China's SCS Strategy Thread

[Rettam Stacf]

A minor but critically important point in fact is that China specifically and purposefully used existing provisions and rules within UNCLOS upon ratification to grandfather in its SCS historical claims as historical; and as such, made UNCLOS utterly irrelevant in regards to the SCS issue.

This is an indisputable fact, yet funny how the western MSM manage to collectively ‘overlook’ it in every.single.fucking report on the matter.

It’s ok for different publications and agencies to have different interpretations of events, but it’s utterly beyond credulity that every.single.fucking western news agency would all miss the same incredibly important piece of indisputable fact in all their reporting on the subject.

I believe UK did the same in regard to the Falkland Islands. Can some correct me if I am wrong ?

 

[antiterror13]

I believe UK did the same in regard to the Falkland Islands. Can some correct me if I am wrong ?

yeapp, also the US and France .. they just adopt/support UNCLOS when convenient to them or against the rivals. And ignore it when against them

 

[plawolf]

I believe UK did the same in regard to the Falkland Islands. Can some correct me if I am wrong ?

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Apparently not (probably because when the old declining colonial powers devised UNCLOS, they were doing so to create a tool to use to further their own interests first and foremost, so did not really expect it to be turned around and used against themselves), but that didn’t stop it from rejecting UN reports and rulings when it went against their interests.

DOWNING Street has dismissed the UN Continental Shelf report, which reports in Argentina claim acknowledges the country's right to what they know as 'The Malvinas'.

More recent and flagrant violation of UN ICJ rulings.

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The British government has rejected both the ICJ’s order and its unanimous ruling that its jurisdiction relates to a UN process of decolonization, not a dispute between two states.

To drag the discussion back on topic, below is a pretty fair and accurate account of the US role in inflaming tensions in the SCS

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On 12 July, the Arbitration Court at The Hague handed down judgment on the case brought under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) by the Philippines against China. In a pre-arranged declaration,

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comprehensively against China’s claims in the South China Sea.

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South China Sea territorial disputes (map on Wikipedia)

From the outset, China rejected the authority of the Court. When China signed up to UNCLOS in 1996, it also exercised its right under article 298 of the Convention to opt out of the arbitration process. China’s

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, meaning that at the very least, China is correct to say that the judgment is not binding. But there is also a strong case that the court went beyond its competence in de facto ruling on issues of disputed sovereignty.

As a result, the judgment will do nothing to resolve the disputes in the South China Sea. But that was never the intention. The real aim of going to the Arbitration Court was to internationalise the dispute, justifying the involvement of the U.S. and, in particular, providing a rationale for an exponential increase in the presence of the U.S. Navy in the South China Sea.

From around 2009, with the aftermath of the world financial crisis accelerating the rate at which China was catching up to the U.S. as the world’s largest economy, the U.S. administration took a decision to ‘pivot’ U.S. foreign policy to Asia, with the aim of ‘

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in the global system… in the face of rising Chinese power’.

In embarking on this,

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: ‘Nothing would better promote the United States’ strategic future and grand strategy toward China than robust economic growth’. But this is not happening. While the U.S. has given a central role to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – a proposed free trade agreement between the U.S. and some Pacific Rim countries that excludes China – the reality is that China’s economy is much more dynamic and more attractive than that of the U.S. A purely economic competition with China is one that the U.S. will lose.

Therefore, in its ‘grand strategy’ against China, the U.S. has been forced to rely more and more on the military front, where it still has a huge strategic advantage over China and will have for decades to come.

The two key arenas for increased U.S. military pressure on China are the South China Sea and northeast Asia. A few days before The Hague ruling, South Korea agreed to the installation of the U.S. THAAD missile defence system, allegedly to counter North Korea, but with a range of 2000 km, it is clearly aimed at China.

 

[plawolf]

Continued due to character limit.

In 2010, the

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that the South China Sea was within its sphere of ‘national interest’ as a prelude to stepping up its military presence. U.S. navy surveillance intensified; U.S. air sorties for close reconnaissance increased from about 260 in 2009 to over 1,200 in 2014; more than 100 U.S. planes have been stopping over each month at Clark, the former U.S. airbase in the Philippines.

In 2003 there were six visits by U.S. warships to Malaysian ports; in 2012 there were over 50. More recently, U.S. navy ships have sailed within 12 nautical miles of Chinese installations. U.S. warships and planes have also made frequent so-called ‘innocent passage’ transits through China’s territorial waters and airspace. Japan has threatened it will also send warships to ‘defend freedom of navigation’ in the Sea.

In 2012, Manila agreed the U.S. could return to its old Subic Bay naval base from which it had been kicked out in 1992. Australia agreed to a new U.S. Marine base in Darwin, within striking distance of the South China Sea.

Taking the issue of China’s claims to the Arbitration Court was a further step in militarising the disputes in the South China Sea. China

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it as ‘a political provocation under the cloak of law’, inspired by the U.S. with the Philippines a willing puppet.

It blew up the bilateral and ASEAN-led negotiating regime that had ensured stability in the Sea for the previous 20 years which allowed a ‘

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‘from 1991 to the end of 2010, during which bilateral cooperation flourished and trade ballooned nearly 37 times, from no more than $8bn to $300bn’. China’s GDP rose rapidly and most Southeast Asian economies expanded more than five-fold.

China’s approach to the disputes in the South China Sea was set out by Deng Xiaoping. When China eventually signed a peace treaty with Japan in 1978, Deng had said the dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands could be left for the ‘wisdom of future generations’ to find solutions which they could not. He took the same

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, saying to president Aquino of the Philippines in 1988: ‘We can set aside this issue for the time being and take the approach of pursuing joint development’ and not let ‘this issue stand in the way of China’s friendship with the Philippines and with other countries’.

Led by China, this approach was largely followed by the other main parties – the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam. On this basis in 2002, China and ASEAN agreed to a Code of Conduct for Parties in the South China Sea, which shelved the question of sovereignty and set in place non-binding protocols for joint seabed exploration and other activities in contested areas. This had meant the disputes over islands and reefs were in the background but

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.

This framework of bilateral agreements and ASEAN-led protocols did not altogether prevent issues arising. There were numerous breaches of the ASEAN Code of Conduct – mainly not by China – but these were kept within bounds.

But once the U.S. entered the fray arguing this historic dispute could no longer be left to those directly involved and insisting on the involvement of the big international guns – not just the U.S. itself but Japan and Europe – this framework began to crumble. Particularly when anyone that stood up to China’s claims was backed up by with a visible show of U.S. naval power.

The use of UNCLOS to try to delegitimise China’s claims in the South China Sea is ironic, as the main role of the 1982 Convention had been to allow the atrophied old colonial empires to use their island remnants to define vast tracts of the world’s oceans as their ‘exclusive economic zones’. The 1982 Convention had introduced a ‘revolutionary change in the law of the sea’ by adding to the previously defined 12 nautical miles (22 kilometres) of territorial waters, a new designation of much more extensive ‘exclusive economic zones’ (EEZ) giving rights to explore and exploit waters and seabed 200 nautical miles out from anything defined as ‘land’.

It was this new designation of EEZs that added urgency and fervour to the clash between the UK and Argentina over the Falklands/Malvinas in 1982. The combined EEZ of the Falklands, South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands delivers the UK rights over two million square kilometers of the South Atlantic, almost three times the EEZ of the UK itself (774,000 km2). In the Pacific, excluding the U.S. west coast, Alaska and the Aleutian Island chain, the U.S. EEZ around its other island territories amounts to 5.8m km2. Compared to these, China’s claim in the South China Sea is tiny, moreover it is not a far-flung outpost of former empire, but its own backyard.[1]

What is even more ironic is that while the U.S. has happily used the UNCLOS definitions to claim exclusive rights over vast areas of the Pacific Ocean and now demands China abides by the outcome in The Hague, the U.S. itself is one of a tiny handful of countries that has never ratified UNCLOS, unlike China.

However, while the ruling may have gone against China, in some respects the response has simply underlined the continuing relative weakening of the U.S. position in the region. The international enthusiasm for The Hague ruling has been muted to say the least. ASEAN failed even to agree that the ruling ‘could be useful’ and decided not to say anything; Singapore simply ‘noted’ it, as did South Korea; Vietnam did not mention the ruling but called for acceptance of international law. The EU could only agree to note that the ruling had gone against China, while the statement from the July Asia-Europe summit in Mongolia didn’t mention it at all. Taiwan rejected it in terms as strong as Mainland China.

So the ruling may have been a blow against the perceived status of China’s claims in the Sea, it is by no means left isolated.

So what will happen next? The U.S. and the Philippines will brand China an international outlaw; the U.S. will continue to ratchet up its military presence while blaming China for the militarisation of the South China Sea; and as long as China grows at 6.5 per cent annually, just by existing it will continue to undermine the U.S.’s attempts to assert its ‘leadership’ in Asia-Pacific.

 

[Gatekeeper]

Continued due to character limit.

Here Here. 99% in agreement. Again your analysis is almost faultless.

I say "almost". This is because it doesn't do the Chinese any justice to compare the International court of Justice (ICJ) with the Kangaroo court of the court of Arbitration! One is the real court which the UK has to. Comply, the other, well, is a Kangaroo court which no one has to comply! and China has decleared null and void as it is within the rules!

 

[Mark777c]

Here Here. 99% in agreement. Again your analysis is almost faultless.

I say "almost". This is because it doesn't do the Chinese any justice to compare the International court of Justice (ICJ) with the Kangaroo court of the court of Arbitration! One is the real court which the UK has to. Comply, the other, well, is a Kangaroo court which no one has to comply! and China has decleared null and void as it is within the rules!

how come you guys can talk politics but im always blamed for even breifly mentioning it ?

 

[Gatekeeper]

how come you guys can talk politics but im always blamed for even breifly mentioning it ?

Please don't drag me into your issues with the mods! We are not discussing politics directly per se. We are discussing system of governance. Which is different. We are skirting on the fringe as supposed to you going in head first!

Please don't quote me again on this issue, or you'll get me into trouble with the mods as well.

Thank you.

 

[Gatekeeper]

Let's create a crisis where none exist!

South China Sea warning: How China’s dominance ‘cannot be reversed’ as tensions soar | World | News

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South China Sea: Taro Kono warns of 'aggressive behaviour'

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’s forces have engulfed the region with military bases, weapons installations and asserted its controversial Nine-Dash Line territory claim despite anger from other Asian nations. And now, it appears even the military efforts of the US have failed to stop Beijing’s forces from becoming the superior presence in the region. According to the Council of Foreign Relations, China’s dominance “cannot be reversed” because of the relentless aggression from Beijing accompanied by huge resources.

The nonprofit think tank said: “The United States cannot reverse China’s militarisation of the

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; Beijing has succeeded in shifting the balance of power in this waterway in its favour.”

It also warned that given the turning tide in the region, increased aggression is risking conflict.

The Council of Foreign Relations added: “China has increasingly interfered with freedom of navigation, warning military and commercial vessels away from its artificial island bases.

“It has also harassed vessels belonging to regional claimants, conducted maritime surveys of dubious legality, and attempted dangerous manoeuvres with its own military craft.

“These activities could lead to accidental or inadvertent escalation. Beijing could interfere with normal operations by other regional claimants, possibly while operating its own vessels dangerously.”

South China Sea: Xi and Trump have clashed over the region. Also concerning for the US are China’s bases in the contested Spratly Island chain.

The Council of Foreign Relations has also warned in its article that other claimants over the archipelago -Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia to name a few - don’t have the resources to defy Beijing on their own.

The article added: “China could further militarise the Spratly Islands by deploying more military platforms; it could also begin building on the Scarborough Shoal, which it seized from the Philippines in 2012.

“Alone, other South China Sea claimants lack the ability to fully resist Chinese

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President

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has invested heavily in the Island chain in recent years, and may have built a domineering presence that can’t be challenged.

Described by many as “island fortresses”, China has engulfed the South China Sea with man-made island bases and has been accused of forming them specifically for military purposes.

The moving of its aircraft carriers, airstrips and weapons into the region has earned the cluster of bases the nickname: “The Great Wall of Sand.”

DON'T MISS:

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A leaked set of photos given to a Filipino newspaper showed just how elaborate China’s development of military bases has been.​

Some photographs showed cargo ships and supply vessels, which the newspaper said appeared to be delivering construction materials to the China-controlled islands.

Others show runways, hangars, control towers, helipads and radomes as well as a series of multistorey buildings that China has built on reefs.

 

[Brumby]

how come you guys can talk politics but im always blamed for even breifly mentioning it ?

Good question. You should flag it with the mods and point out the posts that are political in nature and question why the rules don't apply.

 

[Gatekeeper]

@Mark777c

You see, you have already got a cheerleader wanting you to act! Need I say more?