China Geopolitical News Thread

[Blackstone]

Re: East China Sea Air Defense ID Zone

Article from Global Times now being referenced in other defence journals. It's an Op-Ed piece, Related to ADIZ and Surveillance Flights in general, so this seemed the best thread to post in. Take the source and content as you will, however the few references to 'Core Interests' caught my eye.

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"The large-scale implementation of reconnaissance by US warships and aircraft in the coastal waters and airspace of China is one of the three major barriers that keep impeding the Sino-US military relationship. The others are the US' arms sale to Taiwan and its National Defense Authorization Act posing discriminatory restrictions on China."

"But such reconnaissance is posing a threat to China's core security interests, which could be treated as an act of hostility. If the roles of China and the US were reversed on this matter, Washington would not accept it."

China's position on US or anyone else gathering intelligence off her shores is inconsistent with her claims of upholding international laws and norms. While I think US leaders might rethink their approach to intelligence gathering off China's shores, it's unquestionable US has the right to do it. China has no right under international law to regulate military affairs in anyone's EEZ, so she's attempting to create right through might. I sincerely hope US leaders continue or even increase surveillance until China stops trying to change the status quo through bullying. After that, I hope US reevaluates the frequency of intelligence gathering and stop sticking her fingers in China's eye for no good purpose.

 

[Blackstone]

Re: East China Sea Air Defense ID Zone

As much as I agree with your posts, I think it's best to leave it be for this thread be.

Regardless of what the world should be like if thing were fair, each country is still self centred, and at the moment it suits the US fine to disperse its military forces the way it is around China, in fact one would argue it would be irresponsible if it did not.


Ultimately the military goal of most nations is to seek the ability to harm others will preventing others from harming yourself, but few nations truly achieve it.

Whatever you think of US surveillance off China's coast, it's critical China follows international laws. China keeps saying she wants to change unfair international laws, and I think she could make a strong case for that, but she must do it through the UN or some other near-universally accepted international body. Throwing her considerable bulk around just because she can only frame her as a bully.

 

[solarz]

Re: East China Sea Air Defense ID Zone

China's position on US or anyone else gathering intelligence off her shores is inconsistent with her claims of upholding international laws and norms. While I think US leaders might rethink their approach to intelligence gathering off China's shores, it's unquestionable US has the right to do it.

Care to quote that particular law?

 

[Blackstone]

Re: East China Sea Air Defense ID Zone

China rejected Taiwan's complaint about breach of its airspace, but the UN doesn't recognize Taiwan as a sovereign nation, so can it have an airspace that's not part of China's domain? If not, what legal grounds does Taiwan have to lodge complaints? Tricky international relations problem.

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BEIJING (Reuters) - China has rejected Taiwan's claim that two Chinese military aircraft had breached Taiwan's airspace four times, saying it was a "routine flight".

Taiwan scrambled its jets to intercept two Chinese military aircraft, identified as Yun-8 transport aircraft, on Monday. The Chinese planes left without incident, Xiong Ho-ji, major general of Taiwan's Air Force Combatant Command, told reporters on Tuesday.

"Our military aircraft carried out a routine flight on the 25th in the relevant airspace, there was no occurrence of any abnormality," China's Defense Ministry said in a faxed statement to Reuters late on Tuesday.

The latest incident risked hurting ties between China and Taiwan, which have been ruled separately since defeated Nationalist forces fled to the island at the end of a civil war in 1949. China has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under Beijing's control.

While relations have improved under the China-friendly President Ma Ying-jeou, who has signed a series of landmark economic deals since taking office in 2008, deep political and military suspicions remain.

The breach of Taiwanese air space comes a week after the Pentagon lodged a diplomatic complaint with China about the conduct of a Chinese fighter jet, which it said came within meters of a U.S. Navy patrol plane.

China has said the criticism is groundless and its pilot maintained a safe distance from the U.S plane.

 

[Equation]

Re: East China Sea Air Defense ID Zone

Whatever you think of US surveillance off China's coast, it's critical China follows international laws. China keeps saying she wants to change unfair international laws, and I think she could make a strong case for that, but she must do it through the UN or some other near-universally accepted international body. Throwing her considerable bulk around just because she can only frame her as a bully.

China is only frame as a "bully" by western media.

 

[kyanges]

Re: East China Sea Air Defense ID Zone

I keep reading that they breached Taiwan's "ADIZ". Doesn't that make a difference between that, and breaching "territorial airspace"? Or is there no difference, and that's why most articles just shorten it to "breached Taiwan's airspace?"

 

[delft]

Re: East China Sea Air Defense ID Zone

Whatever you think of US surveillance off China's coast, it's critical China follows international laws. China keeps saying she wants to change unfair international laws, and I think she could make a strong case for that, but she must do it through the UN or some other near-universally accepted international body. Throwing her considerable bulk around just because she can only frame her as a bully.

Please describe a procedure that would have any chance of success. Remember that US is a permanent member of the Security Council.

 

[Zool]

Re: East China Sea Air Defense ID Zone

China's position on US or anyone else gathering intelligence off her shores is inconsistent with her claims of upholding international laws and norms. While I think US leaders might rethink their approach to intelligence gathering off China's shores, it's unquestionable US has the right to do it. China has no right under international law to regulate military affairs in anyone's EEZ, so she's attempting to create right through might. I sincerely hope US leaders continue or even increase surveillance until China stops trying to change the status quo through bullying. After that, I hope US reevaluates the frequency of intelligence gathering and stop sticking her fingers in China's eye for no good purpose.

I think China's position in this case (and from the article) has less to do with international law and more to do with conveying it's security concerns. Following that, a point is being made about the US/China relationship and how it cannot progress with these issues as a continual barrier.

 

[Bernard]

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China’s state-run media warned Washington on Monday that Beijing could treat its surveillance flights as an “act of hostility”, after accusations a Chinese fighter jet flew dangerously close to a US military aircraft.

US Rear Admiral John Kirby said Friday the armed Chinese warplane came close to the American P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft on three occasions, at times less than 30 feet (nine meters) away, in what he called a “very dangerous” intercept.

China’s defence ministry spokesman Yang Yujun called the allegations “totally groundless” in a statement cited by the official news agency Xinhua.

The incident took place 220 kilometres (135 miles) off China’s Hainan island, over an area the US insists is international waters but Beijing regards as part of its territory.

The incident has echoes of a major incident in April 2001, when a Chinese fighter jet collided with a US Navy EP-3 spy plane around 110 kilometres off Hainan.

The Global Times — which is owned by the Communist Party’s mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, and often takes a nationalist tone — lashed out in an editorial at US surveillance “in the coastal waters and airspace of China”.

“Such reconnaissance is posing a threat to China’s core security interests, which could be treated as an act of hostility,” it said.

“It would be a life and death fight between China and the US if the collisions in the South China Sea became confrontations concerning both sides’ core interests,” it warned.

The episode comes as Beijing builds up its military might and naval reach, while Washington is engaged in a foreign policy “pivot” to Asia.

The official China Daily newspaper accused the US of undermining mutual trust, saying that Washington’s concerns over China’s rise were a “psychological need to create an enemy to make up for its sense of loss after the end of the Cold War”.

US naval and airborne reconnaissance missions “do nothing to convince the Chinese authorities and the Chinese people that the US is sincere in claiming it wants to build mutual trust with China,” the paper said in an editorial.

Washington and Beijing have long disagreed over aviation and maritime rights in the strategic South China Sea, the site of key shipping routes, which Beijing claims almost in its entirety.

In the 2001 collision, a Chinese pilot was killed and the American aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing on Hainan.

Chinese authorities initially detained its 24-member crew for more than a week until both governments worked out a face-saving deal for their release.


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[Blackstone]

Re: East China Sea Air Defense ID Zone

Please describe a procedure that would have any chance of success. Remember that US is a permanent member of the Security Council.

There isn't a procedure that can work, if neither side is willing to compromise. My beef with the US is she insists on maintaining her supremacy in Asia, while that model can't possibly work if China challenges it. My beef with China is she's trying to push the US, which is a Pacific nation, out of Asia. Both great powers need to admit to each other no economic or military scheme can work in Asia if the opposite party actively resists. Also, I think it's up to the US to take the first step and reach out to China, because she's the stronger of the two.

Is there an actual mechanism that both sides can accept, even if neither is happy with it? Maybe yes, and maybe no. But, we know the current structure isn't going to last much longer, because China is actively resisting it. A possible solution is for US to share power with China, and jointly lead what Hugh White frames as a "Concert of Asia" that includes fellow great powers India, and Japan. It's not a perfect solution, but if the alternative is greater strategic competition of the bad kind between America and China, then all will suffer in the end.