the founder of IEJ Media, posted a Ministry of National Defense (MND) map to X with the flight paths of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft detected around Taiwan from 6 a.m. Wednesday (June 26) to 6 a.m. Thursday (June 27). Ellis said that the 141 Chinese military aircraft reported by the MND in the ADIZ between June 21-27 were the most seen in a single week since August 2022 and April 2023.

According to Ellis, Taiwan has tracked PLA aircraft more than 2,000 times operating around the Taiwan Strait in 2024 and over 1,000 times entering the ADIZ. Ellis said this latest surge began with one of the largest ADIZ intrusions this year, with 34 detected in the zone between 6 a.m. on June 20 and 6 a.m. on June 21.

This was followed by 41 PLA aircraft tracked around Taiwan over the next 24-hour period. On Thursday, the MND announced that 35 PLA planes had been detected around Taiwan.

Ellis told Taiwan News that the only other one-week periods that recorded more ADIZ incursions were August 2-8, 2022, when 182 PLA planes were tracked, and April 6-12, 2023, when 169 were detected. The August 2022 intrusions coincided with a visit by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, while the April 2023 violations followed former President Tsai Ing-wen's (   ) meeting with former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in Los Angeles.

The latest surge began on Friday, when China issued "22 Opinions" on punishing Taiwan independence activists allowing for trial in absentia, with the maximum penalty being the death sentence. On Tuesday (June 25), Lai rebuked China's autocratic system, said Beijing's new regulations have no legal basis, urged intraparty cooperation, and called for cross-strait dialogue.

Ellis added that Taiwanese Coast Guard Administration patrol boats had chased away four Chinese coast guard ships from Kinmen's restricted waters on Tuesday (June 25). This followed two previous gray zone incidents at sea including two Chinese coast guard ships detected approaching Kinmen on June 1 and the driving of a motorboat into the Tamsui River Estuary by a Chinese man on June 9.

The People's Liberation Army has conducted drills in the South China Sea featuring landing ships amid tensions over disputed islands with the Philippines.

A naval task force comprising landing ships Danxiashan, Laotieshan and Lushan conducted an all-weather full-course combat exercise over four days in the South China Sea, according to a report by CCTV on Saturday. The state broadcaster only said the drills were carried out "recently" and did not specify when they took place.

Training tasks included two ships berthing alongside each other and rescue practice, the report said.

The fleet also carried out air-defence training during which the "enemy's" drones were forced to move away after multiple rounds of fire by the task force, according to video in the CCTV report.

Danxiashan, a Type 072 III tank landing ship, also carried out a cover mission to other warships by releasing smoke, the video showed.

The drills tested the Chinese navy's emergency response and coordinated combat capabilities, it said.

Lushan is a Type 073A landing ship, according to public information. Landing ships are designed to support amphibious operations by transporting and deploying troops, vehicles and supplies onto hostile shores.

While the larger amphibious vessels can carry more troops and equipment and release them some way from shore, the smaller Type 072 and Type 073 series landing ships have "special roles to play" in grounding operations directly on islands and reefs, an anonymous military analyst was quoted by Global Times as saying.

In March, the PLA Navy landing ships Wuzhishan and Changbaishan also took part in drills in the South China Sea.

The recent state media revelation about the drills comes as Beijing and Manila have repeatedly confronted each other in the disputed South China Sea in recent months, especially over Second Thomas Shoal, which China calls Renai Jiao and the Philippines refers to as Ayungin Shoal.

Earlier this month, a Chinese navy Type 075 amphibious assault ship and a Type 071 amphibious landing ship were separately spotted in disputed waters in the South China Sea.

Beijing's political warfare influenced administrations into ignoring dangers, panel told

U.S. intelligence agencies are guilty of multiple failures to address threats posed by China over the past 40 years, resulting in current existential dangers to American security, a former Navy intelligence director told Congress on Wednesday.

Retired Navy Capt. James Fanell testified that the ruling Chinese Communist Party employed strategic deception and political warfare to fool both intelligence officials and executive branch policymakers into falsely assuming China posed no threat.

"Over the course of decades, [China] effectively misled our executive branch to ignore the PRC as a rising existential threat," said Capt. Fanell, former director of intelligence and information operations for the Pacific Fleet. "In particular, the Department of Defense and the intelligence community were deceived by the CCP's skillful use of elite capture, deception, disinformation and propaganda programs."

The failures resulted in U.S. leaders unilaterally disarming psychologically, intellectually and militarily, despite what he said was evidence that China viewed the United States as its main enemy, he said.

"Even worse, our leaders help fund and otherwise enable China's military, economic and technological advances needed to destroy our military forces in the field and destroy our society and economy," Capt. Fanell said.

The testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability came during the committee's second hearing looking into Chinese political warfare activities against the United States.

Committee Chairman James Comer said the American people are aware that China poses the greatest foreign threat to the U.S. way of life.

Too few federal agencies, however, understand that Beijing is waging "an aggressive campaign of political warfare   a strategy to weaken our nation without firing a shot," the Kentucky Republican said. "The end goal is clear   to weaken and defeat America."

Capt. Fanell said that he was pushed out of the Navy 10 years ago after giving a speech approved by his superiors that warned of China's growing military capabilities in preparation for what he called a "short, sharp war" with the United States. He claimed that a civilian Pentagon official told him after the remarks that he was prohibited from making any similar speeches.

"I had contradicted the unwritten policy of 'not provoking' the PRC. Within a few months I was fired," he said.

The retired intelligence officer said American national security officials, both in intelligence agencies and policy departments, failed to correctly assess the threat from China and also failed to put policies in place to mitigate the danger.

"Now our nation faces a herculean task of confronting and defeating communist China's existential threat," he said. "We are not prepared intellectually, ideologically, organizationally, nor militarily."

Regarding the intelligence failures, Capt. Fanell testified that U.S. intelligence agencies engaged in what he called "threat deflation" in seeking to play down or ignore troubling strategic developments. The greatest intelligence failure was China's unchecked rise from underdeveloped nation to a peer rival to the United States, he said.

"For a generation, the [intelligence community] failed national security decision-makers, and the American people, regarding the growth of China's capabilities and intentions," Capt. Fanell said.

Intelligence analysts for about three decades failed to correctly identify Beijing's "malign intentions" and did not assess the role played by its communist ideology. Instead, intelligence agencies produced "gross errors" as a result of benign assumptions about Chinese strategic goals and objectives, he said.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Capt. Fanell's testimony.

Exponential growth

Since the 1980s, China's military power has grown exponentially, including a once-modest nuclear force that has rapidly expanded to what U.S.  nuclear force commanders have called "strategic breakout."

Capt. Fanell said one example of the intelligence failures involved incorrect assessments as late as 2006 asserting China's military had no intention of building aircraft carriers.

"Now less than 20 years later we know the results of this threat deflation: The PRC has put three aircraft carriers to sea in just over a decade," he said. "Unfortunately, this example was repeated time and again, always towards downgrading or denying the PRC's intentions or emerging capabilities."

The Pentagon shares the blame for failing to properly address threats posed by China, the captain contended. The U.S. Navy has declined from a 76-warship advantage over China in 2005 to the situation now where Beijing is deploying 39 more warships and submarines than the Navy.

New Chinese hypersonic and supersonic missiles give the PLA Navy a qualitative edge over the Navy, he contended.

"The U.S. Navy flag officer corps devolved from being an institution that had the moral integrity to 'revolt' over principled disagreements about our national security strategy and budget allocation in 1949, to a U.S. Navy today that is arguably outgunned by the PLA Navy without one admiral publicly speaking out in dissent or resigning," he said.

The danger of a conflict with China is increasing, Capt. Fanell said, and will take place on, over and below the high seas and ranging from Okinawa to Guam to Honolulu, from the West Coast and into the American homeland. "This will be a conflict the likes of which the U.S. has not experienced since World War II," he said.

The retired captain urged the committee to adopt seven recommendations, the first being a recognition that the national security community failed in assessing China.

Pro-China policies also must be replaced and a "Team B" intelligence analysis on China set up to better understand issues related to China.

The United States needs to target the ruling Communist Party and declare publicly to the leadership, the Chinese people, and all global audiences that the regime in Beijing is illegitimate, and that the United States is working with the Chinese people and allies to expel the party from power, he said.

In addition to rapidly building weapons needed to deter and defeat the PLA, the U.S. government must also start countering China political warfare operations that have subverted American defenses. "This must be done immediately," Capt. Fanell said.

Influence operations

Mary Kissel, a former senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, told the committee Chinese influence operations had targeted the State Department.

"I saw firsthand China's vast influence operations and why they are a threat to our national security," she stated. Chinese President Xi Jinping "has accelerated China's influence operations via expansion and empowerment of the United Front Work Department and other party-state apparatus."

The operations are disguised as innocuous and friendly exchanges such as sister-city agreements, business meetings, think tank conferences, and interviews with Chinese propaganda outlets, she said.

The activities as "all opportunities for 'grey zone' influence operations," Ms. Kissel said.

Chinese influence operations target diplomats and seek to soften their views of the regime in Beijing.

Chinese agents also conduct operations in the United States covertly using civil society organizations or community-based associations that are funded by Beijing and in some cases are controlled by the Ministry of Public Security, the party's police and security organization.

"We worked to correct these imbalances during the Trump administration using the tools available to the department, such as shuttering China's Houston consulate for its malign activities and reinvigorating long-standing but long-ignored restrictions on Chinese diplomats' travel," Ms. Kissel said.