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Fishermen, coast guards worry Singapore most in South China Sea

Bloomberg Published on Mon, Oct 03, 2016 / 7:45 AM GMT+8

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SINGAPORE (Oct 3): The risk of a clash in the South China Sea lies with non-military ships, Singapore’s defence minister said, as China deploys more heavily armed coast guard vessels in the disputed waters.

Singapore has joined other nations in the region and the US in warning the reliance on fishing boats and coast guards to assert territorial claims in the South China Sea raises the prospect of an incident. China has used its so-called white hull fleet to chase and shoo ships including fishing boats from other countries away from the reefs it claims.

A practical concern for nations whose ships travel through the area -- it’s a key shipping lane that carries as much as US$5 trillion ($6.8 trillion) in trade a year -- is how to develop processes to defuse incidents as they occur, Ng Eng Hen told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of Southeast Asian and US defence ministers in Hawaii.