China attacks fishing boats in conquest of South China Sea
latimes.com
latimes.com
You might say "the consequence is that they look bad", but they don't, at least not to the people they care about - mainlanders. They own and/or control the news media in mainland China. To produce an anti-CCP news piece in China is suicide for these companies.
External "free" media have their own interests and biases, meaning they may or may not publish articles depending on whether they coincide with their goals. If a bad China news piece makes the current President they support look bad, do you really think it makes headline news?
Honestly, I'm not really sure what to suggest here. Some HN users will post some ideas no doubt, but ultimately the most concerning thing is that none seem to have naturally emerged dominant so far.
[1] https://www.todayonline.com/world/asia/indonesia-sinks-41-il... [2] https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/1672020/indonesia-sinks-51...
This is just the first example but you can find many more:
For example the video you linked is of a Chinese boat operating ~350km off the coast of Argentina, which is nearly the opposite side of the world from China.
In contrast, the waters claimed by China in the South China Sea are just off the coast of Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, and not in close proximity to China [1]. The Permanent Court of Arbitration has also ruled that there is "no legal basis for China to claim historic rights" over the nine-dash line.[2]
They are however, very conveniently located over a large number of unexploited oil and gas deposits.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_disputes_in_the_So...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_China_Sea#2016_ruling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00rMVee0R4c
And there are examples from other countries too.
In fact the "9-dash line" so strongly defended by the Chinese (Mainland) Government dates from WWII and the ROC claims over Japanese-occupied territory.
There is no right and wrong here. For a long time the neighbouring countries, including China, did not pay much attention, then Europeans and Americans colonised the region, now everyone is fighting their corner to further their own interests. It so happens that China has regained strength and has adopted a "just do it" approach similar to the time-honoured one Western countries have historically taken. I.e. they've learned the game at their own expense.
Realistically, no entity, government or otherwise is taking any concrete steps to say no to China in the south China Sea.
Doing "drive bys" is hardly actual action, like say dismantling a Chinese base made in international waters. THAT would be concrete action, and I bet they would get all upset but ultimately do nothing (unless it's too Australia, in which case they'll find some other product to ban).
If nobody is going to stand up to them, it's all over already. In a generation, people will just say "oh isn't that all China's territory?"
> people will just say "oh isn't that all China's territory?"
You're already doing that. I feel like I'm witnessing a bizzare form of doublethink seeing people refer to a body of water as the "South China Sea" and then becoming outraged that China would lay claim to said body of water named after them.
This paragraph completely decontextualizes what's going on and makes it sound like the Chinese state is just rolling around blowing up ships for fun. In reality, fishing in international waters has always been messy.
>You might say "the consequence is that they look bad", but they don't, at least not to the people they care about - mainlanders. They own and/or control the news media in mainland China. To produce an anti-CCP news piece in China is suicide for these companies.
This is just orientalism. Unlike us normal westerners, they don't care about what other people think! How scary!
>External "free" media have their own interests and biases, meaning they may or may not publish articles depending on whether they coincide with their goals. If a bad China news piece makes the current President they support look bad, do you really think it makes headline news?
This is delusional, as I discuss here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25121329
>Doing "drive bys" is hardly actual action, like say dismantling a Chinese base made in international waters. THAT would be concrete action, and I bet they would get all upset but ultimately do nothing (unless it's too Australia, in which case they'll find some other product to ban).
This is just bloodthirsty lol.
I've spent time in Vietnam and China, both of which are in the orient and as far as I can see this is a case of China being a bully and using aggression to grab territory off Vietnam and similar. I'd be more anti bully than anti orient.
>You might say "the consequence is that they look bad", but they don't, at least not to the people they care about - mainlanders. They own and/or control the news media in mainland China. To produce an anti-CCP news piece in China is suicide for these companies.
Because that claim is wrong. Remember the cute stories earlier this year about Chinese internet users using various methods to circumvent censorship of a Renwu interview with Dr. Ai Fen: https://qz.com/1816219/chinese-internet-rallied-to-save-a-ce... ? Renwu is a Chinese magazine, publishing that interview hasn't been suicide for them.
I wish Japan would extend its navy and actively deter China. Too bad Mr. Abe had to resign his post serving as PM, he wanted to revisit article 9 of Japan's constitution. An reiterpretation was made allowing Japan to exercise collective self defense.
The nine-dash line claims were invalidated on the grounds that controlling small islands without permanent settlement doesn't extend the EEZ, so the EEZ is limited to 200 nautical miles from the coastline. But there's a lot within 200 nmi from the Chinese coast, including the Paracels, where those Vietnamese fishermen in the article were attacked by the Chinese coast guard. Simply defending their EEZ, as they have every right to do. Except the Paracels are also within 200 nmi of the Vietnamese coast, so the maritime boundary is up for negotiation. Vietnam and China have a treaty delineating the boundary in the Gulf of Tonkin, but otherwise it's still unspecified.
As for Japan, they're on the other side of Taiwan, so their EEZ doesn't extend nearly far enough to make any claims in the South China Sea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_Delimitation_in_the_B...
Vietnam should bring the case to court and employ some good negotiators. It's the only potentially constructive strategy for them, as outmuscling China is out of the question. If China won't respect the court's decision, the international community can then condemn them, issue tariffs and sanctions and Vietnam could legally fire warning shots and sink their coast guard vessles entering its EEZ.
It is legitimate to criticise a nation state based on their behaviour, foreign policy, etc.
I criticise the US or "western" countries plenty, just not on the top of expansionism in the south China Sea.
My point above is that no power is doing anything of substance about China expanding and laying a tacit claim out to the nine dash line, and that in a generation, give or take, it will be taken for granted that the region is China's territory.
Granted, this is beyond the scope of the article, namely fishing in that region, but the article suggested (though did not state, and may well have not intended) that some of the aggressive Chinese boats were military.
I did not use "yellow peril" or "orientalism", I used "ignorance". I'm not opposed to criticism of China or it's foreign policy, I'm opposed to getting the facts wrong.
You say that "no power is doing anything of substance about China expanding and laying a tacit claim out to the nine dash line", which I assume means you are ignorant of the many cases of other countries' coast guards attacking Chinese fishing boats (as linked in other comments), Vietnam subsidizing fishers specifically for fishing in Chinese-controlled but Vietnamese-claimed waters (as mentioned in the article) or the US Navy's "freedom of navigation" operations (also mentioned in the article).
There's a narrative circulating in right-wing Chinese blogs that the US plans to use its network of military bases and client states across the western Pacific to neutralize the Chinese fleet while simultaneously launching a land-based invasion across the Korean peninsula and amphibious assaults all along the coast. Hopefully you realize that that's quite an absurd scenario and just a transparent excuse to call for greater military spending.
Similarly, it's absurd to claim that there's no opposition to Chinese expansionism, while the overall media consensus is one of opposition and there are many instances where such opposition manifested as actual physical violence.
Talking up how strong your enemies are and how no one can stop them is one of the oldest tricks in the military propaganda book. Julius Caesar wrote about how strong and dangerous the Gauls were before he went and conquered all of their territory.
I have not got the facts wrong.
I said "no power is doing anything _of substance_ about China expanding" and that is a _fact_.
Coast guards attacking illegal Chinese fishing boats is a good step for illegal fishing but it is laughably small if it's meant to rebuke China for installing military bases on islands into the contested waters.
I don't see how Vietnam subsidizing fishers is relevant.
The US and other Navy forces are _entitled_ to sail through international waters by definition. Calling it "freedom of navigation" and doing _nothing_ else is on those trips is, for want of a better word, "cute".
None of these are acts _of substance_.
The _fact_ is that no power wants to poke the bear.
For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not saying those nations are wrong to avoid a substantial act. I'm not even saying China occupying those islands is wrong, nor am I saying it's right. I'm simply saying that no power has or will stand up properly to China. The govt / armed forces / press / etc don't like the expansion but they're not actually going to do anything about it.
As a result, in a couple of decades, the frog will be slowly boiled, and eventually the whole region will be assumed to be China's. That's all I'm saying.
> Similarly, it's absurd to claim that there's no opposition to Chinese expansionism
If you mean me, I made no such claim.
I simply said there have been no acts of substance to demonstrate this opposition.
I dearly wish I could read and speak Chinese. I haven't read the blogs you speak of (so I'll accept I'm ignorant on that), but with that said, is it really a shock that right wing blogs in country A says that nefarious forces in country B or C are itching to invade them? I see that ridiculous narrative often. Americans / Australians / insert-preferred-power-here thinking China will invade. It's tiresome and repetitive. For all of China's expansionist angst and insecurity-driven surveillance, I don't think of it as a warmongering nation.
I didn't follow your point about Caesar.
Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, South/North Korea have all seized Chinese fishing vessels before. Some recently. These countries also regularly seize each other's illegal fishing boats, the entire region is an overlapping web maritime disputes. The difference is China is a juggernaut, larger in population and economy than all other claimants combined. 14 Trillion GDP = capabilities to vastly out muscle everyone else. Same story with SCS islands, where China was _responding_ to other claimants reclamation and weaponization efforts. But Chinese reclaiming at Chinese scale will crush everyone else.
The fishing parallel is growing Chinese coast guard and structuring of maritime militia means Chinese fishing vessels get better support and more lenient treatment from other coat guards as Chinese force balance grows. Recent Chinese SCS skirmishes are relatively peaceful compared to others, whose mutual clashes frequently escalate to bloodshed because small peer countries can escalate and be brutal to each other. Obviously such reports rarely gets attention in western reporting, nor that per capita China underfishes, or fishing fleets from other wealthier per capita countries is sustained through foreign slave labour, whereas China's is just... cheap Chinese labour.
China SCS Monroe doctrine is balancing from this perspective. Philippines finally agreed to "cooperate" with China on SCS oil exploration, setting up frameworks for other members. RCEP this week without US or India. Short of war with USN, it's just a matter of time before China tames the SCS. For context, this is newly projected growth of PLA Navy 14th five-year plan for 2025. Only surface combatants.
https://preview.redd.it/yxsbgotn6kz51.jpg?width=1024&auto=we...
In the next 5 years, China will build approximately entire Japanese Navy in tonnage. It will do so with ~2% of GDP in defense spending, basically what Trump wants NATO members to comit. And as Australia, Japan, Korea are setting record high defense budget growth, China will be increasing national defense by 6.6% this year, lowest in decades. This is the fundamental reality of disportionate Chinese scale and industrial capability, even modest spending means the kind of acquisitions that will make neighbours shit bricks and US worry over hegemony. The alternative is... China not spending money a reasonable amount on defense and modernization, not enforcing her claims, which is a ridiculous expectation.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. The whole reason they have to resort to land reclamation to create artificial islands for their military bases is that they were late to the party and all the good spots on existing islands were already taken, mostly by Vietnamese bases: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Spratly_...
Now holding those islands doesn't help Vietnamese fishermen much when they encounter other countries' coast guards out in the open sea, but the bases still provide a convenient place to shelter if they happen to be close by.
Military expenditure is just a good excuse to jumpstart a high tech manufacturing economy.
This "2%" figure is a top contender for "the biggest load of bullshit in politics" award, I (as a German, if it's relevant) hate it with a passion.
The reason is simple - all this target does is incentivize waste and disincentivize control and oversight. After all, if the only thing that's compared is how much money was spent... what's to keep states from blowing the money on bullshit and hoping that the US will save their butt once again?
What would be way better is to define goals on capability targets. Like... France being responsible for having one combat ready aircraft carrier, Germany 200 tanks, UK 7 nuclear submarines. That way governments would be incentivized to keep the vendors accountable to deliver safe and working products at reasonable cost, instead of basically letting them do whatever the f..k they want and milking the taxpayers for shit like marine helicopters that aren't certified for flight over sea (German NH90 scandal).
Against whom? In practice, NATO is an offensive alliance: Afghanistan, Libya and Bosnia were not defensive wars.
NATO military spending already dwarfs that of any potential rival. Every dollar spent on the military is a dollar not spent on social programs, hospitals, schools, and other things that actually improve people's lives. Rather than pressuring everyone to ratchet up military spending, the world would be much better served by disarmament.
The NIH, NOAA, CDC, National Science Foundation, EPA, food stamps, farm subsidies, low income housing, and anything Obama ever cared about are obviously just wasting taxpayer dollars. But we need those extra aircraft carriers.
Yes, Europeans should invest more in Defence, but not in NATO, which should be let to fade into history.
The military is the strong arm of the political power. Giving a military branch to the EU would seal the deal in terms of creating a federal state.
This is why such initiatives are very limited and often more symbolic than anything else (e.g. Franco-German units) because sovereignty and control are very tricky matters to handle.
Then some countries, notably Germany, have issues with military power for historical reasons.
http://cimsec.org/chinas-claim-spratly-islands-just-mistake/...
https://twitter.com/bill_hayton
I don't think there's anything he writes that can be taken seriously.
The entire historic claims non sense is for the purpose of rebuking PCA ruling, since UNCLOS member states can opt out of compulsory UNCLOS arbitration as part of ratification Which China did because China only acceded to UNCLOS based on condition that territorial claims would be settled bilaterally. Another point conveniently omitted for current geopolitics. The point is, Chinese claims are as legitimate, as are _other_ claimants, but China more so, at least according to customary law. At the end of the day, none of it matters, because possessions is 9/10th of the law, and China possesses her claims.
What I found about the Cairo Declaration:
> The Cairo Declaration stated that “all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, including Manchuria, Formosa, shall be restored to the Republic of China.” The Spratlys and the Paracels were not seized or stolen by Japan from China. Japan seized the Paracels from the French and the Spratlys were unoccupied by any state when Japan established a submarine base in Itu Aba in 1939. In fact, in the 1943 China Handbook, an official publication of the Republic of China delineating China’s territory, China did not claim the Spratlys. The Cairo Declaration stated that “Japan will also be expelled from all other territories which she has taken by violence and greed.” The Spratlys and the Paracels fall under these “all other territories,” which were not awarded to any state in the Cairo Declaration.
What I found about the San Francisco Treaty:
> China, under the People’s Republic of China ruled by the Communists, denounced the 1951 San Francisco Peace Teary as illegal since China was not represented at the Peace Conference. The USSR’s motion to award the Spratlys and the Paracels to China was overwhelmingly rejected by the Peace Conference by a vote of 64 to 3, with one abstention.
>The Japanese accepted the terms of surrender set by the Potsdam Declaration, including the terms of the 1943 Cairo Declaration, which provided that Japan would return all Chinese territories that it had seized from China. Since Nansha and Xisha were occupied by Japan during World War II, they were returned to China. Thus, both the 1951 San Francisco Japan Peace Treaty and the 1952 Sino-Japan Treaty stipulated that Japan renounce all title and claim to Taiwan (Formosa), Penghu (Pescadores), the Parcel Islands and the Spratly Islands. Since then, Japan has not expressed any new position on China's claim of sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea.
Claimants who recognize Chinese claims: Indonesia, North vietnam
Claimants who didn't: South Vietnam, Malaysia, PHILIPPINES
Philippines emphasized since what you found/quoted is basically the Philippine legal position from by their chief justice, Antonio Carpio from last month. Obviously every country have their own biases, arguments for nullifying others claims and again they are _legitimate_ arguments. But the more detached analysis and literature, like this analysis from the 90s before everything popped off, gives greater credence Chinese position. Just to pick on Philippines claims on Scarborough Shoal, based off terra nullius, from the mid 50s, i.e. Filipino claims to be first state/peoples to occupy the shoal, which is... well fantastically absurd since ROC claimed the shoals in early 1900s, which predates Philippines as a sovereign state. They're so late to the party that their argument is... China (and Vietnamese) claims that predates even San Francisco treaty just don't exist. Although this line is interesting, I can't find info on it anywhere.
> USSR’s motion to award the Spratlys and the Paracels to China was overwhelmingly rejected by the Peace Conference by a vote of 64 to 3
From context, speculating USSR probably wanted to award it to PRC... which doesn't invalidate the notion that ROC claims were recognized, as reflected by international reactions at the time, by who would eventually represent China, which later passed to PRC after in 71. Anyway, the Filipino position is stupid, legitimate, but stupid. Just like some of the new Chinese straight baseline arguments in response to PCA ruling. Look it up. Insert Arrested Development meme on the absurdity of maritime law. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter, each party is motivated to find minutiae to argue their case, geopolitical interests will shift positions (lol at US neutrality). Ultimately, IR is more rule by law than rule of law. Everyone has legal arguments, some older and better than others. Everyone also has a navy, some bigger and more modern than others. SCS dispute is going to be solved by 9/10th possessions and naval tonnage. There's too much on the line for any other way.
Edit, to add, since I just connected Carpio dot to point about Sino-Philippine energy exploration I made in another comment: In Philippines case, Carpios letter was followed up by Philippine declaring they would start oil exploration in SCS. The timeline suggesting Philippines asserting itself... but later revealed to be with Chinese blessing [1]. That's SCS dispute politics.
[0] https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...
[1] https://amti.csis.org/a-philippine-china-deal-on-joint-devel...
What I gather they say is Japan gives up rights to the SCS and territories they siezed from China are returned to China (RPC, ROC, whatever).
However it doesn't say the Spratlys and the Paracels are returned to China, for example because Japan seized them from China.
I agree with your last points - the larger picture is that China can claim whatever they want, but their arguments aren't good enough to get the approval of major world players. So they'll have to protect their position with force or trading favors.
Which is inevitable, even in the 60s when significant countries were fine with Chinese claims, these legalities barely mattered to resolving the disputes since no interested party had the power to enforce anything. There's so much resources and security tied to maritime control in this region that this is only a dispute that can be solved through force. Along the same lines, it doesn't matter what regional or major world players think about Chinese legal arguments if China can enforce it via tonnage. Right now the only viable opposition is USN + FONAPS. But that's kind of status quo US+China is comfortable with, everyone dick waves without touching tips.
The important point in terms of "claims" is where previously plurality parties endorsed Chinese legal nitpicks (hence China has the earliest and strongest claims), now they do not, not because other claimants have better arguments, but because geopolitical interests changed. The quality of the arguments do not matter, nor the laws if we're honest. China explicitly did not submit to UNCLOS arbitration mechanism, so the PCA ruling hack was not to decide on sovereignty but maritime boundary but defining what is / is not features to deprive China (and other countries) of EEZ and territoriality. Right now China "adheres" by limiting weaponization, and drafting other legal arguments to legitimize holdings for more territorial perks. But that's just a stalling tactic until Chinese Navy is large enough to control the region defacto.
This is what I don't agree with. It seems you were referring to those treaties to show that the world accepted China's argument. But I don't see the evidence of that; at most they were just non-committal.
Of course it matters how good their argument is – if it was stronger than enough countries would be interested in maintaining stable international order to back them up.
>Of course it matters how good their argument is – if it was stronger than enough countries would be interested in maintaining stable international order to back them up.
No international actor wants a regional Asian hegemony except China, there's no argument strong enough to override such interests. And there's no argument strong enough to form consensus among 6 claimants or US desire for Chinese containment. SCS is simply not a dispute that can be solved legally / multilaterally anymore, unless bilaterally under Chinese terms like original UNCLOS accession conditions. In the meantime, China has the industrial capacity change the conditions on the ground. Probably the most expedient method now, hence arguing over claims is not productive. The claims exist with clear historical documentation, for pretense of Chinese enforcement, that's all that matters.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_territorial_disputes
Many are claimed by the US as well.
Conquest isn’t the only way countries gain territory by a long shot, and whataboutism can’t justify what China’s doing today either.
An unelected government is not a government, it's just a group of thugs who happen to have control over a capital city.
If China has any sort of legitimate government at all it's the one in Taiwan which was at least elected by somebody. But really, mainland China has no government, and the CCP should not be talked to or negotiated with as if they are a government.
Whether or not you like the government of the PRC, it is the government of China.
Jokes aside if the legitimate government are only the elected one lets wipe 2/3 of the world's government lol.
Taiwan is a dispute territory because the kuomintang after they lost the civil war in China they moved to Taiwan and claimed the territory. Taiwan was not even a democracy after that but rather a military dictatorship with the martial law being applied till 1987 (from 1949, year in which they lost the civil war in China)
Only after that Taiwan started to open their system and allow general election in the 1990s (in some form in 1991, 1992 and presidential election only in 1996)
Certainly Taiwan never had a legitimate government either until recently but now they do, demonstrating that it can be done. I hope that the CCP can peacefully give up power too, but we should not take any military options off the table.
The fact that someone elected the government doesn't change anything. People can be manipulated easily, look at who voted for Trump. The reality is that you've to see the history objectively.
CCP won the civil war in China (like Washington won the independence war) and is the legitimate government of China.
Luckily we don't vote for who is legitimate or not in HN, but in the UN. And there are resolutions of the UN that consider the CCP the legitimate government of China. The same can't be said for Taiwan for example.
I'm sorry but the down votes don't change the fact. Your view of what happened is pretty foggy and inaccurate, perhaps full of bias.
The fact that the CCP has a group of men with guns occupying China does not make them in any sense a government, it just makes them the world's largest and most murderous criminal gang. We should stop pretending that China has a government and start working on how to bring them to the Hague for trial.
Country is not defined by the existence of an election process! Taiwan is not recognized as a county by the UN! While the CCP is recognized as the legitimate government of China
Also China has been claiming control over Taiwan ever since they won the civil war, so is not true what you're saying here that nobody has claimed Taiwan.
> The fact that the CCP has a group of men with guns occupying China
Well.. first they were not a bounce of men with guns they had the support of millions of people in China! And the reason was pretty easy, the old government (that become the Komingtan) sold China to the west and Japan (look for Nanjing puppet state [1]) and they were not happy about it by any means! So yes, they had all the rights to start the revolution to fight a corrupted government.
But even if they were a bounce of random people, the Brits went in Australia with guns and all and claim "this is mine now" and as you can see nobody is complaining about it. Before that they went to the current American continent and claim the land as well with guns and all, guess who won?
I hope the LA times are taking their responsibilities seriously and not reporting things in an incendiary way. I'd rather see an unfair peace in Asia than a big war in my lifetime. The US is an underdog against China here, China is bigger, has more ability to exert power and has much at stake.
That reminds about a friend who served in USSR coast guard and was telling stories back then how they were harassing Japanese fishermen who were illegally fishing in USSR waters - instead of shooting though, they would usually shake down the fishermen for various goodies.
the flash point will probably be when Xi Xinping dies of old age and the different chinese subfactions fight over who gets to be next president for life.
First, the Chinese fishing fleets increasingly are venturing far away from their own shores, just as fleets from other nearby countries are also venturing further from their own shores. This is because shore fishing is drying up, due to unsustainable overfishing and ecological collapse. China's distant fishing fleets are thought to have caused the deaths of impoverished North Koreans, by taking over catches from their waters (https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/china-illegal-fishing-fleet...). They are also taking over West African and Antarctic waters (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/beijing-fishing-...). They even have tried to fish off the Galapagos using giant factory fishing ships that allegedly turned off their AIS maritime tracking signals to avoid detection (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/21/china-sq...). China operates the world's largest fishing fleet, with the largest volume of catch, and their scale of operation threatens environments and fishing economies worldwide.
Secondly, the Chinese fishing fleet is highly aggressive and often violent. The NBC article I linked above details an incident where a large number of Chinese fishing vessels took shelter in a South Korean bay to ride out a storm, and also destroyed the environment during their short stay, illegally dumping oil, dragging anchors, and more. The LA times article I linked here also details how bigger Chinese fishing vessels (often with steel hulls subsidized by the Chinese government) will ram smaller fishing vessels from countries like Vietnam or the Philippines. They often steal equipment off those vessels, and even their entire catch, and leave the ship adrift and in need of repairs. And as the LA Times article noted, there are barbaric incidents where crew will hurl hammers or cement blocks at foreign crews of smaller vessels, or even beat them.
Thirdly, encroachment in South China Sea waters is enabled by the increasing aggression of the Chinese naval fleet. Despite naval exercises by the US to assert rights of navigation, China has continued to expand a web of artificial islands that host barely-hidden naval installations with airstrips, missiles, and more. Although the US has made public statements asserting that China's claims to the South China Sea are unlawful (https://www.state.gov/u-s-position-on-maritime-claims-in-the...), that has not changed much on the ground for smaller nations who are victims of China's bullying on the high seas. In fact, in 2020 China's operations in the South China Sea are more aggressive than ever, with COVID serving as a convenient distraction for increased naval imperialism (https://asiatimes.com/2020/04/chinas-covid-19-imperialism-sp...). With increasingly frequent incidents where one country detains another country's fishing vessels and crew, the situation is becoming charged and tense (https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/12/asia/malaysia-china-japan-sea...). China is accordingly stepping up its military activities, with naval exercises (https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/china/2020/c...) and testing of anti-ship ballistic missiles (https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/37662/chinese-long-ran...).
Taking all this together, I can't help but view it as a complete failure of other Asian countries to cooperate against a mutual aggressor, and a failure of the liberal West to manage and contain China to the interest of many nations. Empty diplomatic statements, political posturing, and ineffective performative naval exercises are not the answer to a violent and aggressive actor. But no one is stepping up to answer the calls for help from poorer countries like Vietnam.
It's run by the party who got dramatically voted out at the last election. Even their supporters call it a "backdoor" government.
The former PM who stole billions and was found guilty of all charges was sentenced to 12 years in prison yet still sits in Parliament while getting friendly media interviews, he gave a speech on the budget just the other day representing all of the backbench.
I always find the South China Sea discussions interesting because I'd love to hear who people actually think deserves ownership of it?
The Philippines is run by a proud mass murdering nutjob, Vietnam is China-lite, Brunei just tried to roll out the death penalty for gay people. Malaysia is steadily gaining more extreme Islamists in power who bizarrely blame the Jews for everything that goes wrong like it's a country run by 4chan.
Who exactly deserves all that oil and fish? It's none of the above in my opinion.
Go and critically read history books/articles/etc my friend, not only by the colonial regimes namely Spain, British, Dutch and France that have plundered the countries that you have just mentioned, and what names these areas are collectively called (yes they have their names) few centuries back before the dark colonial era started.
After that you probably know to whom the oil and fish belongs since these people have been fishing there for centuries. Truth and facts really matter but not your random opinions.