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Comment by bildung | Hacker News Reader

> Those claims pose a grave threat directly to global shipping and to regional fishing and mining rights, and indirectly to the largely peaceful maritime waters status quo globally.

European here, so this may be caused by selective reporting in different regions of the world, but here news is equally often about US military presence in the South China Sea. Looking at a globe and seeing the distance between US homeland and the South China Sea, I wonder who gave the US a mandate for military manoeuvers near the coast of another country? And how this makes China the aggressor?

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My understanding is that when it comes the US maneuvers in international waters of the South China Sea, the purpose is actually defensive. Part of international maritime law determining the owner of waterways includes considerations for actual control of areas.

By navigating international waters against China's wishes, the US is demonstrating to the international community that China does not control access to those waters. This prevents China from making claims that those waters should no longer be international and instead be China's.

So this isn't the US going off to provoke China (or if you still wish to see it so, at least not for no reason). This is the US exercising rights granted by international treaties in order to prevent China from making effectively false claims to those waters under those same treaties.

Is it purely a coincidence that it's right around the time the US is losing hegemony in that part of the world to China? How would the US react if China sent ships to secure the waters between the US and Mexico.

https://www.theweek.in/news/world/2021/09/14/china-most-adva...

Imagine if China had military base the US: https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/nintchdb...

Likely we’d find it amusing, as China is mostly incapable of projecting force outside of its immediate region and I shudder to think about the condition of their coastal navy after a cross pacific journey.

That said, I believe your point is valid, but the comparison breaks down once you look at the nuance of the situation. If Mexico feels they can get a better deal by partnering with China to do joint fleet ops in the Gulf of Mexico then I’d say the US has done a very poor job of treating its neighbors correctly, and that needs to be reevaluated. It’s the same answer I have for China - Theyre doing a poor job of being a good neighbor to others in the region.

A more direct answer is that the US is doing the job on behalf of its traditional allies in the region who have claims over parts of the South China Sea which helps to maintain US soft power in the region.

The illegal land grabs in the South China Sea make China the aggressor.

The US navy presence is a reaction to that, and very welcome by almost all of the states on the coast except China, given that without the promise of US opposition, they would all rapidly become members of the Greater Chinese Coprosperity Sphere like Hong Kong and Macao did.

> here news is equally often about US military presence in the South China Sea.

You're misreading your news. The US is doing miliary manuvers in international waters specifically to asser that they are not near the coast of China and are free travel for all. Meanwhile, the Chinese are claiming islands that are no theirs (or building islands out of the sea floor) and putting military installations on those islands. They then claim that as part of China, and trying to assert more ownership of the ocean because of that. The US doing maneuvers near them is a statement that those claims are not recognized.

The British recently did the same thing in waters near Crimea to deny Russia's ownership.

Despite the name and what the CCP wants, the South China Sea is not Chinese. The US maneuvers to keep it international waters, so do we Europeans.

The US has every tight to sail however it wants in international waters, so do the Chinese.

If Chinese sent aircraft carriers 20 miles of Los Angeles, I'm pretty sure USA would react very harsh.

Wouldn’t that be 230 miles, or are there distinct international agreements that put China’s territorial borders eleven times closer their shores than other countries with a coastline?

China's land border with Vietnam terminates at the shore of this sea, so of course in that area the "territorial waters" don't extend so far. It's the same as e.g. Canadian waters located right next to USA. In addition, China and Philippines are separated by about 400 miles at their closest points, so that would curtail a 230 mile perimeter for at least one of those nations.

International waters are 24 Nautical miles Exclusive economic zone is 200 Nautical miles

So it would be ok (in theory) to have a warship 25 miles off the coast provided it wasn't fishing or drilling for oil

The Russians did/do this all the time, although mostly on the East Coast. There wasn't any reaction until they started moving missiles to Cuba though...

To cite Kennedy: “Are those Russians crazy? Putting missiles in Cuba is the same as if we put our missiles in Turkey”.

“But Mr. President, we already have our missiles in Turkey”.

Nowadays those missiles are much closer to Moscow than ever before.

Another European here, but with a different perspective: never seen any mainstream news suggesting US Navy is posing a threat to the Philippines, Vietnam, Japan or Taiwan (or even China). It seems the narative is mostly the same as in the US. Do you have examples of news reporting otherwise ?

Yes the bias is obviously also pro US, anti China, but that has been true since forever. It was the same at the beginning of the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions of the US, for example.

Nevertheless the facts themselves also tend to get reported, e.g.:

https://www.wienerzeitung.at/nachrichten/politik/welt/206683...

https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Deutsche-Fregatte-wird-auf-...

China wants war, just look how close they put their country to our military bases.

The US has defense agreements with at the very least Taiwan and the Philippines and more distantly Japan. Allowing China to claim the South China Sea would seriously hamper the US' ability to meet the obligations in those treaties. Not to mention that ensuring products produced in that area are able to be shipped through the South China Sea is absolutely essential as is evidenced by the effects of the current chip shortage. If access to TSMC products was suddenly cut off by China it would cause massive issues across the world and especially so in the US.

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