China has kicked off a week of military drills in the South China Sea ahead of a hotly anticipated and potentially destabilising court ruling on its territorial claims in the region. China claims sovereignty over huge swaths of the resource-rich South China Sea, within what it calls the “nine-dash line”, but next week’s ruling may call into question the legal legitimacy of those claims. On 12 July, more than three years after the Philippines originally brought the case, the court is due to rule on whether Manila has the right to exploit waters claimed by both countries in the South China Sea. China often conducts military drills in the South China Sea and academics interviewed by China’s party-controlled media claimed the drills were a “normal naval activity to methodically maintain regional stability, which is not connected with specific events or targeted at certain countries”. CCTV, the country’s state broadcaster, said the manoeuvres were due to start at about 8am Beijing time on Tuesday.

Source: The Guardian July 05, 2016 06:04 UTC