China's SCS Strategy Thread
- Thread starter lilzz
- Start date
IF you are familiar with Naval Rulings of ANY country, you will know that when sailors are allowed ashore, there will be Naval (Regimental) Police from the Ship/s who will ensure that they DO NOT misbehave or commit crimes in countries they visit. I am sure you would know the misbehaviour and some crimes committed by a few US sailors in the Philippines in the past, and in recent times in Okinawa. Time to stop degrading other systems - The Lord said, "Look at the beam in your own eye rather than the specks in others" - Amen.
Blackstone
Brigadier
@advill - I hear you and your message has merit. Nonetheless, I was genuinely interested in PLAN personnel shore leave policy and how they compare with other services. An example is there are some logistics awkwardness in visiting certain establishments, if the sailors are kept on very tight leashes by their commissars. And so on.
Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
Chinese navy first visit warmly received in Malaysia by overseas chinese
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AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
An example of how Obama's arguments against AIIB aka against China's loans vs the West's are irrelevant to countries that want loans. Yes it was all just about the US wanting the world not to give anything China does legitimacy. I read an Indian article recently debating whether or not India should attend the OBOR summit in China. Someone pointed out that not participating in anything with China was the old Obama Administration. Since Trump is now in office with a more friendlier tone to China, why should India stick with a policy of an administration that no longer runs the US? So we now can confirm what was only suspicion that Obama went out of his way to isolate China behind the scenes in every way around the world. Too cowardly to do it openly to China for fear China would concentrate all anger upon the US alone. And that's why the US lost the Philippines. Again the US and other rich Asian countries wanted the Philippines alone to do all the dirty work against China so if it didn't work, only the Philippines would get punished by China and not any of them. Duterte himself said the US pushed for the Philippines to challenge China from the start but when China called their bluff and reclaimed islands, the US didn't send even one navy ship in support. Now we know why Obama took over a year to respond to China's island reclamation. Obama thought China would fold when challenged and when China from out of left field built islands in response, Obama was in shock and didn't know what to do next since he started the whole mess in the first place with the Pivot to Asia and he didn't want that on his legacy.
broadsword
Brigadier
If it was a Western power that was vying for sovereignty of the SCS against the Phillippines, the latter would have been thrashed in a war right from the get go, or regime changed. There would be no talk of aid or 'win-win'.
Jura The idiot
General
Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
Here is a good article why it is futile trying to contain china. Excerpt for full article click the link
China has been a hegemon and source of civilization for at least twenty centuries; its rise is not new.
May 23, 2017
Does predict its future? Does predict Asia’s future? These are the wrong questions to be asking. Asia is much more than simply China, and Asia itself is much more than simply a reflection of Europe. The question is not whether there are any lessons to be drawn from Europe’s bloody past; nor is the question whether there is anything essentially Chinese that we can trace back through the mists of time which will allow us to unlock the Oriental mind. Rather, the most relevant questions are whether East Asia as a region experienced any enduring patterns or dynamics, and if so, then what are the implications for regional security in the twenty-first century?
The answers to these questions is clearly, “Yes.” East Asia has usually been unipolar, and often hegemonic. Today the region has returned to unipolarity so quickly that almost nobody has noticed. Whether China can again become a hegemon, however, is far less certain.
After a tumultuous twentieth century, an East Asian regional power transition has already occurred, and occurred peacefully. Despite endless pessimistic of the return of the balance of power politics to Asia, China’s rise in the region is already over. China’s share of regional GDP grew from 8 percent in 1990 to 51 percent in 2014, while Japan’s share fell from 72 percent in 1990 to 22 percent. The past quarter-century has seen a head-spinningly fast regional power transition. Countries are rapidly increasing their economic ties to China and each other. East Asian countries have steadily reduced their because they see little need to arm. China passed Japan in overall size without a blink from anyone in the region. The only remaining question is how big the gap between China and its neighbors will become. In fact, the difference in size between China and its neighbors is already so stark as to be almost impossible to put on the same chart.
This leads to an uncomfortable conundrum for all the pessimists out there who bleat endlessly about the return of power politics in Asia, or who wishfully hope for Abe to lead a to compete with China:
Considering the ample evidence of China’s rising power, states in the region could easily have already begun a vigorous counterbalancing strategy against China if that were their intention. It seems reasonable to argue that if states were going to balance against China, then they would have begun by now. Those who predict that a containment coalition will rise against China in the future need to explain why this has not already occurred, despite three decades of transparent and rapid Chinese economic, diplomatic and military growth. Idle speculation about what could happen decades from now provides little insight into the decisions states are making today. If China’s neighbors believed China would be more dangerous in the future, they would have begun preparing for that possibility already.
Problems with Using European History to Understand Asia’s Present
The tendency to use European comparisons to understand Asia is unsurprising. Our theories of multipolarity, alliances and balance-of-power politics were largely inductively derived from the European historical experience, but have been presented as universal phenomena. Yet the Western international system grew and spread out of something that preceded it that was quite different. Because of the triumph of the nation-state system, it is forgotten that other international orders have existed, and might exist again. The current international system is actually a recent phenomenon in the scope of world history, but to date it has generally been studied from within: scholars studied European history to explain how this European model for international relations developed over time.
Arguments about Asia’s future thus become arguments about European history, instead. And, using Europe as a lens through which to view Asia also implies that learning about Asia must not be that important. After all, if European history is all we need to understand Asia’s future, then why put in the enormous effort to master an Asian language? Why put in the years of time and effort to become comfortable with the history, culture and society of an Asian country?
China has been a hegemon and source of civilization for at least twenty centuries; its rise is not new.
May 23, 2017
Does predict its future? Does predict Asia’s future? These are the wrong questions to be asking. Asia is much more than simply China, and Asia itself is much more than simply a reflection of Europe. The question is not whether there are any lessons to be drawn from Europe’s bloody past; nor is the question whether there is anything essentially Chinese that we can trace back through the mists of time which will allow us to unlock the Oriental mind. Rather, the most relevant questions are whether East Asia as a region experienced any enduring patterns or dynamics, and if so, then what are the implications for regional security in the twenty-first century?
The answers to these questions is clearly, “Yes.” East Asia has usually been unipolar, and often hegemonic. Today the region has returned to unipolarity so quickly that almost nobody has noticed. Whether China can again become a hegemon, however, is far less certain.
After a tumultuous twentieth century, an East Asian regional power transition has already occurred, and occurred peacefully. Despite endless pessimistic of the return of the balance of power politics to Asia, China’s rise in the region is already over. China’s share of regional GDP grew from 8 percent in 1990 to 51 percent in 2014, while Japan’s share fell from 72 percent in 1990 to 22 percent. The past quarter-century has seen a head-spinningly fast regional power transition. Countries are rapidly increasing their economic ties to China and each other. East Asian countries have steadily reduced their because they see little need to arm. China passed Japan in overall size without a blink from anyone in the region. The only remaining question is how big the gap between China and its neighbors will become. In fact, the difference in size between China and its neighbors is already so stark as to be almost impossible to put on the same chart.
This leads to an uncomfortable conundrum for all the pessimists out there who bleat endlessly about the return of power politics in Asia, or who wishfully hope for Abe to lead a to compete with China:
Considering the ample evidence of China’s rising power, states in the region could easily have already begun a vigorous counterbalancing strategy against China if that were their intention. It seems reasonable to argue that if states were going to balance against China, then they would have begun by now. Those who predict that a containment coalition will rise against China in the future need to explain why this has not already occurred, despite three decades of transparent and rapid Chinese economic, diplomatic and military growth. Idle speculation about what could happen decades from now provides little insight into the decisions states are making today. If China’s neighbors believed China would be more dangerous in the future, they would have begun preparing for that possibility already.
Problems with Using European History to Understand Asia’s Present
The tendency to use European comparisons to understand Asia is unsurprising. Our theories of multipolarity, alliances and balance-of-power politics were largely inductively derived from the European historical experience, but have been presented as universal phenomena. Yet the Western international system grew and spread out of something that preceded it that was quite different. Because of the triumph of the nation-state system, it is forgotten that other international orders have existed, and might exist again. The current international system is actually a recent phenomenon in the scope of world history, but to date it has generally been studied from within: scholars studied European history to explain how this European model for international relations developed over time.
Arguments about Asia’s future thus become arguments about European history, instead. And, using Europe as a lens through which to view Asia also implies that learning about Asia must not be that important. After all, if European history is all we need to understand Asia’s future, then why put in the enormous effort to master an Asian language? Why put in the years of time and effort to become comfortable with the history, culture and society of an Asian country?
I think the key point of the article is not that it is futile trying to contain China but that international circumstances are in uncharted territory particularly with the US and China unlikely to have historical references in their playbooks on how to co-exist well with one another.
If Australia listened to our hawks on China, we'd have been hung out to dry
Sydney Morning Herald
MAY 24 2017 - 12:41AM
Bob Carr
It was like a meeting with an Old Testament prophet. Towering and rock-hewn, Malcolm Fraser was grave, telling me – Australia's new foreign minister – that America was capable of being drawn into a land war with China.
"Going to war with China and losing it. And then withdrawing from Asia."
In this nightmare, Australia would have been recruited to join America and then left high and dry, all alone in a region that China dominated.
A dystopian vision and a long way from current realities. But on a more modest scale, Australia would be stranded right now if, after the election of Donald Trump, we'd taken the advice of our own hawks about China policy.
Consider the South China Sea.
In November Peter Jennings, the director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said Australia should expect an early phone call from Trump asking us to run patrols in the South China Sea to challenge China. He argued we would have to agree.
...
we would have been shocked to hear Susan Thornton, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian Affairs, saying at a March 13 press conference that the Obama administration's pivot to Asia was over. The much-vaunted pivot, on which so many words of alliance piety were spilt: over.
...
Canberra's cool-headedness in response to American admirals and its own hawks has been vindicated.
Some Americans may entertain the notion of containing China's return to great power status. Australian cold warriors will persist in urging us to join the containment project. But their problem is that America – not just the current president – can be impetuous, swinging between bursts of foreign policy activism and periods of retrenchment.
If allies such as Australia sign up for a burst of crusading zeal, they are liable to be hung out to dry when America changes direction. No other American ally is as dependent on China for its economic future. If the Turnbull government had been persuaded by the hawks, right now that would be our position: out to dry.
Bob Carr was the longest serving premier of New South Wales and is a former foreign minister. He is the director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology, Sydney.
Read more
The land war being referred to is Korea.