Re: Japanese Defence Minister: Helicopter & DDG "locked on" by Chinese Frigates' Ra
Why 20 years? What is the big rush?
I'm shocked to hear this coming from SDF's biggest Chinese nationalist! I thought you cared about China's territory and China's unification. What was the rush in the CCP invading Hainan Island or the Paracel Islands? If the Diaoyu and Spratly Islands don't matter, why spend even a single yuan on attempting to show control and sovereignty. If the islands don't matter, why spend any money maintaining forts and sending CMS ships to patrol the territorial waters? If you believe China will always win in the long run, what's the point in having a military?
Time absolutely matters in territorial disputes because their is an informal and legal bias toward the status quo. The longer a territorial arrangement goes on, the more likely it is that future governments and international bodies will prefer the status quo to change. For example, no one would back a Chinese to claim the northern Vietnam on the basis on the Han Dynasty 1000 year control because it's been so long since then.
Focusing on development has paid great dividends for China and hugely increased its military capacity. But without some kind of decisive action in the future, it will achieve very little in the quest to reunify China. Development has increased the tools available to China's leaders, but will they ever use them? Or do you think that economic development will be enough, that Vietnam, the Philippines, and Japan will be so much in awe of China's economy that they will roll over and surrender the disputed territories?
China's long history gives its people and its leaders great patience and prospective. It is one of the most fundamental advantages the Chinese civilisation and nation holds over most of the rest of the world, who are too impatient to get results yesterday with little thought or planning for what might happen 10, 20, 100 years down the line.
This is a bunch of nonsense. How does that explain China plundering and humiliation for 200 years under foreigners? Was it all part of a "grand Qing plan for eventual Chinese domination of the world?" Was the ceding of Hong Kong to Britain part of that grand plan too?
It seems like many Chinese nationalists want to believe there is a long-term plan for retaking all the disputed islands in the absence of any firm measures. But what they want to be true is not necessarily the same as what is true. Unless we have some good evidence on top level Chinese decision-making, this so-called long-term plan could be accurately described as "we have no idea how to get the islands back so we'll keep doing nothing."
But seriously, I find it very distateful when people post out of irrational passion rather than cold, hard reason. When you cloud your judgment with emotion, you lose sight of the big picture and start making bad decisions. Like throwing your advantage away and trying to forcibly retake DYT, or deludedly believing that Japan and the US are too scared to respond to a Chinese incursion of DYT.