China's Island Factory – New islands being made in disputed China Sea
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
It seems like China has figured out a way to hack the media (the free media outside of China, I mean -- the government there obviously has root on Chinese TV and newspapers).
Japanese ownership of this territory is basically as settled under international law as anything of this nature can be; the islands have been held by Japan since the 1800s, then controlled by the USA for a time after it defeated Japan in WWII, and eventually returned to Japan along with the return of Okinawa.[1]
But after China's slow and steady media campaign, it has somehow become widely reported as 'disputed territory'. (Which it is in a meaningless and pedantic sense only.)
This island-building is another hack, and maybe a clever one. Killing 70 Vietnamese soldiers in the military action in the 1980s to seize a submerged reef didn't make China look good at all.
But perhaps by building new 'islands' to buttress its aggressive and expansionist claims to the territorial waters of other nations, we may end up seeing the western media in ten years uncritically reporting that "China, which has 9 islands in the disputed waters, insists that it is merely defending its territory..."
Which is very important, because none of the countries whose territories China is going after -- not even Japan -- would do well in a straight up military conflict. The Philippines only hope is American protection. So the way China's aggression is covered in the western media is actually very important.
Interesting times.
[1]: http://csis.org/publication/japan-chair-platform-senkaku-isl...
I'm curious about why you don't think Japan would do well in a straight-up military conflict.
One is that there is always a higher level China could escalate to. I mean, in the end game they have nukes and Japan doesn't. But even if it didn't get to that level, China is a totalitarian regime with a history of brutally suppressing dissent, and I also assume that China would be willing to lose a lot more lives to make gains.
Japan is a high-functioning democracy, and has been one of the most peaceful advanced economies of the world since losing the war. Before that, yeah, they were a definite bad actor on the world stage. But they haven't committed any military aggression toward any country in more than 65 years.
It is my personal opinion that there is almost no way that the people of Japan (where I live, though I am American) would support a war against China. Even if China just up and landed an occupying force on Japan's Senkaku islands.
In a democracy, that public support really matters. In a totalitarian regime, not so much.
I don't personally know that much about the military stuff -- how much would Japan's superior equipment matter in an actual conflict -- so I'd be interested to hear more knowledgeable people chime in. But in Japan, a war with China would be politically untenable unless China like, invaded Tokyo, or something. Which is highly unlikely.
As with the Philippines, I think the USA is the main deterrent to Chinese aggression. And these days it's a pretty shaky deterrent.
Well, yeah. It's in their constitution.
> It is my personal opinion that there is almost no way that the people of Japan (where I live, though I am American) would support a war against China. Even if China just up and landed an occupying force on Japan's Senkaku islands.
Perhaps not over the Senkaku Islands, but I think that if China were aggressive toward one of the four main islands (or Okinawa), the Japanese people would definitely support war -- even if not in actual name. I was really surprised at the general sentiment toward the proposed amendment in that it was a lot more supportive than I personally would have expected from a heiwa-boke Japan.
Especially against China though, there's already a lot of dark, anti-China sentiment (especially with the recent chicken fiasco) that I feel like could be stirred up into support for a non-War armed conflict/proportional response... though I don't know how the people would act after seeing the results.
Edit: In addition, I feel like war-weary Americans would be similarly ambivalent about entering war against China if China tried to annex, say, Wake Island.
> As with the Philippines, I think the USA is the main deterrent to Chinese aggression.
This is for me personally the number one reason I don't think that China would be willing to escalate against Japan, actually. American bases in Japan can not only provide support, but attacks on them would draw America into the conflict necessarily.
But touch our territory, and you're going to wish you hadn't. It doesn't matter if nobody knows where Wake Island is or if nobody lives there. It doesn't matter if it's fairly unimportant. It's ours, and Americans are intensely territorial.
If China landed troops on Wake Island, I'm pretty sure that the less war-hungry side of Congress, whichever that may be at the time, would be calling for bombing campaigns, carrier task forces, and an immediate counter-invasion. The hawks would need to be bodily restrained from launching ICBMs.
The rest of your point is fair - for Japan to go to war would take a fundamental shift in the country, and its questionable whether the Senkaku Islands would meet that level. China is an aggressive, scary power in a lot of ways, and we ought to be cognizant of the dangers it poses - and the Japanese (and the Vietnamese, and the Phillipinos) are.
The estimates vary depending on how many and what kind of weapons they would build. Apparently Japan has a small stockpile of weapon-grade plutonium, and a huge stockpile of less refined plutonium. So they could build a small number of bombs quickly (the 6 month estimate), but building more would require either designing the weapon around less refined plutonium (which increases the risk that it would not work) or building a refinement plant (several years). They would also need some way to deliver the weapons---the most difficult option is ballistic missiles, which gives the 10-year estimate, while cruise missiles on submarines would be faster.
http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/85865 (see footnote 35 on page 11)
http://thediplomat.com/2012/10/japan-joining-the-nuclear-wea...
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/washington_quarterly/v026/26.1k...
> A nuclear triad — land- and sea-based missiles combined with weapons delivered by manned bombers — holds little promise in light of Japan's lack of geographic depth and the vulnerability of surface ships and aircraft to enemy action. That means fielding an undersea deterrent would be Tokyo's best nuclear option.
You don't make nuclear weapons in days. Unless you have no idea what you are talking about. Weapon grade uranium takes months to produce. Why do you think Iran has been trying for so long to make such material ?
Indeed.
Since the end of World War II, there have been 248 armed conflicts in 153 locations around the world. The United States launched 201 overseas military operations between the end of World War II and 2001, and since then, others, including Afghanistan and Iraq.
http://scientistsascitizens.org/2014/05/15/academics-and-sci...
As an American, the USA's bottomless well of rah-rah nationalism any time they trot out the troops has always been a mystery. But it's definitely there, and I don't think any other country since the USSR has come close to the USA in terms of attacking other countries.
I also disagree with the comment below about a war-weary USA having a tepid response to China seizing a minor uninhabited American island. I think public support for a military response would be huge, like always.
What I was saying was that in Japan specifically, that knee-jerk support would not be there.
I don't really know how to evaluate the claim myself as a removed outsider, but there seems to be a pretty credible claim that politically, China is economic growth addicted. IE, any kind of stagnation or substantially reduced growth rate endangers the political status quo.
People standing over their 14 year old kids to get the grades expect a salaried lifestyle for that kid in 10 years that isn't available today. They are expecting economic growth to create it. If, when that kid is 19 and in University it starts to look like a white collar job for graduates is unlikely, this kid studying Business and International Studies is not going to achieve what his parents worked. If he finds himself with something they unanimously agree is beneath him….
War is tricky.
OTOH, using (even engineering) an external crisis -- including outright war -- to redirect popular anger over current or expected domestic economic conditions is not unheard of.
Lets say China decides to call US bluff and lands Marines on Senkakus tomorrow. To do that they would need to sink multiple Japanese coast guard vessels and kill a lot of Japanese sailors. What next? Obama says something about how he is unhappy. Japan is now probably incapable of direct landing on Senkaku right now IF it is opposed. It is however more then capable to sweeping Chinese planes out of the sky in the area. In the air war tech and training >> numbers. The other aspect of the war will be naval and Japan operates the best submarine fleet in Asia, given freedom they would inflict horrendous losses on Chinese surface fleet.
Chillingly at the same time PM of Japan knowing that he was betrayed by US would give an order to weaponize Japanese stockpile of weapon grade material and in a matter of weeks? month? Japan will test multiple fusion devices. Now the real game begins.
In reality I do not think that China will play this game now, their leaders are not Putin and Japan is not Ukraine. I think confrontation or war between China and India and/or Japan will happen but not yet. 10-15 years from now?
I almost choked on that one. Yeah, a democracy when there's a change of prime minister every single year or less, can surely be defined as "high functioning". It's as functional as the 4th Republic was in France.
> But they haven't committed any military aggression toward any country in more than 65 years.
They have unconditionally supported the US war operations in many theaters around the world, though. they have not taken directly taken part in conflict but support the US in their wars. That's just because their constitution prevents them to, not that they don't want it...
On all three of those metrics, Japan does better than, say, the United States.
If the will of the people is 'meh/who cares/none of the above', then that's a different problem, IMO.
Free of corruption, Japan? Really ? You have a twisted understanding of Japanese politics then.
And by the way, Japan is very much like the US in the fact that you have a bi-party system, with one party more often than not always in power. Hardly a good sign of a healthy democracy when there's so little choice available to voters.
Japanese election results overwhelmingly reflect who actually got the most votes; I have never even heard that point contested.
And little choice? Two-party system? I wonder: have you ever actually seen a Japanese election?
There are so many candidates and parties now that it takes an hour just to google them all. Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the Japanese Communist Party, New Komeito, the Social Democratic Party, Nippon Isshin, the New Rennaissance Party, then we have the Green Wind Party and the Smile Party... and I am definitely missing a whole bunch more -- all of whom have actively serving winners in local government positions and the Japanese Diet.
And in most recent gubernatorial election in Tokyo, where I live, the guy who won wasn't even in any of those parties, but AFAICT made his own party with only himself in it...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_gubernatorial_election,_2...
What I mean is there are only two ruling parties in Japan, the rest is so limited they can never expect to be of any importance at the national level.
> Japanese election results overwhelmingly reflect who actually got the most votes; I have never even heard that point contested.
Well yeah, I am obviously not talking about that kind of corruption.
I guess the American's population strong opposition to the Vietnam war or the second Iraq war says a lot about the validity of your comment. No, even democracies can go to war without much public support. Most democracies have actually special measures to go to war without any kind of popular vote.
You must be kidding. The US military power is like 50 times what the Chinese can hope to come up with during a conflict. Even in 2014, if China were to try to take on the Pacific, they would be squashed like a mosquito if the US was to be involved. And believe me, they would be involved.
The scariest scenario in Asia right now is: China attacks Japan (e.g. invades the Senkakus, or even accidentally kills some Japanese soldier in one of China's frequent reckless acts of attempted intimidation, like flying dangerously close), the Japan retaliates, the China escalates, then USA intervenes, and somehow USA and China end up in direct armed conflict.
But even there, China and USA have directly fought each other in a war (Korean war) and nobody pulled out their nukes (though China didn't have them yet iirc). The USSR and USA were always invading somebody or other. The nuclear Armageddon scenario is probably a lot less likely than feared--whereas I think the possibility of a nevertheless-vey-bad war in Asia is broadly underestimated.
Someone attacks a Great Power, they demand lots from a small country. Another Great Power swears to protect the small country. Another Great Power will defend first Great Power. Then before you know it, the power keg explodes.
Nobody really knows how an armed conflict between two major nuclear powers would play out, because it's never happened. The Korean War was a completely different scenario. China didn't have nuclear weapons. The Soviets barely had nuclear weapons. The USA was essentially the only nuclear power at the time. The USSR didn't gain the ability to inflict MAD levels of destruction until sometime in the 1960s, more than a decade later.
Probably the closest we came to a direct conflict between two major nuclear powers was the Cuban Missile Crisis. At one point that conflict was prevented from going nuclear only by the stubborn insistence of a single submarine officer arguing with two of his fellows. And that conflict was barely a fight at all!
Maybe a war between major nuclear powers has little chance of going nuclear. But nobody knows. There are good reasons to think that it could be hard to avoid.
Correct. They didn't have them until the 1960's (first A-bomb test in 1964, first H-bomb test in 1967):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_and_weapons_of_mass_destr...
that is the main point. Any country escalating a conflict outside the war zone would pay a heavy price that would make it not worth it. They wouldn't win the war that way, they'd lose it. It is not their good will, it is just their desire to win, not lose. Bombing Argentina outside of war zone would pit Great Britain against whole world - a loosing position, or not-wining at the very least. You wanna fight - take it outside and everybody is happy.
... They are recorded in “Voyage with a Tail Wind”, published in 1403, a portolano recounting a journey from Fujian province to Ryukyu, the old name for the Okinawa chain of islands. By the following century, in “A Record of an Imperial Envoy’s Visit to the Ryukyu Kingdom”, Chinese names were given to all the islets in the Diaoyu group. Japanese diplomats do not bring it up, but the great Japanese military scholar, Shihei Hayashi, followed convention in giving the islands their Chinese names in his map of 1785, “A General Outline of Three Countries” (see map). He also coloured them in the same pink as China.
http://www.economist.com/news/christmas/21568696-behind-row-...
Like any large country that tastes power and prosperity for a couple decades, China got rich with money from exports and drunk with power, and like any other country including the U.S. it will not end well. Too bad i makes life miserable for their neighbors too.
I think there is a fundamental cultural difference in the way the west and China views the dispute. To the west if you found a piece of land and lived there for 100 years, it's yours - that's how the US was founded after all. But to China it's just the latest in a series of conflicts with Japan going back hundreds of years.
Some say the genocide of the natives also helped a lot. These kind of logic just can't be applied to the problems in Asia, where the territory disputes trace back to hundreds of years ago. It's not a west vs east thing.
[0] http://www.thestar.com/business/personal_finance/2013/12/13/...
You, uh, do realize that every piece of land in the US was found first by people who were already living there?
Every piece of land in the world has been competed for and disputed many times. Sometimes identities such as "Chinese," "Scottish" or "Kurdish" are created or hardened specifically to serve that dispute. Other times they are dissolved by the outcome of the dispute.
I'm not trying to make some grand claim that "It's all an illusion." China is disputing Japan's ownership of these islands. The ownership of these islands is in dispute. We can either have some sort of lawful (or otherwise peaceful) way of resolving these disputes or we can go back to the traditional method of war and intimidation.
Our international legal systems were put in place in politically difficult circumstances to prevent world wars. They have definitions of territorial claims and some shambles of a system for resolving them and (theoretically) enforcing them. But this system (being a shambles) get very little respect. They are ignored by major power, minor powers and sometimes by upstarts (ISIS declared the border between Iraq & Syria dissolved and implemented that declaration).
Perhaps something like:
"then controlled by the USA for a time after Japan surrendered to the Allies in WWII"
... would make your comment sound a little less ignorant.
I know the correct answer is: China doesn't care, and isn't concerned with reason when it comes to the nine dash line. It still boggles my mind.
There is no valid Chinese claim on those waters, there is only who has the military power to dictate terms.
I don't think it's called experimental when you flex your military muscle.
I'm calling it experimental because they seem to be exploring their options rather than seeking head-on confrontation in the manner of Putin - I get the sense that China is not sure of its strategic position and is probing to see whether it could establish a 'new normal' without actual conflict. But that's just a hunch on my part, I have no special insight.
Getting these islands mean they get an outlet to open seas.
Did you really say that?!
Yeah, just like the American invasion of Iraq in 2004. Just because they could, despite it being unlawful at all international levels. But hey, Russia also does it, so there's not really any good example out there of a country that does not seize opportunities.
The US war in Iraq started in March, 2003.
I get it, you don't like the United States, but you're desperately trying to draw equivalencies that do not exist. It's been a really long time since the US annexed anything. That doesn't make the loss of life that occurs in its small wars any less serious but you cannot talk about international events if you lump everything bad that happens in the world into the same ill-defined category and then use whatever labels you have at hand to refer to that category. Annexation isn't invasion. They might be associated - Russia annexed Crimea after an invasion, after all - but they're not the same thing.
If simply using terms properly doesn't move you, then there's this: you can tell a lot about a county's ambitions based on what its territorial disputes are and what it's trying to acquire. In this annexation = invasion world that you're inhabiting, you'd conclude that the United States wants to colonize the Middle East. I assure you that this is not the case. We just want to buy their oil, aside from that we don't give a damn about them. Not saying whether that's smart or ethical or not, but that's the reality.
China is the one that made out like a bandit with the new supply of Iraqi oil. The US only got a giant bill out of it all for over a trillion dollars, a lot of dead and injured soldiers, and a lot of destroyed military hardware.
What the US didn't acquire: Iraq's oil; land; tax revenue; any territorial claims; the right to station large numbers of troops in Iraqi territory; gold or other plunder.
And further, the US left when it was told to. The supposed US puppet threw the US out, and we didn't do anything to them with our military in response.
Please, educate me then.
> I get it, you don't like the United States
Never even said that. I don't like SOME of what the US does, but I think it's a great country in many other aspects. Thanks for the strawman, always appreciated in a discussion.
> It's been a really long time since the US annexed anything
There's real annexation and de facto annexation. There are several countries around the world which are tightly controlled by the US, either through diplomatic means, economic or military pressure. By the way, I did not mention the word "annexation" anywhere in my comment, so I'm not sure where it came from in the discussion.
> In this annexation = invasion world that you're inhabiting, you'd conclude that the United States wants to colonize the Middle East.
No, the US has no interest in colonizing the Middle East. They want to control it to ensure they have priority access to energetic means, and ensure than nobody else does (like China, Russia or other emerging powers). Energy is Power. It's obvious that most of the conflicts we see in the Middle East are linked with struggles to get access to large sources of Energy.
> We just want to buy their oil, aside from that we don't give a damn about them
Oh, I don't have the slight illusion that you care about locals there. Invasion is not motivated by "bringing democracy" to the world, this is just political bullshit, I don't think anyone believes in this anymore.
Not even remotely close to what happened.
In fact ASEAN could not stand together against China in this case is exactly because every country around South China Sea has conflicting claims.
BBC is trying to avoid this as much as possible. Facts are hard, Let's just blame bad China.
In general, there are always two sides to the coin. Where from an American perspective you see Chinese aggression outwards, if you flip the arrows on the map around, you might notice that from a Chinese perspective, the US is aggressively boxing China in.
This exactly. Media blames China for everything that went wrong on this planet, and people believe it without thinking twice. It's funny because as a Chinese, I thought we were supposed to be the only one that got brainwashed.
officially it is called "international law"
Since 17th century, a few islands had been controlled by various western countries and more had been marked or renamed.But the pirates, armed merchants and provincial navy of imperial China were still the dominant power in the area for a long time.
Chinese people totally lost control of it after the Sino-French war which changed the geopolitical status drastically: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-French_War
The nine-dash line stems from the eleven-dash line when ROC was the ally of the US after WWII and was accepted as the transferee of those islands from Japanese army who had acquired them from France/Great Britain.
But the ROC were too eager to fight back to the mainland instead of sending naval troops to guard those islands.It just chose one island Taiping as a strong point.
The unattended reefs and islands have been occupied by various countries in all kinds of sneaky/funny ways merely in past 30 years after the US-Vietnam war.
The validity argument makes no sense in this 'occupy and claim to own' game. Every country is a thief and the biggest is Vietnam whose navy had been more powerful than China's with the support from the former USSR during the PRC-USSR conflict.
Maybe the ROC in Taiwan should be the rightful owner according to the arrangement after WWII. But it is too weak to say anything now.
The whole history of the area is a vivid example of military power dictates terms.
I'm starting to see it more and more.
It reminds me of when "Multimedia CD-ROMs" first appeared circa mid-1990s, where flashy interfaces were ranked much higher than useability.
Please stop it. Give me a webpage with text, and images that I can enlarge when clicked. Thank you.
It says it was built with Shorthand - http://shorthand.com/ . Anyone know of an open-source equivalent?
Thanks to Iraq and Afghanistan, the US has spent a lot of treasure. The population doesn't have the desire for more war. Now Russia and China are seeing how far they can push. I hope I'm wrong, but I feel like we're seeing the beginnings of things that lead to a major war between Russia & China on one side, and the US on the other.
The Fermi paradox is a reminder that we are living in very dangerous times right now.
Likely more will come on board in the next decade. Such as Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and so on. I would expect another country or two to go nuclear in Asia in response to China's mighty military.
If you think that's scary, consider the all too plausible possibility of a shooting war between Russia and China over what is currently south-east Russia.
Indeed.
> but could we stop using "treasure" outside the context of forgetful pirates and sunken ships and such? When talking about Iraq and Afghanistan it's just an overly fancy way to say "money".
No, its an accurate way to say "treasure" -- or, if you have some need to avoid pirate-related associations in your head, "wealth". Money is, of course, one form that treasure takes, and also money values are used for "keeping score" of all forms of treasure, but what is actually at issue is the treasure--wealth, material assets of all kinds--expended, not just money (sure, those assets were generally purchased for money at some time in the past, but often that was before the war started and not specific to it -- what was consumed by the war was the concrete assets, not the money.)
I explicitly stated that as an alternative, so I'm not sure why you would ask that in response.
> I wouldn't call a tank "treasure".
Since treasure refers to a collection of valuable objects, and a tank, as such, is generally a valuable object, that's true -- one wouldn't usually refer to a tank (or a gold coin, etc.) as "treasure", though one might validly refer to a collection of things that included, among other things, one or more tanks that way.
The historical uses linked in a sibling comment seem to be pretty clear that it's used as a synonym for "money".
[0] http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2013/02/blood-and-treasure...