What China Has Been Building in the South China Sea
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Here is the map that China wants to claim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_disputes_in_the_So...
When you look at China's claims in comparison with everyone else's claims, (especially Vietnam's), it does not look that outlandish, and everyone in the region effectively wants to be able to say "these are our waters you're passing through." The actors in this region are not as innocent as you would think they are.
http://pages.stolaf.edu/asiaforecast2014/portfolio/sino-viet...
You have to trace back to Japanese actions before WWII and look at the geopolitical insecurity of these countries in order to understand these motivations, and then recognize that China does what it does because it does not think that the powers-that-be will be able or willing to defend its economic interests in the future. The only reason why China seems scary is because it would appear as if it can actually build up and defend its claims, unlike everyone else, but even then, it doesn't have a blue water navy like the United States. They can't instigate an area denial attack on these claims without strangling their own economy either, so it's kind of a tempest in a teapot.
The navy has zero defenses that can stop a 1970s ballistic antiship missle.
And of course the USN has defenses. First are soft defenses like ECM, followed by AEGIS and SM3.
Not only are there defenses against the missile themselves, but it's not like the navy would just sit idle while being targeted. They'd work the entire kill chain, and most of this is assuming that the DF-21 can even find the carriers...
The fact is, the United States is effectively guaranteeing the trade lanes for everyone. They have not tried to own the oceans for themselves as others did. They have not tried to own resources or markets for themselves the way the Europeans did in the age of mercantilism.
China does what it does out of paranoia. And because people have been jerks to them in the past. But they know that what they have is not effective for waging expansionist war. Those missiles could make it really, really hurt if the United States were to try to take a military action against the Chinese mainland, because that would place a number of CBGs in close proximity to the mainland, where it'd be much easier to track and launch said missiles at them. A more ambitious project would be to cut off American support for Taiwan, and that would be a much longer-term issue for both sides, and one that is not abetted by these islands.
As for the islands, there isn't even any military value in holding them. They are a military liability rather than an asset. Unlike Guam, etc., they are not useful as a staging point, because the range of modern ships makes them kind of useless as a staging or refueling point. They are small–they don't even have fresh water–and thus they are easy to saturate with a few cruise missiles (the USN has 3000 tomahawks in inventory, last I checked?), so, forget about trying to put serious static defenses there. When you look at the fluff, yea, it seems alarming, and that's what it's for. It's politics. The Chinese are doing it because they know the Vietnamese and the Filipinos can't, and the U.S. will just #facepalm and mostly go back to staring at maps of the Middle East the next month, in spite of all the talk of an Asian pivot.
Watch their economy crumble if they are prevented from selling this cheap knacks to the rest of the world.
It be a stupid move and the Chinese are far from stupid unlike the the Russians who are doing their best to tick every checkbox on a rogue criminal state chalkboard
And while they fight amongst each-other, China voices support for one while undermining that support in another fashion. Pitting them against each-other is common.
Building the islands... well, everybody else who claims that area also seems to be building there. That could, arguably, be considered an act of war, but so far everybody's doing it and we do not yet have a war.
It already has the self-declared ownership right. The point is, it will have the infrastructure to carry it out.
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The average depth of the Pacific Ocean is over 14,000 ft (almost exactly 4.3 km).
That's a lot of dredging.
Edit: Clarification, since so many of the smaller uninhabited islands have been claimed by the UK, US, and other Western nations, how is it wrong to build some uninhabited islands of your own?
Creating an island out of thin air and then claiming the territory around it is 1 step short of Sealand.
That said no we aren't perfect and we did stuff like this as well but two wrongs in this case don't make a right, this is nothing but a very destabilising move.
Execute massive land grab first to get strategic high ground, and then bitflip your previous moves to be wrong for anyone else to do. That makes sure that anyone else trying to catch up to you is unable to do so. Boom. Barriers to entry. Done.
However the world has moved on, that it moved on at a time when the West was dominant (for now) wasn't planned it was just how it was.
If your definition of "the world" excludes the words largest country by territory and the largest country by population.
It would seem more fitting to instead say "the West has moved on".
If you hold that no past behaviour is considered expired then pretty much every country on the planet or the people who live there before it was that country is responsible for something.
African tribes have warred for millenia, European tribes have warred for millenia, South America, Middle East, Far East pretty much everyone has at some point beaten up their neighbours and not so near neighbours.
Besides that, artificial land is nothing new, a good chunk of NL was made by manipulating the sea. Even so this is clearly a 'landgrab', but not much different other than the time in which it happens (the present, rather than a few hundred years ago). NL did it with the colonies and plenty of other countries did it too. A lot of that has reverted over the last 3 decades but there are still quite a few remnants such as Cyprus (claimed by the Turks and the Greeks), the Falkland islands (UK vs Argentina) and a whole bunch of smaller ones.
The world map will always be in flux due to territorial disputes like these, in the end it is all about money.
You can't compare an island with 1 million inhabitants to basically uninhabited islands.
Outside of mythology, I can't think of any in the first category; most of those that are traditionally described in the second or third were about groups control of land of material resources, though the basis of the claim to that control (or at least the propaganda to get people to fight for it) may have been based on religion/ideology.
How about the US' involvement in Vietnam, that seems like an ideological war.
We got involved with Europe's affairs because we made a killing selling them military equipment to blow each other up. Then it started to seem as if the Nazis might take over the continent. To drive this point home, we sold weapons to the Nazis until 1941.
Pearl Harbor happened because we started an oil embargo with Japan.
Vietnam was a proxy war, it's inherently about not letting the enemy gain land or an ally in a certain territory.
There is something to gain behind every aggression and it is usually material and for personal profit to the those initiating it.
There is increasing necessity to condition Americans for what is seen as a coming confrontation with China. People need to start being worried and have concerns. I'm not placing any kind of judgement on whether that is good or bad, but it is happening and our government deems it necessary to "educate" the public and we all very well know that the NYT, along with many other mainstream news sources, are little more than government propaganda channels.
I wouldn't say it's about money. From the bottom it looks like it's all about money, because there is a huge money layer that blocks the view; but from the top, it becomes rather clear that it's not really about money at all when you have all the money you ever need. It's about power, control, and legacy; all far more elusive goals than simply money.
What if China wants a piece of the Philippines or Vietnam? It needs to be addressed on an international stage before the civilians on both sides begin suffering.
I think these issues need to be resolved without assessing blame, because the world's most powerful countries always try to impose their will on other smaller sovereign states.
Interesting that you mention Vietnam.
Only mentioned Vietnam because it was discussed in the article. Besides US Troops arent fighting proxy wars with Russia at the moment. Just fighting "Terrorists", whatever that means at this time.
Of course, at the time China's economy and military where much smaller. But so was Vietnam's.
Out of China's neighbors that should be worried Vietnam is probably the least likely target since it's basically an armadillo. The rest, however, have plenty to fear.
Sure. Unlike the Russians, or the communists, or the terrorists, this time there's a true global threat.
>What if China wants a piece of the Philippines or Vietnam?
Exactly: what if? Are we going to prepare for every possible scenario? There are a lot of them.
Maybe you should talk to some older Polish, Czech or East-German people and tell them the USSR wasn't a real threat...
My point being that this never-ending blame game won't solve anything.
It is if you ignore artificial land construction which had no effect on territorial boundaries. Which, after all, is irrelevant to the conversation at hand.
Also - hitting closer to home for me is that a good chunk of Boston is on top of man made land. The entire "Back Bay" area (which is what most people consider downtown Boston) was originally underwater.
Development of the islands actually accelerated dramatically when the case was filed, and I suspect the PRC wanted to get the largest and most obvious work done before that case concludes, since, although the PRC doesn't recognize the court's jurisdiction, past cases where other countries have acted with similar disregard suggest the optics surrounding it still matters.[2]
[1] See: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-13748349 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-dotted_line
[2] For example: http://systemchangenotclimatechange.org/article/caving-inter...
How could any court agree to the claims, why, yes, you demonstrated prior control, you indeed had a permanent population there"?
To anyone seeing this this is an obvious objective to nullify claims by ph, vn, my, jp, etc.
Can international courts be persuaded by these obvious artificial methods of establishing jurisdiction?
As much as we try to develop rules and norms to constrain and moderate behavior by countries in the international community, at the end of the day, "the strong [still] do as they can and the weak [still] suffer what they must".
And yes, you're right that the actions and intentions are pretty transparent, with just some uncertainty surrounding the extent (ie, what reasoning will the PRC ultimately use to justify its claims, as it's also been quite ambiguous about them).
The more direct link is potentially to the CCP's claim to legitimacy as the government of China. If they can't defend China's "historic" claims to territory then they could lose legitimacy in the eyes of an increasingly nationalistic public.
On nomenclature, Indochina Sea would perhaps be a reasonable candidate for a more honest toponym, being as it is both suggestive of the general area and adequately distanced from any specific modern political entities.
Planting your flag on a 1m wide rock above the high tide line enables an exclusive zone with radius 12 NM for excluding all foreign vessels, a radius of 24 NM for enforcement of your laws, and one with radius 200 NM for exclusive economic activities, like oil drilling, undersea mining, and fishing.
It's a resource grab. China wants the fish and the seafloor.
What they're going to end up doing is forging a multilateral treaty between Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Phillippines, and possibly Taiwan, with Australia and the USA giving a nod and a wink from the back of the room.
I think that there won't be a shooting war. It will be about 95% economic warfare.
I think the last thing China wants is a multilateral treaty: the more people that are involved in a treaty, the less powerful China's negotiating time is. China has made repeated angry noises against proposals to treat the issue as a single regional issue rather than a collection of bilateral disputes. The disputes are also a large factor into why all the other south-east Asian countries (including especially Vietnam!) are trying to cozy up to the US and get the protection of the US Navy.
The 12 NM territorial limit for a natural island certainly allows the power owning it to build barracks, airfields, and artillery batteries within that limit. And that prevents other countries from claiming or disputing the island.
Your second point is accurate, but China having the ability to disrupt a route brings it up to par with other powers, whereas right now they are solely at the mercy of foreign nations wrt other waterways, with no ability to respond in kind. This gives them that ability.
In that sense the failurs of the F-35 are kind of a blessing for the US Navy. It forces them to think about drones. If there is a future for surface ships it is probably as missile platforms or as some sort of drone platform, not aircraft carriers.
Have to find someplace where the seafloor is close to the surface, then dump enough volume of dirt on it to reach a viable altitude.
The only time the UN can act is with the support of all five permanent members, which also includes Russia. Guess how often that happens.
An actual combat that results in Chinese loss would be detrimental to the continuity of Xi's party and the Communist Party itself. The risk is far too great for the small gain it gets. Chinese leadership operates on a cost/benefit analysis, I don't think anything has changed.
So the only logical conclusion is that Xi, along with his anti-corruption campaign to take out his foes, is using brinkmanship to further his popularity and distract people from internal problems that could lead to massive unrest. Economic downturn would certainly be a threat and war drumming has been a common political tool used by many different countries at different points in history.
A military conflict that would be launched by China so far away from it's coastline makes no sense where US has dozens of nearby bases in different countries and logistic support on it's own and from host countries to sustain a prolonged naval warfare. If there was a war, China should pick it's coastlines where it has anti-access/area denial weapons (allegedly) and opposing force would not risk their assets. It would be a nightmare in terms of logistics for PLAN if they did launch some provocation so far away from the mainland. The island building is a clever way to provoke without risking it's military.
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21590930-chinas-new-ai...
They are considered the 3rd most powerful military.
What is the risk?
The risk is, if the Chinese pick a naval fight and their navy gets pummeled, it's a PR disaster. That's a risk for the leadership, not so much for the country.
China's leaders are smart and they see that issue. I think that is one of the reasons they want to increase land trade through central asia.
This seems to still be China's approach, at least in this area.
And they also destroy everything in their path: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Summer_Palace
How does a military conflict between China and US even look like, I always thought it immediately escalates to nuclear war.
Read that last week, it's a about a future war between the US and the Chinese, it's bordering on sci-fi but interesting nonetheless and a good read.
Interestingly it posits a future where the US economy is in major trouble as the reason why the US Navy has been severely downsized, they had to do that since the current US Navy vs the current PLA Navy while horrific wouldn't be remotely a fair fight.
News for you:
http://news.yahoo.com/u-airlines-advised-china-flight-plans-...
I predict the peak to be when the North Korean regime collapses and South tries to absorb the North de facto creating an option for Korea to become a regional military super house. Japanese right wing extremists pushing government to start massive military spending once again creating much more powerful Japan.
I do not really know what will China do at this stage to be honest. It may try to ally with Korea but i think koreans stay neutral and will try to rebuild the North. It is highly possible that the second miracle on the han river may actually happen and Korea gets richer and richer (after all North has a massive mineral resources and a cheap workforce) and korean GDP might start reaching interesting numbers.
I predict Japan will try to push forward and claim the disputed islands with the support of uncle Sam.
At this point I do not know what happens but i see Korea as a random factor that might start shooting at everyone who is not korean.
I know anti-Japanese propaganda is strong in China, but there is no need to invent conflicts that do not exist to fuel more hate.
EDIT: for that matter Korea doesn't have any stake in this either. I know there is an important territorial dispute between China and Japan (Senkaku islands), and minor conflicts between Japan/Korea and China/Korea. So a conflict around the Spartly islands could spill in this area, but I don't see it starting from Korea or Japan.
Heavy Japan alliance with Phillippines is unlikely (history, empire of japan, blah blah).
It's not about anti-japanese sentiment here but more like japanese fear of revenge from chinese and maybe the right time to make a point.
The more passive-aggressive China is the more likely it's that Korea and Japan will do something about it.
Which islands were you thinking about? Japan has three notable territorial conflicts: the Kuril islands with Russia (controlled by Russia), the Senkaku islands with China (controlled by Japan) and the Takeshima islands (controlled by Korea).
Of these three conflicts the ones with Korea and Russia are largely under the radar: most Japanese people I know aren't even aware of them. Though I think the reverse is not true in Korea... And Japan cannot "push forward and claim" the Senkaku: they are already controlling them.
And yes Dokdo (Takeshima in Japan) is a big thing in Korea.
The Liancourt Rocks case is interesting, because it is so asymmetric: all the Korean people I know feel so strongly about it, but none of the Japanese people I know either know or care about it. If I were in Japan I would try to give up all claims on Dokdo as part of a wider friendship treaty with Korea, and try to prop up the relations between the two countries. But Japanese politicians are questionable at best, and Korean politicians seem to enjoy Japan bashing, so I doubt it will happen in the foreseeable future...
I do not feel that there will ever be any real friendship between these two countries. I would compare it to polish russian relationship.
Koreans have every right to feel strong about it. Every damn right. But this is a discussion for another evening.
And replying to your comments above i was talking about the situation in asia in general. You should also know that Korea donated a war ship to Philippines. Do you think this gesture did not have anything to do with the situation in the area ? I very much doubt so.
The state of Japan bought the islands to prevent promoters from exploiting them, to try to maintain the status quo with China. Obviously it was a failure, and outright buying the islands was not a good solution. But the liberal Japanese government at that time was very inexperienced: I don't think Abe for example -despite being a nationalist- would have done the same mistake.
I am from Europe, and I do not share your pessimism about Asia. The city where I'm born switched between France and Germany at least four times over the last 150 years. Hell, there is not a single border on the continent that makes sense. Peace and "friendship" between states is a political construct, built strictly out of political will, the rest is nationalist bullshit. That's true of Poland and Russia too.
Can you detail your reasoning? If the lessons of West/East Germany are anything to go by, reunification will be followed by an inward looking period in which the work of integration absorbs all resources.
Also the Nork military while large, really wouldn't add anything to the capability of the South - it's poorly equipped, malnourished and badly trained. If it wasn't for the risk of collateral damage to Seoul, any modern military could rout it just as fast as Israel won the Six Day War or the Coalition rolled over Iraq in Gulf War 1.
All true but South is already a regional military powerhouse with the troops from north and 40-60years of work they could really become as strong as the Empire of Japan was.
Ironically tho' if they did achieve their wildest dreams and conquer the South they would be more, not less, vulnerable, because they wouldn't have any Western ally to hold to ransom anymore.
420,000+ signatures so far...
It actually has a bit over 76,000 signatures.
https://www.change.org/p/playmobil-please-make-disability-to...
The Lego petition doesn't seem to be doing as well. It's disappointing that Lego doesn't see the market.
The US does not claim ownership over any part of the Gulf of Mexico that it doesn't blatantly have a right to, as this image makes very clear:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/91/Te...
The southern tip of Texas across to the southern tip of Florida is extremely reasonable as a water claim.
Russia was just busy flying bombers 40 miles off the coast of California last week. Last time I checked, we haven't declared war on Russia for it. They regularly do the same thing with their navy in various ways, whether off the Atlantic or Pacific coast, or near Cuba / Florida waters.
The proper comparison to cuba is Star Wars type missile shields. And USSR/Russia has long been quite opposed to that, for good reason.
SLBMs were just being developed in the early 60s, and so Cuban-based missiles represented a novel, more credible first-strike threat given distance (~20 minutes flight time).
"Don't look at what we're doing over here, look at these other people over there."
It's equivalent to a direct admission that what China is doing is wrong and you know it. Presumably if you could actualy defend China's actions, you do so instead of changing the subject.
You think Germany wants China to set up a large military base in their country? How about South Korea or Japan? Of course not.
Vietnam build islands, CNN FOX cricket, cricket. China build islands, it is against international law.
- http://amti.csis.org/west-reef-tracker/
- http://www.newseveryday.com/articles/16087/20150508/vietnam-...
- http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/08/us-southchinasea-v...
China, human right violations. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2014/country-chapters/china... VS. Former University of Cincinnati police officer pleads not guilty - http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/07/30...
And Stop and frisk.
- http://www.nyclu.org/content/stop-and-frisk-data
I am not sure who is violating human right now.
The article clearly shows Vietnam is building islands too. It also shows them being pretty close to mainland Vietnam.
The robbery just such a small amount, it should not be charged.
Since the amount is so small, i am going to forgive it.