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Mark J. Valencia, Visiting Senior Fellow at the Maritime Institute of Malaysia (MIMA), writes, “the real issue of course is China’s expanding blue water navy and its major submarine base on Hainan. Obviously it wants to protect its ‘secrets’ in the area including the activities and capabilities of its submarines and the morphology of the sea bottom. And just as intently, the US wants to know as much as it can about China’s submarine capabilities and the area it may one day need to do battle in. Thus such incidents are likely to be repeated and become more dangerous and they do not pertain to China and the US alone.”

Read a discussion of this article here.

Axel Berkofsky, Adjunct Professor at the University Milan and Advisor on Asian Affairs at the European Policy Centre (EPC) in Brussels, writes, “Sitting quietly on the sidelines of the process of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula, the EU has never been invited or made any clear efforts to become actively involved in the six-party North Korea nuclear talks. And while the US, Japan, South Korea, China and, of course, North Korea, call all the shots, Brussels waits for the right moment to step in.”

Read a discussion of this article here.