China's SCS Strategy Thread

[Jura The idiot]

there're no posts in https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/south-china-sea-strategies-for-other-nations-not-china.t7302/ anymore, so here ...

... comes
Exclusive: British Navy warship sails near South China Sea islands, angering Beijing

Updated 2 hours ago

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Beijing expressed anger on Thursday after a British Royal Navy warship sailed close to islands claimed by China in the South China Sea late last month, saying Britain was engaged in “provocation” and that it had lodged a strong complaint.

The HMS Albion, a 22,000 ton amphibious warship carrying a contingent of Royal Marines, exercised its “freedom of navigation” rights as it passed near the Paracel Islands, two sources, who were familiar with the matter but who asked not to be identified, told Reuters.

The Albion was on its way to Ho Chi Minh City, where it docked on Monday following a deployment in and around Japan.

One of the sources said Beijing dispatched a frigate and two helicopters to challenge the British vessel, but both sides remained calm during the encounter.

The other source the Albion did not enter the territorial seas around any features in the hotly disputed region but demonstrated that Britain does not recognize excessive maritime claims around the Paracel Islands. Twelve nautical miles is an internationally recognized territorial limit.

The Paracels are occupied entirely by China but also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan.

China’s Foreign Ministry, in a faxed statement sent to Reuters, said the ship had entered Chinese territorial waters around the Paracel Islands on Aug. 31 without permission, and the Chinese navy had warned it to leave.

“The relevant actions by the British ship violated Chinese law and relevant international law, and infringed on China’s sovereignty. China strongly opposes this and has lodged stern representations with the British side to express strong dissatisfaction,” the ministry added.

“China strongly urges the British side to immediately stop such provocative actions, to avoid harming the broader picture of bilateral relations and regional peace and stability,” it said.

“China will continue to take all necessary measures to defend its sovereignty and security.”

The encounter comes at a delicate time in London-Beijing relations.

Britain has been courting China for a post-Brexit free trade deal, and both countries like to describe how they have a “golden era” in ties.

A spokesman for the Royal Navy said: “HMS Albion exercised her rights for freedom of navigation in full compliance with international law and norms.”

British Prime Minister Theresa May’s spokesman said Britain had a strong relationship with China.

FREEDOM OF NAVIGATION
China’s claims in the South China Sea, through which some $3 trillion of shipborne trade passes each year, are contested by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. Britain does not have any territorial claims in the area.

While the U.S. Navy has conducted Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs) in the same area in the past, this British challenge to China’s growing control of the strategic waterway comes after the United States has said it would like to see more international participation in such actions.

Both Britain and the United States say they conduct FONOP operations throughout the world, including in areas claimed by allies.

The British Navy has previously sailed close to the disputed Spratly Islands, further south in the South China Sea, several times in recent years but not within the 12 nautical mile limit, regional diplomatic sources have said.

Singapore-based South China Sea expert Ian Storey said Britain had strong traditional interests in defending freedom of navigation but regular deployments in the South China Sea would be constrained due to limited numbers of warships and onerous demands in other parts of the world.

“The UK’s actions will please Washington as the Trump administration has grumbled that U.S. allies have been remiss in upholding freedom of navigation in the South China Sea,” said Storey, of Singapore’s ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute.

“But China will be displeased as it suggests that U.S. allies are responding to Washington’s appeals... It might also nudge other U.S. allies to make similar moves.”

FONOPs have so far not persuaded Beijing to curtail its South China Sea activities, which have included extensive reclamation of reefs and islands and the construction of runways, hangars and missile systems.

Beijing says it is entitled to build on its territories and says the facilities are for civilian use and necessary self-defense purposes. China blames Washington for militarizing the region with its freedom of navigation patrols.

Foreign aircraft and vessels in the region are routinely challenged by Chinese naval ships and monitoring stations on the fortified islands, sources have said previously.

In April, warships from Australia - which like Britain is a close U.S. ally - had what Canberra described as a close “encounter” with Chinese naval vessels in the contested sea.

The Albion is one of three Royal Navy ships deployed to Asia this year, along with HMS Argyll and HMS Sutherland.

In a speech in Jakarta in August, Foreign Office Minister for Asia and the Pacific Mark Field said Britain was committed to an enduring security presence in Asia and urged countries to respect navigational freedom and international law in the South China Sea.

That law included the ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, whose landmark 2016 judgment criticized Chinese actions in the South China Sea and found no basis for its sweeping historic claims. Beijing has repeatedly rejected the ruling and earlier refused to participate in the case brought by the Philippines.

 

[Jura The idiot]

Today at 8:02 PM

... comes
Exclusive: British Navy warship sails near South China Sea islands, angering Beijing

Updated 2 hours ago

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and now noticed the tweet

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China strongly opposes a UK ship's entrance into Chinese territorial waters off Xisha Islands without permission on Aug 31, and has lodged stern representations over the action that violated Chinese law & relevant int'l law, and infringed on China’s sovereignty: defense ministry

 

[Jura The idiot]

now I read
China warns 'external parties' against moves in South China Sea
2018-09-17 21:08 GMT+8

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China hopes to solve South China Sea-related issue through dialogues, said Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Geng Shuang on Monday.

He urged other external parties to think twice before making any moves in the area to avoid actions that could potentially hurt the peace and stability of the South China Sea region.

Geng made the remarks when responding to questions over Japanese submarine's recent naval drill in the area.

The submarine Kuroshio took part in an exercise on Thursday with other Japanese warships, including the Kaga helicopter carrier, which is on a two-month tour of Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean.

This was the first time a Japanese submarine had conducted drills there, including moves like detection evasion, Reuters reported.

"The situation in the South China Sea area is moving toward the positive side," Geng said.

China and the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are currently under negotiations over a Code of Conduct in the region, to further strengthen practical maritime cooperation.

 

[Hendrik_2000]

OMG click this link you see interactive GIF of the base. You see the expanse of the base amazing

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China’s Sea Control Is a Done Deal, ‘Short of War With the U.S.’
Image

An American crew monitored China’s buildup in the South China Sea last week from a Navy P-8A Poseidon reconnaissance plane.CreditCreditAdam Dean for The New York Times
By

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NEAR MISCHIEF REEF, South China Sea — As the United States Navy reconnaissance plane banked low near Mischief Reef in the South China Sea early this month, a Chinese warning crackled on the radio.

“U.S. military aircraft,” came the challenge, delivered in English in a harsh staccato. “You have violated our China sovereignty and infringed on our security and our rights. You need to leave immediately and keep far out.”

Aboard the P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, flying in what is widely considered to be international airspace, Lt. Dyanna Coughlin scanned a live camera feed showing the dramatic evolution of Mischief Reef.

In late August, one of the Philippines’ largest warships, a cast-off cutter from the United States Coast Guard, ran aground on Half Moon Shoal, an unoccupied maritime feature not far from Mischief Reef.

Five years ago, this was mostly an arc of underwater atoll populated by tropical fish and turtles. Now Mischief Reef, which is off the Philippine coast but controlled by China, has been filled out and turned into a Chinese military base, complete with radar domes, shelters for surface-to-air missiles and a runway long enough for fighter jets. Six other nearby shoals have been similarly transformed by Chinese dredging.

“I mean, this is insane,” Lieutenant Coughlin said. “Look at all that crazy construction.”

A rare visit on board a United States Navy surveillance flight over the South China Sea pointed out how profoundly China has reshaped the security landscape across the region.

The country’s aggressive territorial claims and island militarization have put neighboring countries and the United States on the defensive, even as President Trump’s administration is stepping up efforts to highlight China’s controversial island-building campaign.

In congressional testimony before assuming his new post as head of the United States Indo-Pacific Command in May, Adm. Philip S. Davidson sounded a stark warning about Beijing’s power play in a sea through which roughly one-third of global maritime trade flows.

“In short, China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States,” Admiral Davidson said, an assessment that caused some consternation in the Pentagon.

Image

A view of Subi Reef and the array of vessels there.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times
How Beijing relates to its neighbors in the South China Sea could be a harbinger of its interactions elsewhere in the world. President Xi Jinping of China has held up the island-building effort as a prime example of “China moving closer to center stage” and standing “tall and firm in the East.”

In a June meeting with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Mr. Xi vowed that China “cannot lose even one inch of the territory” in the South China Sea, even though an international tribunal has dismissed Beijing’s expansive claims to the waterway.

The reality is that governments with overlapping territorial claims — representing Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei — lack the firepower to challenge China. The United States has long fashioned itself as a keeper of peace in the Western Pacific. But it’s a risky proposition to provoke conflict over a scattering of rocks in the South China Sea, analysts say.

“As China’s military power grows relative to the United States, and it will, questions will also grow regarding America’s ability to deter Beijing’s use of force in settling its unresolved territorial issues,” said Rear Adm. Michael McDevitt, a senior fellow in strategic studies at the Center for Naval Analyses.

An unexpected encounter in the South China Sea could also set off an international incident. A 1.4-million-square-mile sea presents a kaleidoscope of shifting variables: hundreds of disputed shoals, thousands of fishing boats, coast guard vessels and warships and, increasingly, a collection of Chinese fortresses.


The Chinese, who also claim the shoal, sent vessels from nearby artificial islands, but the Philippines refused any help. After all, in 2012, the Chinese Coast Guard had muscled the Philippines off of Scarborough Shoal, a reef just 120 nautical miles from the main Philippine island of Luzon. Another incident in 1995 brought a Chinese flag to Mischief Reef, also well within what international maritime law considers a zone where the Philippines has sovereign rights.

Could somewhere like Half Moon Shoal be the next flash point in the South China Sea?

“A crisis at Half Moon was averted, but it has always been the risk with the South China Sea that a small incident in remote waters escalates into a much larger crisis through miscommunication or mishandling,” said Ian Storey, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. “That’s why this is all so dangerous. It’s not just a pile of rocks that can be ignored.”

 

[Jura The idiot]

OMG click this link you see interactive GIF of the base. You see the expanse of the base amazing

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...

yep it's cool looking

for me the most interesting part though was
Missed Opportunities
:

Perceptions of power — and Chinese reactions to these projections — have led some analysts to criticize President Barack Obama as having been too timid in countering China over what Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., the former head of theUnited States Pacific Command, memorably called a “great wall of sand” in the South China Sea.

Critics, for instance, have faulted the previous administration for not conducting more frequent freedom of navigation patrols.

“China’s militarization of the South China Sea has been a gradual process, with several phases where alternative actions by the U.S., as well as other countries, could have changed the course of history,” said Alexander Vuving, a professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu.

Chief among these moments, Mr. Vuving said, was China’s takeover of Scarborough Shoal. The United States declined to back up the Philippines, a defense treaty ally, by sending Coast Guard vessels or warships to an area that international law has designated as within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

“Seeing U.S. commitment to its ally, Beijing might not have been as confident as it was with its island-building program,” Mr. Vuving said. “The U.S. failure to support its ally in the Scarborough standoff also demonstrated to people like Duterte that he had no other option than to kowtow to China.”

With most of the Spratly military bases nearing completion by the end of the year, according to Pentagon assessments, the next question is whether — or more likely when — China will begin building on Scarborough. A Chinese base there would put the People’s Liberation Army in easy striking distance of the Philippine capital, Manila.

From the American reconnaissance plane, Scarborough looked like a perfect diving retreat, a lazy triangle of reef sheltering turquoise waters. But Chinese Coast Guard vessels could be seen circling the shoal, and Philippine fishermen have complained about being prevented from accessing their traditional waters.

“Do you see any construction vessels around there?” Lieutenant Coughlin asked.

“Negative, ma’am,” replied Lt. Joshua Grant, as he used a control stick to position the plane’s camera over Scarborough Shoal. “We’ll see if it changes next time.”

 

[ougoah]

OMG click this link you see interactive GIF of the base. You see the expanse of the base amazing

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China’s Sea Control Is a Done Deal, ‘Short of War With the U.S.’
Image

An American crew monitored China’s buildup in the South China Sea last week from a Navy P-8A Poseidon reconnaissance plane.CreditCreditAdam Dean for The New York Times
By

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NEAR MISCHIEF REEF, South China Sea — As the United States Navy reconnaissance plane banked low near Mischief Reef in the South China Sea early this month, a Chinese warning crackled on the radio.

“U.S. military aircraft,” came the challenge, delivered in English in a harsh staccato. “You have violated our China sovereignty and infringed on our security and our rights. You need to leave immediately and keep far out.”

Aboard the P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, flying in what is widely considered to be international airspace, Lt. Dyanna Coughlin scanned a live camera feed showing the dramatic evolution of Mischief Reef.
View attachment 48916
In late August, one of the Philippines’ largest warships, a cast-off cutter from the United States Coast Guard, ran aground on Half Moon Shoal, an unoccupied maritime feature not far from Mischief Reef.

Five years ago, this was mostly an arc of underwater atoll populated by tropical fish and turtles. Now Mischief Reef, which is off the Philippine coast but controlled by China, has been filled out and turned into a Chinese military base, complete with radar domes, shelters for surface-to-air missiles and a runway long enough for fighter jets. Six other nearby shoals have been similarly transformed by Chinese dredging.

“I mean, this is insane,” Lieutenant Coughlin said. “Look at all that crazy construction.”

A rare visit on board a United States Navy surveillance flight over the South China Sea pointed out how profoundly China has reshaped the security landscape across the region.

The country’s aggressive territorial claims and island militarization have put neighboring countries and the United States on the defensive, even as President Trump’s administration is stepping up efforts to highlight China’s controversial island-building campaign.

In congressional testimony before assuming his new post as head of the United States Indo-Pacific Command in May, Adm. Philip S. Davidson sounded a stark warning about Beijing’s power play in a sea through which roughly one-third of global maritime trade flows.

“In short, China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States,” Admiral Davidson said, an assessment that caused some consternation in the Pentagon.

Image

A view of Subi Reef and the array of vessels there.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times
How Beijing relates to its neighbors in the South China Sea could be a harbinger of its interactions elsewhere in the world. President Xi Jinping of China has held up the island-building effort as a prime example of “China moving closer to center stage” and standing “tall and firm in the East.”

In a June meeting with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Mr. Xi vowed that China “cannot lose even one inch of the territory” in the South China Sea, even though an international tribunal has dismissed Beijing’s expansive claims to the waterway.

The reality is that governments with overlapping territorial claims — representing Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei — lack the firepower to challenge China. The United States has long fashioned itself as a keeper of peace in the Western Pacific. But it’s a risky proposition to provoke conflict over a scattering of rocks in the South China Sea, analysts say.

“As China’s military power grows relative to the United States, and it will, questions will also grow regarding America’s ability to deter Beijing’s use of force in settling its unresolved territorial issues,” said Rear Adm. Michael McDevitt, a senior fellow in strategic studies at the Center for Naval Analyses.

An unexpected encounter in the South China Sea could also set off an international incident. A 1.4-million-square-mile sea presents a kaleidoscope of shifting variables: hundreds of disputed shoals, thousands of fishing boats, coast guard vessels and warships and, increasingly, a collection of Chinese fortresses.


The Chinese, who also claim the shoal, sent vessels from nearby artificial islands, but the Philippines refused any help. After all, in 2012, the Chinese Coast Guard had muscled the Philippines off of Scarborough Shoal, a reef just 120 nautical miles from the main Philippine island of Luzon. Another incident in 1995 brought a Chinese flag to Mischief Reef, also well within what international maritime law considers a zone where the Philippines has sovereign rights.

Could somewhere like Half Moon Shoal be the next flash point in the South China Sea?

“A crisis at Half Moon was averted, but it has always been the risk with the South China Sea that a small incident in remote waters escalates into a much larger crisis through miscommunication or mishandling,” said Ian Storey, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. “That’s why this is all so dangerous. It’s not just a pile of rocks that can be ignored.”

Wow the quality of some of the comments on that article is surprisingly intelligent. Also the title is correct. PRC is not going to budge on SCS. But war has already started. Just not the shooting variant.

 

[gelgoog]

Half of it is to get the resources in the area. The other half is to be able to control vessels coming in and out of the Strait of Malacca into the North Eastern nations.
With the proper missile systems the Chinese can threaten to stop all supplies through that route similarly to what Singapore can do.

The Chinese saw the danger of trade tariffs and embargoes coming a a long time ago. While the SCS islands assure them of the capability to retaliate against a move to close their access to the strait it is not an alternative to it. This is why they started OBOR.

 

[AndrewS]

Half of it is to get the resources in the area. The other half is to be able to control vessels coming in and out of the Strait of Malacca into the North Eastern nations.
With the proper missile systems the Chinese can threaten to stop all supplies through that route similarly to what Singapore can do.

The Chinese saw the danger of trade tariffs and embargoes coming a a long time ago. While the SCS islands assure them of the capability to retaliate against a move to close their access to the strait it is not an alternative to it. This is why they started OBOR.

The most likely scenario is that the SCS bases will be protecting the shipping routes from China, to the SCS littoral states and beyond.

China is the world's largest trading nation, and that will still be the case even if the US applies 25% tariffs on all imports from China.

Shipping from Malacca to NE Asia can always just take the long way around past Indonesia and the Philippines

 

[Jura The idiot]

there're no posts in https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/south-china-sea-strategies-for-other-nations-not-china.t7302/ anymore, so here ...

... US B-52s fly near contested islands amid China tensions

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The US Air Force conducted two bomber flights this week into areas considered sensitive by the Chinese military, missions that have come amid heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing.
Earlier this week, US B-52 bombers flew from Guam and transited through the South China Sea, an area where the Chinese government has built islands and established military facilities on disputed features.
"That just goes on, if it was 20 years ago and had they not militarized those features there it would have been just another bomber on its way to Diego Garcia or wherever," Secretary of Defense James Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon Wednesday when asked about the bomber flight.
"There's nothing out of the ordinary about it," Mattis added.
On Tuesday, US B-52s also "participated in a regularly scheduled, combined operation in the vicinity of the East China Sea," Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Dave Eastburn told CNN.
A US defense official told CNN that the bombers were escorted by Japanese fighter jets and flew in proximity to the Japanese controlled Senkaku Islands which China lays claim to.
The bombers also flew into the Chinese military's unilaterally declared Air Defense Identification Zone which extends over the area.
The two missions comes amid heightened tensions over a series of issues in the last week.
Earlier on Wednesday, President Donald Trump

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in the 2018 US elections and the countries are involved in a high profile trade dispute.
In the last week, the Chinese government denied a US Navy warship permission to visit Hong Kong, the US sanctioned a Chinese defense entity over its purchase of Russian-made weapons, the State Department approved a military equipment sale to Taiwan and a high-ranking Chinese naval officer canceled a meeting with his American counterpart.
"We're sorting out obviously a period with some tension there, trade tension and all, so we'll get to the bottom of it but I don't think that we're seeing a fundamental shift in anything, we're just going through one of those periodic points where we got to learn to manage our differences," Mattis said when asked about the tensions.

 

[Jura The idiot]

now noticed the tweet

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The PLA Naval Air Force of the Southern Theater recently organized fighter planes and bombers to conduct live-fire shooting drills at a sea range in the South China Sea.