PiSigma
"the engineer"
There is no need to fall to their level. Its probably easier for China to sell tunnel digging equipment to mexico as quid pro quo.
China's SCS Strategy Thread
- Thread starter lilzz
- Start date
Equation
Lieutenant General
Of course many of us had already knew this.
But I disagree with the article tying the blame mostly on the Obama administration for the US SCS losing. There wasn't much President Obama could do at the time because the world is changing and so are the politics and economics of things.
But I disagree with the article tying the blame mostly on the Obama administration for the US SCS losing. There wasn't much President Obama could do at the time because the world is changing and so are the politics and economics of things. Of course many of us had already knew this.
Pretty shallow propaganda article written as if the arbitration panel had jurisdiction and as if the divergent interpretations of international law is just a high school popularity contest. Casting blame on Obama is just the author politicizing the issue for US domestic politics.
Another similar article.
Basically besides China play its cards right, China also got very very lucky, US presidential transition and Trump the new president being extremely incompetent, abandon TPP from first week to his obsession with himself, and of course, Philippine also had a president transition with someone who is much more favorable to China etc...
US will continue to sail ships into those islands, but the battle is already over now.
Basically besides China play its cards right, China also got very very lucky, US presidential transition and Trump the new president being extremely incompetent, abandon TPP from first week to his obsession with himself, and of course, Philippine also had a president transition with someone who is much more favorable to China etc...
US will continue to sail ships into those islands, but the battle is already over now.
This is a very different article since it advocates seeking accommodation rather than conflict. Though yes indeed China has been very lucky.
China may have turned the tide of battle for the mood and overall direction of the territorial disputes for now, seeking consensual resolution rather than conflict, but China has not "won" the territorial disputes per se.
Other claimants control plenty of holdings and can do whatever they want with them, the disputes have not been settled yet, China merely protected its own holdings and its right to do whatever it wants with those. Also the US can still do pretty much whatever it wants in the region.
joshuatree
Captain
Not enough detail, did the US naval ship sailed within 12 NM of Triton operate in a manner consistent with innocent passage? If so, they would be simply demonstrating that. Also, what position was the ship relative to the island? Was it within China's declared archipelagic baselines so they are demonstrating nonrecognition of declared internal waters? But none of this necessarily means not recognizing Chinese ownership of Paracels.
Really it's the Chinese government that should be saying these things in international forums such as the UN and public press releases rather than a low-readership online site like Asia Times.A balance and logical article on SCS. The cacophony and drumbeat of the war monger is getting louder and louder without even thinking the consequence. This article refute the propaganda by AMTI
When reporting on the South China Sea, it has become commonplace for media around the world to draw upon think tank research detailing China’s developing military capable facilities in the region.
Some use the information to bolster campaigns to convince the US Trump administration that China presents an imminent threat to the country’s interests, including freedom of navigation. But the deepening drumbeat for the US to militarily confront China in the South China Sea should be considered with a healthy dose of scepticism.
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by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies describes China’s latest construction projects in the South China Sea, concluding that it “can now deploy military assets including combat aircraft and mobile missile launchers to the Spratly Islands at any time.”
This is fact. But the AMTI director also warned in a subsequent interview to “look for deployment in the near future”. This implies that China intends to use these facilities to do so. This is supposition.
Construction is shown on Mischief Reef, in the Spratly Islands, the disputed South China Sea in this satellite image released by CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Inititative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Photo: CSIS/AMTI DigitalGlobe/handout via Reuters
Australia’s Lowy Institute released fretting that “these strategic outposts will permit Beijing to enhance its power projection capabilities and establish anti-access zones right across the South China Sea”. There are many bad things that could happen in the South China Sea. But that doesn’t mean that they will.
flourishes when academic analysts themselves push US-slanted research. Let’s take the concern that China will interfere with freedom of commercial navigation. Media articles often cite the more than US$5 trillion trade that transits the South China Sea.
The obvious inference is that China may use their facilities to disrupt this trade. This is possible. But China has not done so, is unlikely to do so and maintains it will not do so. China’s economy depends on seaborne trade through the South China Sea, which would likely be interrupted in a conflict.
This May 10, 2015 US Navy handout photo shows the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson in the South China Sea. The Carl Vinson Strike Group is deployed to the U.S. 7th Fleet in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. AFP/ US Navy/LT. Jonathan Pfaff.
The United States has cleverly conflated freedom of commercial navigation with the freedom to undertake provocative military intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance activities (ISR).
The US argument is that freedom of navigation is indivisible and includes both commercial navigation and US IRR probes.
The United States then argues that China’s interference with its military vessels and aircraft in and over China’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) violates freedom of navigation. But China argues that it is not challenging freedom of navigation itself, only the abuse of this right by the US military in its EEZ.
A Chinese H-6K long range bomber flies over Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal in the Philippine Exclusive Economic Zone after the UN Permanent Court of Arbitration trashed China’s 9-Dash Line claim.
US ISR missions include active ‘tickling’ of China’s coastal defences to provoke and observe a response, interference with shore to ship and submarine communications, ‘preparation of the battlefield’ using legal ambiguities to evade the scientific research consent regime, and tracking of China’s new nuclear submarines for potential targeting as they enter and exit their base.
In China’s view these are not passive intelligence collection activities commonly undertaken and usually tolerated by most states. Moreover, they are not uses of the ocean for peaceful purposes as required by , but are intrusive and controversial practices threatening the use of force which is prohibited by the UN Charter.
Western think-tank research seems often one-sided and focused on ‘outing’ China. More balanced analysis would pay equivalent attention to other claimants’ activities — particularly those of the US navy and its own ‘militarisation’ of the South China Sea.
While China might present a problem for the US navy in encounters close to the Chinese mainland, the United States still maintains the overall military advantage in the South China Sea. It currently operates with combat military vessels and aircraft as well as manned ISR assets. It is also deploying aerial, surface and underwater drones to the area.
South China Sea disputed islands
Research on the South China Sea also commonly neglects the vulnerability of China’s installations to the US capability to destroy them. In any conflict scenario — and interference with commercial freedom of navigation would likely incite conflict — these facilities would be indefensible in the face of US long-range cruise missiles.
According to Dennis Blair, retired Admiral and former US director of national intelligence, “The Spratlys are 900 miles away from China for God’s sake. Those things have no ability to defend themselves in any sort of military sense. The Philippines and the Vietnamese could put them out of action, much less us.”
Vietnam has deployed advanced mobile rocket launchers to some of the features it occupies thus threatening China’s installations.
China apparently does not consider defensive installations ‘militarisation’. It has repeatedly warned it will defend itself if the United States persists with provocative ISR probes and Freedom of Navigation exercises ( and occupied features.
In a January 2016 teleconference with US Chief of Naval Operations John Richardson, Chinese naval commander Wu Shengli said that “We won’t not set up defences. How many defences completely depends on the level of threat we face”. Self-defence is every nation’s right.
There is obviously disagreement over the definition of ‘militarisation’ and who is doing it. Was the recent US deployment of the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier strike force into the South China Sea ‘militarising’ the Sea? What about US ally Japan announcing with great media hype that it will send its largest naval vessel there? Both China and the US are — at least in each other’s eyes.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
I think there are two considerations at play in China not making its case for forcefully and publicly internationally.
Firstly, to become the champion of an alternative world view inevitably puts you into a direct confrontational stance against the champion of the incumbent view, aka USA.
For China to do that risks falling into the trap laid by elements within the US who sees China as a mortal foe and wish to kick off Cold War 2.0 or even a world war to destroy China before, in their view, China grows strong enough to destroy the US.
Right now, the people who holds such extremist views are in the extreme minority in the US (even if they disporotionately holds key roles in the US military and government).
However, for China to publicly and forcefully challenge an US-led consensus is to make China 'the other side' in the minds of more and more Americans.
Right now, China is only pushing back when the US comes making trouble on its doorstep, which, despite the relentless western media propaganda, most Americans and westerners find it hard to fully buy into the MSM party line that China is the aggressive party.
It is for similar reasons that China does not condition reciprocal intel gathering and deliberately probing or defences US forces routinely conducts against China even though it has the military capability to do so.
The second reason is that China does not want to set the precedent of explaining itself to the western public.
The Chinese government has only ever said what it wants to say. It makes statements and answers questions as and when it chooses, because it chooses. It does not owe answers or explanations to any foreigners.
That is, and has always been China's position. And it does not want to create any prescesents whereby the foreign press, governments or peoples get into the habit of expecting to demand answers from China.
Western propaganda specialists have been years trying to temp, trick and force China to play their games by publicly explaining itself, and thus far, China has resisted all such lures.
Jura The idiot
General
plawolf
Lieutenant General
Typical greedy and mafia style 'trade' from America, seeing how there would be no SCS flashpoint if not for their own active and relentless shitstirring.
Create a problem and then offer to 'help' by stopping sustain it, in exchange for real painful consessions from China.
Would be like if China gave public and vocal support to the likes of Black Panthers in the US, and secretly funnelled military grade weapons, munitions and communications equipment to such extremist groups, as well as funding and organisational support to create a race war in the US and then offering to 'help' the US solve that problem if America helped China reunite with Taiwan.
Real great trade that would be for China!
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