South China/West Philippine Sea

[Bugatti Veyron]

http://news.yahoo.com/hoping-project-power-china-finds-itself-alone-060524988.html

 

 

Hoping to project power, China finds itself alone

http://l.yimg.com/os/152/2012/04/21/image001-png_162613.png By JACK CHANG 2 hours agoBEIJING (AP) — Nearly three decades after Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping famously instructed his diplomats to "be good at maintaining a low profile and never claim leadership," a new generation of rulers has made it clear that they're ready to shed the humility and show off their country's rising military and political power.

 

From Southeast Asian waters that may hold billions of barrels of oil to uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, China has stepped into territorial disputes with neighbors including Japan, South Korea and the Philippines — and in some cases, some would say, provoked them. At the same time, Beijing has pledged to build what it says will be a new security framework for Asia, replacing U.S.-dominated alliances that have defined the post-World War II period.

 

"We should work for a new architecture of Asia-Pacific security cooperation that is open, transparent and equality-based," Chinese President Xi Jinping told dignitaries from India and Myanmar last month. "The notion of dominating international affairs belongs to a different age and such an attempt is doomed to failure."

 

Yet despite Xi's depiction of China as a "peaceful, amiable and civilized lion," the country's moves have so far set off alarms across the region and pushed other Asian countries to seek backup from Washington. Promises to build a self-governing Asian community of nations have amounted to little more than words, while the reality has been what many see as Chinese bullying.

 

Xi, who has shown similar boldness at home since rising to power last year, is at the heart of the new strategy. For the first time in decades, Chinese officials are emphasizing an "active" foreign policy that sets the regional agenda while touting China's maritime strength.

 

"This is a very strong theme with him," said Christopher Johnson, a former China analyst with the CIA who's now chairman of China studies at the U.S. think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It's bound up in his view of himself as not only the savior of the party but kind of an instrument of history, with the goal being this great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation."

 

That means showing "strong willingness to counter U.S. influence in the region," said Alice Ekman, head of China research at the French Institute of International Relations. Chinese officials have been especially critical of the Obama administration's touted "pivot to Asia," with diplomats openly mocking America's ability to police the region.

 

"We are seeing at several levels — economic, institutional, political, security — a reinforced competition between China and the U.S. in the region since Xi's arrival." Ekman said at a recent lecture in Beijing on China's foreign policy.

 

She said China's growing dominance of the global economy, and its neighbors' dependence on Chinese trade, is central to the strategy. "China's moves in the region are based on the following hypothesis: Time moves in favor of China as long as the economic attractiveness of China will reinforce the balance of power in favor of China," she said.

 

Xi's immediate goal is to give his country's forces tactical military superiority within what is known as the first island chain off the country's shores, from Japan down to Indonesia, Johnson said.

 

In May, Chinese officials sent an oil rig into parts of the South China Sea claimed by both China and Vietnam, setting off repeated confrontations between the two countries' ships and sparking anti-Chinese riots in Vietnam. In the nearby Spratly archipelago, the Chinese have been adding sand to reefs and rocks so they can build military installations despite claims to the outcroppings by both Vietnam and the Philippines.

 

Farther north, China provoked rebuke from Japan, South Korea and the U.S. in November after declaring an air defense identification zone, which requires foreign planes to identify themselves to Chinese forces across much of the East China Sea. China and Japan are disputing control of a scattering of rocky islands there, and Japan protested after Chinese fighter jets flew close to Japanese surveillance planes observing a joint China-Russia naval drill in May.

 

China is also locked in longstanding territorial disputes with India along its southern border and has committed itself to defending with military force if necessary what it calls its core interests — chief among them, reuniting with the self-governing island of Taiwan, which Beijing claims, and holding on to Tibet.

 

China has appeared to be more active in defending territorial claims than it has been in pursuing a new alliance of Asian countries. At a China-hosted summit in May of some four dozen countries and international groups, Xi touted what he said would be a new Asian security network that would exclude the U.S., but he left the meeting with few solid steps to actually building such a framework.

 

Australian Cabinet minister Malcolm Turnbull said China has found itself largely alone, at least diplomatically, as it shows its teeth to the region.

 

"It has really no allies in the region, apart from North Korea," Turnbull was quoted as saying at a recent security and economic leadership conference. "And the consequence has been how China's neighbors are drawing closer to the United States than ever before."

 

With tensions high over China, U.S. President Barack Obama paid high-profile visits to Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines in April, where he reassured governments that the U.S. would honor agreements to defend them.

 

Japanese leaders took matters into their own hands last week when they reinterpreted their pacifist constitution to let them expand the use of the country's military to defend its allies. The move strengthens Japan's alliance with the U.S. but also opens the door to new alliances with like-minded Asian countries.

 

"In the South China Sea, I think Chinese leaders have one purpose: They want to do as much damage as possible to U.S. credibility," said Huang Jing, a China expert at Singapore National University's Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. "China understands that if China appears soft, there'll be no end of it, so China will appear tough and will not make compromises ... and (China believes) the U.S. will not come to help when push comes to shove."

 

In capitals across Asia, he said, China is forcing governments to make a difficult choice: Will they bet on a future dominated by a newly confident China or one based on longtime U.S. assurances?

 

 

 

[sonnyt111]

An interesting analysis about how China views American military might and how it believes it can take on the United States in this part of the world.

 

http://theweek.com/article/index/264032/china-thinks-it-can-defeat-america-in-battle

 

China thinks it can defeat America in battle

 

But it overlooks one decisive factor By David Axe, War is Boring | July 7, 2014The bad news first. The People's Republic of China now believes it can successfully prevent the United States from intervening in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan or some other military assault by Beijing.

 

Now the good news. China is wrong — and for one major reason. It apparently disregards the decisive power of America's nuclear-powered submarines.

 

Moreover, for economic and demographic reasons Beijing has a narrow historical window in which to use its military to alter the world's power structure. If China doesn't make a major military move in the next couple decades, it probably never will.

 

The U.S. Navy's submarines — the unsung main defenders of the current world order — must hold the line against China for another 20 years. After that, America can declare a sort of quiet victory in the increasingly chilly Cold War with China.

 

How China wins

 

The bad news came from Lee Fuell, from the U.S. Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center, during Fuell's testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 30.

 

For years, Chinese military planning assumed that any attack by the People's Liberation Army on Taiwan or a disputed island would have to begin with a Pearl Harbor-style preemptive missile strike by China against U.S. forces in Japan and Guam. The PLA was so afraid of overwhelming American intervention that it genuinely believed it could not win unless the Americans were removed from the battlefield before the main campaign even began.

 

A preemptive strike was, needless to say, a highly risky proposition. If it worked, the PLA just might secure enough space and time to defeat defending troops, seize territory, and position itself for a favorable post-war settlement.

 

But if China failed to disable American forces with a surprise attack, Beijing could find itself fighting a full-scale war on at least two fronts: against the country it was invading plus the full might of U.S. Pacific Command, fully mobilized and probably strongly backed by the rest of the world.

 

That was then. But after two decades of sustained military modernization, the Chinese military has fundamentally changed its strategy in just the last year or so. According to Fuell, recent writings by PLA officers indicate "a growing confidence within the PLA that they can more-readily withstand U.S. involvement."

 

The preemptive strike is off the table — and with it, the risk of a full-scale American counterattack. Instead, Beijing believes it can attack Taiwan or another neighbor while also bloodlessly deterring U.S. intervention. It would do so by deploying such overwhelmingly strong military forces — ballistic missiles, aircraft carriers, jet fighters, and the like — that Washington dare not get involved.

 

The knock-on effects of deterring America could be world-changing. "Backing away from our commitments to protect Taiwan, Japan, or the Philippines would be tantamount to ceding East Asia to China's domination," Roger Cliff, a fellow at the Atlantic Council, said at the same U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission hearing on Jan. 30.

 

Worse, the world's liberal economic order — and indeed, the whole notion of democracy — could suffer irreparable harm. "The United States has both a moral and a material interest in a world in which democratic nations can survive and thrive," Cliff asserted.

 

Fortunately for that liberal order, America possesses by far the world's most powerful submarine force — one poised to quickly sink any Chinese invasion fleet. In announcing its readiness to hold off the U.S. military, the PLA seems to have ignored Washington's huge undersea advantage.

 

The Silent Service

 

It's not surprising that Beijing would overlook America's subs. Most Americans overlook their own undersea fleet — and that's not entirely their own fault. The U.S. sub force takes pains to avoid media coverage in order to maximize its secrecy and stealth. "The submarine cruises the world's oceans unseen," the Navy stated on its Website.

 

Unseen and unheard. That why the sub force calls itself the "Silent Service."

 

The Navy has 74 submarines, 60 of which are attack or missile submarines optimized for finding and sinking other ships or blasting land targets. The balance is ballistic-missile boats that carry nuclear missiles and would not routinely participate in military campaigns short of an atomic World War III.

 

Thirty-three of the attack and missile boats belong to the Pacific Fleet, with major bases in Washington State, California, Hawaii, and Guam. Deploying for six months or so roughly every year and a half, America's Pacific subs frequently stop over in Japan and South Korea and occasionally even venture under the Arctic ice.

 

According to Adm. Cecil Haney, the former commander of Pacific Fleet subs, on any given day 17 boats are underway and eight are "forward-deployed," meaning they are on station in a potential combat zone. To the Pacific Fleet, that pretty much means waters near China.

 

America has several submarine types. The numerous Los Angeles-class attack boats are Cold War stalwarts that are steadily being replaced by newer Virginia-class boats with improved stealth and sensors. The secretive Seawolfs, numbering just three — all of them in the Pacific — are big, fast, and more heavily armed than other subs. The Ohio-class missile submarines are former ballistic missile boats each packing 154 cruise missile.

 

U.S. subs are, on average, bigger, faster, quieter, and more powerful than the rest of the world's subs. And there are more of them. The U.K. is building just seven new Astute attack boats. Russia aims to maintain around 12 modern attack subs. China is struggling to deploy a handful of rudimentary nuclear boats.

 

Able to lurk silently under the waves and strike suddenly with torpedoes and missiles, submarines have tactical and strategic effect greatly disproportionate to their relatively small numbers. During the 1982 Falklands War, the British sub Conqueror torpedoed and sank the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano, killing 323 men. The sinking kept the rest of the Argentine fleet bottled up for the duration of the conflict.

 

America's eight-at-a-time submarine picket in or near Chinese waters could be equally destructive to Chinese military plans, especially considering the PLA's limited anti-submarine skills. "Although China might control the surface of the sea around Taiwan, its ability to find and sink U.S. submarines will be extremely limited for the foreseeable future," Cliff testified. "Those submarines would likely be able to intercept and sink Chinese amphibious transports as they transited toward Taiwan."

 

So it almost doesn't matter that a modernized PLA thinks it possesses the means to fight America above the waves, on land, and in the air. If it can't safely sail an invasion fleet as part of its territorial ambitions, it can't achieve its strategic goals — capturing Taiwan and or some island also claimed by a neighboring country — through overtly military means.

 

That reality should inform Washington's own strategy. As the United States has already largely achieved the world order it struggled for over the last century, it need only preserve and defend this order. In other words, America has the strategic high ground against China, as the latter must attack and alter the world in order to get what it wants.

 

In practical military terms, that means the Pentagon can more or less ignore most of China's military capabilities, including those that appear to threaten traditional U.S. advantages in nukes, air warfare, mechanized ground operations, and surface naval maneuvers.

 

"We won't invade China, so ground forces don't play," pointed out Wayne Hughes, a professor at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. "We won't conduct a first nuclear strike. We should not adopt an air-sea strike plan against the mainland, because that is a sure way to start World War IV."

 

Rather, America must deny the Chinese free access to their near waters. "We need only enough access to threaten a war at sea," Hughes said. In his view, a fleet optimized for countering China would have large numbers of small surface ships for enforcing a trade blockade. But the main combatants would be submarines, "to threaten destruction of all Chinese warships and commercial vessels in the China Seas."

 

Cliff estimated that in wartime, each American submarine would be able to get off "a few torpedo shots" before needing to "withdraw for self-preservation." But assuming eight subs each fire three torpedoes, and just half those torpedoes hit, the American attack boats could destroy all of China's major amphibious ships — and with them, Beijing's capacity for invading Taiwan or seizing a disputed island.

 

Waiting out the Chinese decline

 

If American subs can hold the line for another 20 years, China might age right out of its current, aggressive posture without ever having attacked anyone. That's because economic and demographic trends in China point towards a rapidly aging population, flattening economic growth, and fewer resources available for military modernization.

 

To be fair, almost all developed countries are also experiencing this aging, slowing and increasing peacefulness. But China's trends are pronounced owing to a particularly steep drop in the birth rate traceable back to the Chinese Communist Party's one-child policy.

 

Another factor is the unusual speed with which the Chinese economy has expanded to its true potential, thanks to the focused investment made possible by an authoritarian government… and also thanks to that government's utter disregard for the natural environment and for the rights of everyday Chinese people.

 

"The economic model that propelled China through three decades of meteoric growth appears unsustainable," Andrew Erickson, a Naval War College analyst, told the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

 

What Erickson described as China's "pent-up national potential" could begin expiring as early as 2030, by which point "China will have world's highest proportion of people over 65," he predicted. "An aging society with rising expectations, burdened with rates of chronic diseases exacerbated by sedentary lifestyles, will probably divert spending from both military development and the economic growth that sustains it."

 

Wisely, American political and military leaders have made the investments necessary to sustain U.S. undersea power for at least that long. After a worrying dip in submarine production, starting in 2012 the Pentagon asked for — and Congress funded — the acquisition of two Virginia-class submarines per year for around $2.5 billion apiece, a purchase rate adequate to maintain the world's biggest nuclear submarine fleet indefinitely.

 

Given China's place in the world, its underlying national trends and America's pointed advantage in just that aspect of military power that's especially damaging to Chinese plans, it seems optimistic for PLA officers to assume they can launch an attack on China's neighbors without first knocking out U.S. forces.

 

Not that a preemptive strike would make any difference, as the only American forces that truly matter for containing China are the very ones that China cannot reach.

 

For they are deep underwater.

 

 

 

[sonnyt111]

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-five-best-weapons-war-the-soviet-union-10681

 

If Vietnam and China Went to War: Five Weapons Beijing Should Fear

 

They went to war in 1979 and it did not turn out well for China. Today, Vietnam has the military muscle to present lots of problems.

 

Robert Farley July 12, 2014

 

 

 

In 1975, the armed forces of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam defeated the Republic of Vietnam, capturing Saigon and putting to end nearly thirty years of civil war. The victory came three years after the United States, unwilling to pay the price of continued engagement, left the war. In 1979, the People’s Republic of China invaded Vietnam in an effort to punish Hanoi for its actions in Cambodia, and for its association with the Soviet Union. The war lasted a month, with Chinese forces leaving after heavy losses and without achieving any strategic objectives.

 

In short, the Vietnam People’s Army has a history of success. Today, Sino-Vietnamese relations are again hitting a low point. The deployment of a Chinese oil rig in waters claimed by Vietnam has only exacerbated tensions over control of islands in the South China Sea. Various Vietnamese politicians, including the late Vo Nguyen Giap, have warned about the threat of Chinese encroachment.

 

If war broke out, what weapons could Vietnam use? It turns out that China and Vietnam shop in the same place; most of the weapons that Vietnam would use against China are also in the hands of the People’s Liberation Army. However, the implications of offensive and defensive employment vary greatly. Here are five systems that Vietnam might use to good effect against the Chinese military.

 

Su-27

 

Airpower played a curiously small role in the 1979 war. The People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) did not, because of problems with doctrine and technology, have the capacity to extend itself over the battlefront. The much smaller Vietnam People’s Air Force (VPAF) remained quiet, preferring to play the defensive role that it had perfected against the United States a decade earlier, but didn’t need in this conflict.

 

That won’t be the case the next time around. Both the VPAF and the PLAAF have upgraded with formidable Russian, and in the latter case domestic, aircraft. Most notable among these are members of the Su-27 Flanker family. Vietnam operates around 40 Flankers of various types, with another 20 on order from Russia. In addition to defense air-to-air missions, these aircraft can strike Chinese land and sea targets with long-range, precision cruise missiles. The Flankers are heavy, fast, and deadly, and would see action on both sides.

 

In conjunction with Vietnam’s integrated air defense network, the Flankers (as well as a few older fighters, such as MiG-21s), can threaten not only to deny Vietnamese airspace to China, but also to punch back. We don’t yet have a sense of how Vietnamese pilot training compares with Chinese, although the PLAAF obviously has greater resources, and has devoted attention in recent years to realistic training. Nevertheless, the VPAF may be able to use its sophisticated Flankers to good defensive advantage against overstretched Chinese forces.

 

Kilo Class Submarine

 

Analysts generally agree that the PLAN has yet to work out the most important problems with anti-submarine warfare. While the PLAN will undoubtedly have a huge advantage in submarines in the opening days of any conflict, its undersea fleet is optimized for attacks against surface ships, not fighting enemy subs.

 

The quiet, modern Kilo class subs that Vietnam has recently begun acquiring from Russia will present a major problem for the PLAN. Although the Chinese also operate Kilos (as well as a variety of other subs), these would not necessarily neutralize the Vietnamese boats before they could exact a toll. The Vietnamese Kilos carry both torpedoes and anti-ship cruise missiles that could pose a big threat to Chinese warships and to Chinese offshore installations.

 

Vietnam currently operates two Kilos, with four more on order. Although China may try to pressure Russia to slow the transfer of subs and munitions to Vietnam, Moscow is unlikely to comply. Vietnam will field a steadily stronger submarine force over the next few years, just as big new Chinese warships come to serve as juicy targets.

 

P-800 Onyx Cruise Missile

 

Over the past decades, China has developed a formidable array of cruise missiles as part of its A2/AD “system of systems.” With China now interested in projecting power, it has to manage the budding A2/AD systems of its neighbors. Like China, Vietnam has long pursued a variety of launch systems for cruise missiles. Today, Vietnam can launch cruise missiles from aircraft, surface ships, submarines, and shore based platforms. In combination, these missiles could attack Chinese ships from multiple, unexpected vectors in order to overwhelm the PLAN’s shipboard air defense systems.

 

The shore based platforms may be the most survivable in context of a major Chinese assault. Vietnam already operates the P-800 Onyx surface-to-surface cruise missile, intended for coastal defense. A Mach 2.5 missile with a 180 mile range and a 250kg warhead, the Onyx can give any Chinese warship a very bad day. Located at strategic points and defended by the VPA’s air defense network, these missiles (as well as various older shore-launched cruise missiles) could severely limit the PLAN’s radius of action.

 

S-300 SAM

 

The PLAAF hasn’t flown against an integrated, sophisticated air defense system since… well, ever. Using the PLAAF against Vietnam will require the Chinese to suppress or avoid Vietnamese air defenses. Suppression of Enemy Air Defense operations are among the most organizationally and individually demanding missions than an air force can undertake. The United States has developed expertise in these missions through hard experience won in Vietnam, Kosovo, and Iraq, and through ultra-realistic exercises over the Nevada desert. We don’t yet know if the PLAAF has developed the kind of expertise needed to defeat the Vietnamese air defense network. If it hasn’t, Vietnamese surface-to-air missiles could exact a terrible toll on Chinese pilots and aircraft.

 

The most advanced system in the VPAF’s air defense network is the S-300. It can track and engage dozens of targets at ranges of up to seventy-five miles. Additional point-defense systems can protect the S-300s themselves from attack. Used in conjunction with the fighters of the VPAF, the SAM network would make it very difficult to carry out a concerted air campaign against Vietnam at acceptable cost.

 

Space

 

In 1979, China tried to punish Hanoi by launching a massive infantry and armor invasion of Vietnam’s northern provinces. The Vietnam People’s Army (VPA) determined that the central Chinese objective was to engage and destroy the best units of the army. Consequently, the VPA avoided committing its most effective units until the PLA could be channeled into appropriate ambush zones. At that point, both sides suffered heavy losses, but the Chinese eventually withdrew.

 

Both the PLA and the VPA are smaller now than in 1979, but more professional, more technologically advanced, and better organized. The VPA in particular has increased the educational attainment of its officer corps, exposed its units to international training and experience, and provided them with significant equipment upgrades.

 

This doesn’t make the VPA the equal of the PLA, but then it doesn’t have to be. As in 1979, the VPA has the advantage of space. The tenacity of Vietnamese infantry, often fighting with guerilla tactics in inhospitable terrain, will probably deter the PLA from a major land incursion into Vietnam’s north. In the unlikely event that China decides to punish Vietnam with another ground invasion, it can expect serious losses from mechanized counterattacks, especially given the likely inability of the PLAAF to win air supremacy over the battlefield. The PLA is big, but the VPA has repeatedly demonstrated a capability for finding and maximizing its territorial assets.

 

Conclusion

 

Vietnam does not want a full-scale war with China. The best case scenario for such a conflict is a replay of 1979, which proved humiliating for China but very costly for Vietnam. In particular, Vietnam doesn’t want to go toe-to-toe with China in a capital and technology intensive war that might attrite away the expensive equipment that the VPA has acquired. Nevertheless, China must appreciate that Vietnam has bite. The Vietnamese military, in its current configuration, is designed to deter Chinese adventurism. We can expect that Vietnam will enhance these capabilities as the years go on, and as provocations in the South China Sea continue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Bugatti Veyron]

http://peakoil.com/publicpolicy/why-china-wants-control-of-the-south-china-sea

[maxiev]

China keeps changing excuses for sea claim

 

GOTCHA By Jarius Bondoc (The Philippine Star) | Updated August 4, 2014 - 12:00am

 

Ancient Malays had crossed the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific millenniums before China started mapping its surrounding waters. With that fact, Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio T. Carpio prefaced a lecture last June at De La Salle University on China’s false historical claims over the South China Sea. “Historical Facts, Lies, and Rights” reviews Filipinos on their ancestors’ feats, and opens Chinese eyes to the bankruptcy of their communist leaders’ thinking. Following is a three-part serialization:

 

* * *

 

1. China has always asserted that its nine-dashed-line claim is based on international law. Thus, in the 2002 ASEAN-China Declaration of Conduct, China agreed that the maritime disputes in the South China Sea shall be resolved “in accordance with universally recognized principles of international law, including the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.” There is no mention whatsoever in the 2002 ASEAN-China Declaration of Conduct that “historical facts”shall also be a basis in resolving the maritime disputes.

 

2. After the Philippines filed in January 2013 its arbitration case against China before an international tribunal, invoking UNCLOS to protect the Exclusive Economic Zone of the Philippines, China stressed “historical facts” as another basis for its maritime claims in the South China Sea. China’s mantra now states that China’s nine-dashed line claim is based, in the words of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, on “historical facts and international law.”

 

3. General Fang Fenghui, Chief of Staff of the People’s Liberation Army, recently declared during his visit to the United States, “Territory passed down by previous Chinese generations to the present one will not be forgotten or sacrificed.” Chinese diplomats now declare that they will not give one inch of territory that their ancestors bequeathed to them. Two weeks ago, during the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, China’s spokesperson, former deputy Foreign Minister Fu Ying, declared that the islands in the South China Sea were “first discovered by China hundreds of years before they were occupied by Japan during World War II.” Fu Ying stressed that “China has a very clear claim to these islands,” without, however, giving any specifics.

 

4. Chinese leaders and Chinese citizens who entered school after 1947, the year the nine-dashed line map was drawn, have been taught that China has historical rights to the South China Sea. This is of course false and merely constitutes state propaganda, but unfortunately the Chinese people now believe in this propaganda as “historical facts.”

 

Opinion ( Article MRec ), pagematch: 1, sectionmatch: 1

5. There are, of course, Chinese scholars who realize that China’s nine-dashed line claim cannot stand impartial scrutiny based on actual historical facts. Professor Jin Canrong of Renmin University in Beijing, who attended the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, said that China should be given more time to clarify its nine-dashed line claim because if it clarifies its claim now, it will face domestic political pressure. Prof. Jin said, “Give China some time, it will change its stance in the future.”

 

6. That change, however, will not happen without the misimpression by the Chinese people on the so-called “historical facts” being first corrected. If the actual, unvarnished historical facts are presented to the Chinese people, then change will follow naturally. That is why it is important to discuss the actual historical facts in the West Philippine Sea, with a caveat.

 

7. Historical facts, even if true, relating to discovery and exploration in the Age of Discovery (early 15th century until the 17th century) or even earlier, have no bearing whatsoever in the resolution of maritime disputes under UNCLOS. Neither Spain nor Portugal can ever revive their 15th century claims to ownership of all the oceans and seas of our planet, despite the 1481 Papal Bull confirming the division of the then undiscovered world between Spain and Portugal. The sea voyages of the Chinese Imperial Admiral Zheng He, from 1405-1433, can never be the basis of any claim to the South China Sea. Neither can historical names serve as basis for claiming the oceans and seas.

 

8. The South China Sea was not even named by the Chinese but by European navigators and cartographers. The Song and Ming Dynasties called the South China Sea the “Giao Chi Sea,” and the Qing Dynasty, the Republic of China as well as the People’s Republic of China call it the “South Sea” without the word “China.” India cannot claim the Indian Ocean, and Mexico cannot claim the Gulf of Mexico, in the same way that the Philippines cannot claim the Philippine Sea, just because historically these bodies of water have been named after these countries.

 

9. Neither can ancient conquests be invoked under international law to claim territories. Greece cannot claim Egypt, Iran, Turkey and the land stretching up to Pakistan just because Alexander the Great conquered that part of the world from 334-323 BC. Neither can Mongolia claim China just because Genghis Khan and Kublai Khan conquered China, with Kublai Khan founding the Yuan Dynasty that ruled China from 1271 to 1368 AD. Neither can Italy claim the land conquered and ruled by the Roman Empire from 27 BC to 476 AD, stretching from Europe to the Middle East.

 

10. Under international law, as held in the famous 1928 Island of Palmas case between the United States as the colonial power in the Philippines and the Netherlands as the colonial power in Indonesia (Permanent Court of Arbitration 1928), a state cannot maintain title to territory based on discovery alone where subsequent to such discovery another state has shown “continuous and peaceful display of territorial sovereignty” over the same territory. While mere discovery may have been sufficient to acquire valid title to territory in the 16th century, the continued validity of such title over the centuries requires compliance with new conditions required by evolving international law for the acquisition of such title. Besides, since the time of decolonization after World War II, the consent of the people in the disputed territory is now paramount to any territorial claim as embodied in the right to self-determination of nations that were conquered and colonized by other states.

[maxiev]

Here's an interesting analysis regarding how politics and vested interests within the PROC play a role in the South China/West Philippine Sea dispute. A bit of a long read but worth the time in my opinion.

 

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/china%E2%80%99s-epic-fail-the-south-china-sea-11019

 

China’s Epic Fail in the South China Sea

Bill Hayton

 

August 5, 2014

 

By whatever metric you choose, China’s recent oil-drilling adventure in the South China Sea was a disaster. No new oil will reach Chinese consumers, no new maritime territory has been gained and regional advantage has been handed to the United States. ASEAN solidarity has held firm and the positions of ‘pro-Beijing’ forces in crucial countries, particularly Vietnam, have been seriously weakened. China’s foreign-policy making has proven to be incompetent. How did it all go so wrong?

 

We can’t know what the Chinese leadership hoped to achieve when it approved the deployment of the country’s largest oil rig and a small armada of protecting vessels into waters also claimed by Vietnam. It seems unlikely that the operation was simply an attempt to find oil. There are many better places to go prospecting. On March 19, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) announced it had discovered a mid-sized gas field in uncontested waters closer to Hainan Island. Exploitation of that field was delayed while the Paracels adventure unfolded farther south.

 

The two areas of seabed explored by the giant drilling rig HS-981 are not good prospects for hydrocarbons. A 2013 report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration suggested the Paracels’ energy potential is low. It seems significant that CNOOC, China’s most-experienced offshore operator, was not involved in the expedition. Although CNOOC’s subsidiary COSL was operating the rig, the overall operation was directed by the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) which has much less experience of exploration in the South China Sea.

 

HS981 ended its mission a month early, in the face of the impending arrival of super-typhoon Rammasun. CNPC declared that the rig had found hydrocarbons, but was very unspecific about details and amounts. It is almost certain that they will never be commercially exploited for both technical and political reasons. This operation was not really about oil.

 

One motivation can be safely ruled out. We know that the mission was not an attempt to rouse popular nationalist feeling in China because, as the Australian researcher Andrew Chubb has shown, news about the clashes between the rig’s protection fleet and the Vietnamese coast guard was kept out of the Chinese media for a week afterwards.

 

There may well have been another political purpose, however. An operation of such magnitude must have been planned well in advance and approved at the highest level. Chinese authorities announced that the rig had arrived on station on May 3, exactly one week before the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was due to get underway in Myanmar. Perhaps Beijing was hoping to repeat its success at the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Phnom Penh in July 2012. On that occasion, ASEAN split: Cambodia vetoed a collective statement, leaving the Philippines and Vietnam isolated in their sea disputes with China.

 

If China was hoping to achieve the same thing over the Paracels, the effect was exactly the opposite. ASEAN came together in a conspicuous display of unity and issued a joint statement, in effect telling Beijing to back off. This was the first time the organization had taken a position on the Paracels—which is a purely bilateral dispute between China and Vietnam (unlike the Spratly Island disputes which affect five ASEAN members, including Indonesia). Andrew Chubb has argued that this quiet display of solidarity had much more of an impact in Beijing than the high-volume statements from Washington.

 

Some commentators have suggested that the episode was an example of “salami slicing”—a steady process of occupying areas of the South China Sea in small steps without attracting too much attention. But if that was the aim, it also failed since, with the withdrawal of the oil rig, the waters are, once again, unoccupied. The “slice” has rejoined the salami. The politburo may have thought that a decisive statement of maritime control would strengthen China’s territorial claim to the islands, but Vietnam’s robust response is equally good proof that it disputes that claim.

 

The Australian analyst Hugh White has argued that China’s purpose in provoking such confrontations is to deliberately stretch and weaken the security linkages that bind the United States to Southeast Asia. “By confronting America's friends with force”, he says, “China confronts America with the choice between deserting its friends and fighting China. Beijing is betting that, faced with this choice, America will back off and leave its allies and friends unsupported. This will weaken America's alliances and partnerships, undermine U.S. power in Asia, and enhance China's power.”

 

But Vietnam is not an ally of the United States, so this episode was a better demonstration of the problems of standing against China alone. However, in provoking this confrontation, Beijing has achieved the opposite of White’s expectations: pushing Hanoi closer to Washington. As David Elliott's recent book makes clear (and see my review here), Vietnam’s foreign-policy orientation has been generally pro-China ever since it stopped being pro-USSR. Over the past two decades, it was only when the “pro-China” voices were weakened by policy failures and Chinese antagonism—that liberalizers were able to reorientate Vietnam’s foreign policy.

 

The analyst Zachary Abuza has given us an enlightening account of how the balance of forces within the upper leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam has changed as a result of the oil-rig standoff. “A June 2014 meeting of the Vietnam Communist Party's Central Committee unanimously resolved to condemn Chinese aggression and encroachment” he tells us. In late July, Politburo member Pham Quang Nghi made an intriguing visit to the United States at the invitation of the State Department.

 

In short, whatever China hoped to achieve with the deployment of HS-981—oil, territorial advantage or long-term strategic gain—didn’t work out. How can we explain such a foreign-policy failure? I think the episode shows how China’s South China Sea policy is more a reflection of internal priorities than a considered foreign policy. In short, the South China Sea has become a giant pork barrel for some of China’s provinces, state agencies and state-owned enterprises.

 

Two decades ago, John Garver argued that the Chinese navy’s push into the South China Sea represented “the interaction of national and bureaucratic interests”. They’re still interacting. Their navy’s getting bigger along with its budgets. Prestige, promotion and pecuniary rewards are following. The same is true of the new China Coast Guard—a year after the merging of several smaller maritime authorities into one. The Coast Guard needs to focus on something other than internal squabbling as it completes that merger and both it and the navy are looking for missions to demonstrate their usefulness and justify their funding.

 

And what’s true of the military is true of southern provinces. Hainan is China’s smallest province and relatively poor with an economy dominated by agriculture. In recent years it’s put great efforts into developing its fishing industries and become expert at harvesting state subsidies to equip new boats. Some excellent on-the-ground reporting by Reuters last month reminded us of the hundreds, perhaps thousands of fishing boats receiving between $300 and $500 per day to go fishing in disputed waters. While one captain noted that, “The authorities support fishing in the South China Sea to protect China's sovereignty” it might be just as accurate to say the authorities make use of the sovereignty claim in order to justify the support for fishing. Reuters discovered that eight trawlers being launched in the port of Dongfang on Hainan would each qualify for $322,500 in “renovation” grants.

 

Oil companies are also able to play the sovereignty card in support of their semi-commercial ventures in the South China Sea. In May 2012, when CNOOC launched the heavily-subsidised deep water rig at the centre of the Paracels standoff, HS-981, its chairman famously described it as, “mobile national territory and a strategic weapon”.

 

It seems strange, therefore, that CNOOC was not in charge of the Paracels expedition. Why was this? We're not privy to the corporate machinations but a few explanations suggest themselves. CNPC may have been willing to take risks that CNOOC wasn't—both technical and political. This was the first time that HS-981 had been used in deep water and the first time in disputed water. Perhaps CNPC was trying to steal a march on CNOOC by staking a claim in an unexplored area. Or perhaps CNPC’s senior management was trying to get itself out of deep political trouble. Spiralling corruption allegations against the company were becoming a national political scandal. CNPC’s management might have regarded a mission to fly the flag in disputed territory as a way of currying favour with the Politburo and saving their skins.

 

None of this is meant to deny that the Chinese participants in the oilrig standoff believe wholeheartedly in the validity of their country’s territorial claim in the South China Sea. The legend of China’s ‘indisputable sovereignty’ has been inculcated into generations of Chinese children. I have argued elsewhere that this belief depends upon early-twentieth century misreadings of Southeast Asian history by Chinese nationalists but I have no doubt that the Chinese leadership sincerely believes in its correctness.

 

Nonetheless, for special interests inside the Chinese party-state bureaucracy, the South China Sea has become a giant political piñata. They simply have to whack the issue from time to time to provoke another stream of subsidies from on high. Chinese policy in the Sea is less likely to be the result of a considered summation of reasoned arguments than the unpredictable result of an agglomeration of lobbying campaigns. When they work together, the power of these interest groups is immense: they can sway Communist Party policy to their advantage. One thing they can all agree on, whether for reasons of nationalism, security, profit or jobs, is that China must have access to the resources of the South China Sea.

 

Too many commentators have been taken in by China's propaganda efforts. The myth of Beijing's inscrutable invincibility is taking root in the op-ed pages of too many news outlets. The result is that even when China blunders, it’s assumed to be simply a cover for a more sophisticated and nefarious plot. It’s time to dispel the myth and see Beijing's blunders for what they really are. At the moment, cockup is a better guide to China’s moves in the South China Sea than conspiracy.

 

Bill Hayton is the author of The South China Sea: the struggle for power in Asia to be published by Yale University Press shortly.

[Bugatti Veyron]

Here's an interesting analysis regarding how politics and vested interests within the PROC play a role in the South China/West Philippine Sea dispute. A bit of a long read but worth the time in my opinion.

 

http://nationalinter...china-sea-11019

 

China's Epic Fail in the South China Sea

Bill Hayton

 

August 5, 2014

 

By whatever metric you choose, China's recent oil-drilling adventure in the South China Sea was a disaster. No new oil will reach Chinese consumers, no new maritime territory has been gained and regional advantage has been handed to the United States. ASEAN solidarity has held firm and the positions of 'pro-Beijing' forces in crucial countries, particularly Vietnam, have been seriously weakened. China's foreign-policy making has proven to be incompetent. How did it all go so wrong?

 

We can't know what the Chinese leadership hoped to achieve when it approved the deployment of the country's largest oil rig and a small armada of protecting vessels into waters also claimed by Vietnam. It seems unlikely that the operation was simply an attempt to find oil. There are many better places to go prospecting. On March 19, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) announced it had discovered a mid-sized gas field in uncontested waters closer to Hainan Island. Exploitation of that field was delayed while the Paracels adventure unfolded farther south.

 

The two areas of seabed explored by the giant drilling rig HS-981 are not good prospects for hydrocarbons. A 2013 report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration suggested the Paracels' energy potential is low. It seems significant that CNOOC, China's most-experienced offshore operator, was not involved in the expedition. Although CNOOC's subsidiary COSL was operating the rig, the overall operation was directed by the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) which has much less experience of exploration in the South China Sea.

 

HS981 ended its mission a month early, in the face of the impending arrival of super-typhoon Rammasun. CNPC declared that the rig had found hydrocarbons, but was very unspecific about details and amounts. It is almost certain that they will never be commercially exploited for both technical and political reasons. This operation was not really about oil.

 

One motivation can be safely ruled out. We know that the mission was not an attempt to rouse popular nationalist feeling in China because, as the Australian researcher Andrew Chubb has shown, news about the clashes between the rig's protection fleet and the Vietnamese coast guard was kept out of the Chinese media for a week afterwards.

 

There may well have been another political purpose, however. An operation of such magnitude must have been planned well in advance and approved at the highest level. Chinese authorities announced that the rig had arrived on station on May 3, exactly one week before the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was due to get underway in Myanmar. Perhaps Beijing was hoping to repeat its success at the ASEAN Foreign Ministers' meeting in Phnom Penh in July 2012. On that occasion, ASEAN split: Cambodia vetoed a collective statement, leaving the Philippines and Vietnam isolated in their sea disputes with China.

 

If China was hoping to achieve the same thing over the Paracels, the effect was exactly the opposite. ASEAN came together in a conspicuous display of unity and issued a joint statement, in effect telling Beijing to back off. This was the first time the organization had taken a position on the Paracels—which is a purely bilateral dispute between China and Vietnam (unlike the Spratly Island disputes which affect five ASEAN members, including Indonesia). Andrew Chubb has argued that this quiet display of solidarity had much more of an impact in Beijing than the high-volume statements from Washington.

 

Some commentators have suggested that the episode was an example of "salami slicing"—a steady process of occupying areas of the South China Sea in small steps without attracting too much attention. But if that was the aim, it also failed since, with the withdrawal of the oil rig, the waters are, once again, unoccupied. The "slice" has rejoined the salami. The politburo may have thought that a decisive statement of maritime control would strengthen China's territorial claim to the islands, but Vietnam's robust response is equally good proof that it disputes that claim.

 

The Australian analyst Hugh White has argued that China's purpose in provoking such confrontations is to deliberately stretch and weaken the security linkages that bind the United States to Southeast Asia. "By confronting America's friends with force", he says, "China confronts America with the choice between deserting its friends and fighting China. Beijing is betting that, faced with this choice, America will back off and leave its allies and friends unsupported. This will weaken America's alliances and partnerships, undermine U.S. power in Asia, and enhance China's power."

 

But Vietnam is not an ally of the United States, so this episode was a better demonstration of the problems of standing against China alone. However, in provoking this confrontation, Beijing has achieved the opposite of White's expectations: pushing Hanoi closer to Washington. As David Elliott's recent book makes clear (and see my review here), Vietnam's foreign-policy orientation has been generally pro-China ever since it stopped being pro-USSR. Over the past two decades, it was only when the "pro-China" voices were weakened by policy failures and Chinese antagonism—that liberalizers were able to reorientate Vietnam's foreign policy.

 

The analyst Zachary Abuza has given us an enlightening account of how the balance of forces within the upper leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam has changed as a result of the oil-rig standoff. "A June 2014 meeting of the Vietnam Communist Party's Central Committee unanimously resolved to condemn Chinese aggression and encroachment" he tells us. In late July, Politburo member Pham Quang Nghi made an intriguing visit to the United States at the invitation of the State Department.

 

In short, whatever China hoped to achieve with the deployment of HS-981—oil, territorial advantage or long-term strategic gain—didn't work out. How can we explain such a foreign-policy failure? I think the episode shows how China's South China Sea policy is more a reflection of internal priorities than a considered foreign policy. In short, the South China Sea has become a giant pork barrel for some of China's provinces, state agencies and state-owned enterprises.

 

Two decades ago, John Garver argued that the Chinese navy's push into the South China Sea represented "the interaction of national and bureaucratic interests". They're still interacting. Their navy's getting bigger along with its budgets. Prestige, promotion and pecuniary rewards are following. The same is true of the new China Coast Guard—a year after the merging of several smaller maritime authorities into one. The Coast Guard needs to focus on something other than internal squabbling as it completes that merger and both it and the navy are looking for missions to demonstrate their usefulness and justify their funding.

 

And what's true of the military is true of southern provinces. Hainan is China's smallest province and relatively poor with an economy dominated by agriculture. In recent years it's put great efforts into developing its fishing industries and become expert at harvesting state subsidies to equip new boats. Some excellent on-the-ground reporting by Reuters last month reminded us of the hundreds, perhaps thousands of fishing boats receiving between $300 and $500 per day to go fishing in disputed waters. While one captain noted that, "The authorities support fishing in the South China Sea to protect China's sovereignty" it might be just as accurate to say the authorities make use of the sovereignty claim in order to justify the support for fishing. Reuters discovered that eight trawlers being launched in the port of Dongfang on Hainan would each qualify for $322,500 in "renovation" grants.

 

Oil companies are also able to play the sovereignty card in support of their semi-commercial ventures in the South China Sea. In May 2012, when CNOOC launched the heavily-subsidised deep water rig at the centre of the Paracels standoff, HS-981, its chairman famously described it as, "mobile national territory and a strategic weapon".

 

It seems strange, therefore, that CNOOC was not in charge of the Paracels expedition. Why was this? We're not privy to the corporate machinations but a few explanations suggest themselves. CNPC may have been willing to take risks that CNOOC wasn't—both technical and political. This was the first time that HS-981 had been used in deep water and the first time in disputed water. Perhaps CNPC was trying to steal a march on CNOOC by staking a claim in an unexplored area. Or perhaps CNPC's senior management was trying to get itself out of deep political trouble. Spiralling corruption allegations against the company were becoming a national political scandal. CNPC's management might have regarded a mission to fly the flag in disputed territory as a way of currying favour with the Politburo and saving their skins.

 

None of this is meant to deny that the Chinese participants in the oilrig standoff believe wholeheartedly in the validity of their country's territorial claim in the South China Sea. The legend of China's 'indisputable sovereignty' has been inculcated into generations of Chinese children. I have argued elsewhere that this belief depends upon early-twentieth century misreadings of Southeast Asian history by Chinese nationalists but I have no doubt that the Chinese leadership sincerely believes in its correctness.

 

Nonetheless, for special interests inside the Chinese party-state bureaucracy, the South China Sea has become a giant political piñata. They simply have to whack the issue from time to time to provoke another stream of subsidies from on high. Chinese policy in the Sea is less likely to be the result of a considered summation of reasoned arguments than the unpredictable result of an agglomeration of lobbying campaigns. When they work together, the power of these interest groups is immense: they can sway Communist Party policy to their advantage. One thing they can all agree on, whether for reasons of nationalism, security, profit or jobs, is that China must have access to the resources of the South China Sea.

 

Too many commentators have been taken in by China's propaganda efforts. The myth of Beijing's inscrutable invincibility is taking root in the op-ed pages of too many news outlets. The result is that even when China blunders, it's assumed to be simply a cover for a more sophisticated and nefarious plot. It's time to dispel the myth and see Beijing's blunders for what they really are. At the moment, cockup is a better guide to China's moves in the South China Sea than conspiracy.

 

Bill Hayton is the author of The South China Sea: the struggle for power in Asia to be published by Yale University Press shortly.

One giant pork barrel pala ito....

[kisshmet]

I doubt if GMA denied the request because there was an ongoing search for a suitable offshore patrol vessel was at that time, and the government was evaluating other alternatives. It was during GMA's term when they came up with the idea of using Malampaya Funds to acquire OPVs to protect our offshore platform and the other oil exploration sites within our EEZ. What was your basis that GMA denied it?

 

The S211 is the lemon of all lemons as far as Trainer/Attack planes are concerned. Though brand new, its optical targeting system sucked from day one. The air force technicians had to use the famous Filipino "diskarte" to use the targeting system recycled from retired F-5's to make some use out of the S-211s other than train pilots how to take off and land a jet. Of the 25 we bought, only 5 are now left flying in so short period of time. S-211s is the Philippine Air Force's version of the "Widow Maker". Anyway, I doubt if Cory has any idea what her government bought for the Air Force at that time. I'd hazard a guess that a few Air Force generals retired rich when the S211s were procured.

 

Glory simply doesn't want to rile the chinks who are the principal sponsors of her pet projects like the NBN-ZTE or north rail among other things

 

S211 is the only remaining air asset with jet propulsion that the PAF still maintain pending acquisition of newer jets. In other words it was supposed to be augmented with the sale of a portion of fort bonifacio and Villamor airbase (AFP modernization program). Unfortunately for the PAF it didn't materialize.

 

This development forced the hands of the PAF to over extend the utilization of these two decades old trainers. After three administrations from the end of corys term, the S211 will get some relief with the new trainers acquired by another Aquino administration

 

Come to think of it, bonifacio global and resorts world are currently flourishing commercial developments. A far cry from its former image of a delapidated military establishments. Ironically, the AFP is still ill-equipped and neglected by the very leaders you support

[sonnyt111]

China's power tripping is now leading them to other areas aside from the South China/West Philippine Sea. I welcome this since it will spread their military forces even thinner. And it means we will have more potential allies such as India.

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-troops-have-entered-disputed-india-territory-2014-8

 

 

Chinese Troops Have Entered Disputed India Territory Multiple Times In Recent Days

http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/52b30fa969beddbc74f15456-50/afp.jpg AFP

 

Aug. 19, 2014, 8:10 AM

 

Chinese troops have advanced in recent days into disputed territory claimed by India, echoing a similar incursion last year that raised tensions between the two rival giants, official sources said Tuesday.

 

Chinese troops twice crossed over the border into a remote area of the western Himalayas, with some unfurling a banner that read "this is Chinese territory, go back", an official said on condition of anonymity.

 

Indian border police noticed the troops on Sunday in an unpopulated area of Ladakh during a patrol of the informal border that separates India and China.

 

"It was a temporary peaceful face-off with PLA well inside Indian territory," the official told AFP referring to China's People's Liberation Army.

 

He said troops returned to India's Burtse area in Ladakh on Monday displaying a banner "understood to be saying 'this is Chinese territory, go back'."

 

Indian army spokesman Colonel S D Goswami declined to confirm if any such incidents had taken place. But the incursions were confirmed by several official sources.

 

Chinese troops crossed over the border into the same area last April and set up camps, triggering a three-week standoff with Indian soldiers which was only resolved after senior officers from both sides reached an agreement for a joint pullback.

 

That row had threatened to dent improving ties between the two countries which have long been dogged by mutual suspicion -- a legacy of a 1962 border war.

 

The informal border separating China and India is known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC). While it has never been formally demarcated, the countries have signed two accords to maintain peace in frontier areas.

 

Small incursions of a few kilometres (miles) across the contested boundary are common but it is rare for either country to set up camps in disputed territory.

 

 

 

 

 

[Bugatti Veyron]

China is getting bolder as shown in its latest provocative act of harassing a US reconnaissance aircraft.

 

http://www.businessi...hina-sea-2014-8

 

 

That U.S.-China Near-Miss In The South China Sea Is A Sign Of Things To Come

Armin Rosen

Aug. 22, 2014, 5:19 PM

 

This week's reported near-collision between a Chinese fighter plane and an American surveillance aircraft in the East China Sea proves that China isn't afraid to strictly enforce its maritime border in the South China Sea, even if it has to risk a confrontation with the world's most powerful military in the process.

 

As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, a Chinese Navy Shenyang J-11B — a domestically-produced version of the Russian Sukohi-27 — passed dangerously close to a U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon that was likely in the region to monitor "unprecedented Chinese military exercises held recently and currently underway in the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and South China Sea."

 

The risks of an interception were substantial for China — the fallout of a midair collision between American and Chinese military aircraft inside of China's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) or the seizure of the plane and its crew would be complicated for both sides to deal with, to say the least.

 

The American plane was inside of China's offshore exclusive economic zone, which extends 200 miles from shore, and inside of its air-defense identification zone as well. Foreign ships and aircraft transit inside of other countries' EEZs all the time without triggering an attempted interdiction; the U.S., for instance, treats its EEZ as the high seas, where air traffic rules are more lax than are on land.

 

"China has a pretty restrictive interpretation of international law in its EEZ," Nan Li, an expert in Chinese defense policy at the Naval War college, told Business Insider, noting that China is "very sensitive about surveillance aircraft."

 

Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at RAND, adds this has been a longstanding area of concern for Beijing. "China is very protective of the areas where our reconnaissance aircraft tend to go into," he told Business Insider. "It would be natural them to come in close and let us know that we're not happy that we're there."

 

China energetically polices its offshore boundary, it won't necessarily make an exception for American military aircraft.

 

This map helps explain why.

 

http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/53f7ade169beddf65735ca4b-801-495/screen%20shot%202014-08-22%20at%204.48.13%20pm.png The South China Sea is the site of a slow-motion power struggle, with China claiming territory inside of Vietnam and the Philippines' EEZs. In May, Beijing took the unprecedented measure of moving an oil rig inside of internationally-recognized Vietnamese waters.

 

Disputed oil and gas deposits, regional anxieties about China's rise, and a history of mutual suspicion and hostility between China and its neighbors make the South China Sea one of the more worrying corners of the globe.

 

The U.S.'s "pivot to Asia" — which includes eventual American access to five bases in the Philippines — anticipates the complexities that a newly-ascendant and sometimes aggressive China will create. China's a military and economic giant, but also a self-styled global superpower that's willing to confront both its neighbors and the U.S.

 

Complicating matters is the fact that different countries have different interpretations of what's allowed inside of each other's EEZs, so the boundaries for acceptable action within South China Sea aren't always clear. For instance, there's no current agreement as to whether foreign military activities are permitted in an EEZ under international law — a difference of interpretation that was the source of a 2009 confrontation between the U.S. and China.

 

In March of that year, five Chinese vessels intercepted an unarmed U.S. Naval surveillance vessel called the USNS Impeccable 75 miles south of the island of Heinan. The Impeccable withdrew under armed escort, and after a public protest from the Pentagon, which believed it had a right to operate within China's EEZ.

 

This week's incident offers more proof that China is prepared to take a hard line on its regional territorial rights — which are themselves connected to a series of disputes and conflicting claims that will only become more tense as China's ascension continues.

 

This doesn't mean that China is looking for war with the United States. But it's willing to assert itself in ways that could complicate relations between the two powers, or lead to confrontations that neither anticipates or even wants.

 

The two country's planes missed each other by 30 feet on August 19th. Next time, they might not be so lucky.

Edited August 23, 2014 by Bugatti Veyron

[Bugatti Veyron]

Here Is The Chinese Fighter Jet That Harassed A U.S. Surveillance Plane

By Alberto Riva@albertoriva

on August 22 2014 2:40 PM http://s1.ibtimes.com/sites/www.ibtimes.com/files/styles/v2_article_large/public/2014/08/22/chinese-j-11.jpg?itok=3HLkDytF The Chinese J-11 plane photographed by the crew of a U.S. P-8A Poseidon U.S. Navy The U.S. Navy has released on Friday photographs of the close encounter last week between one of its patrol planes and a Chinese fighter jet, which U.S. officials said came very close and maneuvered dangerously around the American plane.

 

U.S. defense officials told the Washington Free Beacon on Thursday that a Chinese interceptor flew within 50 feet (15 meters) of a Poseidon surveillance aircraft earlier this week The officials said the fighter jet made a barrel roll over the top of the American jet, a move they described as threatening and dangerous.

 

The images show that the Chinese plane was a J-11, a locally produced version of the Sukhoi Su-27, an advanced Russian-made fighter jet.

 

On Friday, Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon's press secretary, confirmed that the Chinese plane had engaged in dangerous maneuvers, in fact as close as 20 to 30 feet (7 to 10 meters), and said the incident happened on Tuesday 135 miles (200 km) east of Hainan Island.

 

The United States has lodged a formal protest with the Chinese government, the Pentagon spokesman said. The incident took place over international waters, according to the Pentagon.

 

The images published Friday show that the J-11, while turning away from the U.S. plane, showed the crew the air-to-air missiles it carried under the wings -- a procedure not unusual in this type of situation, when the intercepting airplane shows that it has the means of shooting down an intruder. However, intercepts over international waters are typically conducted with the fighter jet maintaining a safe distance from its target. Barrel rolls and aggressive maneuvers are not part of the commonly followed procedure.

 

The American plane was a Boeing P-8A Poseidon, a maritime patrol derivative of the civilian 737 and the latest addition to the U.S. lineup of surveillance aircraft. Equipped with a powerful radar and anti-shipping weapons, the Poseidon is able to find and hit ships and submarines at great distances, as well as conducting electronic surveillance.

 

It has recently been employed in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in the Indian Ocean.

 

In April 2001, an in-flight collision between a Chinese interceptor and a U.S. spy plane over international waters resulted in the crash of the Chinese jet, killing the pilot, and the emergency landing of the American plane on Hainan Island, where the crew was detained for ten days.

 

http://s1.ibtimes.com/sites/www.ibtimes.com/files/styles/v2_article_large/public/2014/03/17/p-8-poseidon-display-flight.jpg?itok=Ln4t8Yfj A U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon during its display at the Dubai air show on November 18, 2013 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Alberto Riva

Edited August 23, 2014 by Bugatti Veyron

[sonnyt111]

Something the US should ponder should it go to war against China.

 

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/what-homers-iliad-tells-about-us-china-war-11139

 

 

What Homer's Iliad Tells Us about a U.S.-China War

Stephen Fallon August 24, 2014

 

Despite its status as one of the oldest works of literature in the Western canon, Homer’s Iliad boasts enduring relevance. Though it recounts the legend of the Trojan War, it has three key lessons to teach the American strategist who seeks to navigate the Asia-Pacific region.

 

 

 

The Asia-Pacific is experiencing a period of strategic flux in which China is attempting to erode American primacy. War is not likely in the short term, but the risk of conflict will grow if Beijing continues its economic and strategic trajectory. While the region and the world will look to leaders in both countries to mitigate the effects of strategic competition, The Iliad has something to teach us about what may prompt a regional conflict, the risks entailed in seeking to prosecute such a war and how the contest could be resolved.

 

Homer’s compatriot, Thucydides, in his History of the Peloponnesian War, famously suggested that fear initially drove Athens to expand its empire, while honor and interest followed afterwards. The Iliad, however, highlights that honor can be the primary driver of conflict.

 

The Greeks were driven to an amphibious invasion of Troy to satisfy honor. Paris, a Trojan prince, stole Helen from her husband, Menelaus. Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks and Menelaus’ brother, vowed to bring her home. To satisfy this point of honor, he risked the lives of his men, his allies and his own power. By any reasonable standard, this was a disproportionate response. To be sure, Agamemnon would also have been attracted by the prospect of glory and riches, but the loss of Helen and the desire to retrieve her was the casus belli.

 

Such a course of action may be more readily understood when committed to by an ancient society, but honor still drives nations to take disproportionate risks. This is the first lesson the American strategist can draw from The Iliad. Consider, for example, China’s actions in the East China Sea. Beijing is trying to redraw its maritime borders, running the risk of a severe miscalculation that could escalate to a devastating great-power war with Tokyo and Washington. Running such a risk in order to acquire a few paltry rocks, even with the potential natural resources bonanza that possession of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands may bestow, seems irrational if one does not consider the motivating power of honor.

 

One of Beijing’s key motives is to redress its century of humiliation, dating from the First Opium War in 1839 to the founding of the modern People’s Republic in 1949. This era saw China humbled as it was carved up and dictated to by Japan and Western powers. By refusing to acquiesce to Japanese and American desires to return to the pre-existing status quo vis-à-vis the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, Beijing wishes to be seen as a great power that can shape its strategic environment in a way it could not during the slow collapse of the Qing dynasty.

 

This drive to regain national honor cautions us that just as the Greeks went to war because of an upset husband, Beijing may choose to wage war in order to satisfy national honor and avoid what it views as submitting to the same foreign powers responsible for its century of humiliation. When responding to and attempting to shape Chinese behavior, Washington and Tokyo should be cognizant of the influence that preserving national honor may exert on Beijing.

 

While the risk of war between the United States and China is low, The Iliad also has wisdom to impart, should conflict develop in Asia. Homer’s poem recounts a few weeks in the final year of the war. By this stage of the conflict, the Greeks have spent almost a decade at war. In an era before satellite phones and email, characterized by short life expectancy and the ever-present danger of a grisly death, the Greek warriors have spent a significant proportion of their lives fighting in a foreign land.

 

As a result of facing such hardships, their morale is low, and they often voice a desire to return home. In one passage, Homer tells us that Agamemnon, attempting to test his troops, bemoaned the cost of the fighting and the difficulty of conquering Troy. Having offered his men the opportunity to return home, he is shocked when they embrace it:

 

They cried in alarm and charged toward the ships

 

and the dust went whirling up from under rushing feet

 

as the men jostled back and forth, shouting orders—

 

“Grapple the ships! Drag them down to the bright sea!

 

Clean out the launching-channels!” Shrill shouts

 

hitting the heavens, fighters racing for home . . .

 

Agamemnon’s troops would have deserted him had Odysseus not persuaded them to continue the struggle. Nevertheless, this hints at the difficulty of projecting and, even more importantly, sustaining power far from one’s homeland.

 

The Trojans, in contrast, do not enjoy the luxury of retreat. In a particularly moving passage, Hector, a prince of Troy and its finest warrior, returns to his wife and child after a day of fighting. He finds his wife, Andromache, terrified that he will be killed and she will be taken to Greece as a slave, giving us a glimpse of the consequences of defeat:

 

. . . it is less the pain of the Trojans still to come

 

that weighs me down, not even of Hecuba herself

 

or King Priam, or the thought that my own brothers

 

in all their numbers, all their gallant courage,

 

may tumble in the dust, crushed by enemies—

 

That is nothing, beside your agony

 

when some brazen Argive hales you off in tears . . .

 

The lesson for Washington is clear. If asked to fight a great-power war in Asia, the average American, tired of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and eager for nation-building at home, will likely struggle to understand why more American blood and treasure must be sacrificed to support goals so far from home.

 

Should a Sino-American conflict break out, America would at least enjoy the option of returning home across the Pacific. China, however, would not. This would ensure that the result of the conflict would matter more to China. Its vital interests would be more likely to be at stake; it could, therefore, be expected to be willing to make greater sacrifices in order to prevail. When faced with future Sino-American crises, U.S. strategists should bear this in mind. U.S. leaders should not assume that the Chinese will concede, even if faced with the prospect of going to war against Washington.

 

In the event of a Sino-American war, The Iliad has one final lesson to teach. Throughout the fighting described in the poem, the advantage seesaws between the Greeks and Trojans. At one point, led by Hector, the Trojans gain the upper hand and force the Greeks back to their ships. Before the Trojans can annihilate their invader, however, darkness falls.

 

Hector gathers his troops and orders them to rest and feast to restore their strength:

 

Then all night long till the breaking light of day

 

we keep the watch fires blazing, hundreds of fires

 

and the rising glare can leap and hit the skies,

 

so the long-haired Achaeans stand no chance tonight

 

to cut and run on the sea’s broad back. Never,

 

not without a struggle, not at their royal ease

 

are they going to board those ships! No, no,

 

let every last man of them lick his wounds—

 

a memento at home—pierced by arrow or spear

 

as he vaults aboard his decks. So the next fool

 

will cringe at the thought of mounting hateful war

 

against our stallion-breaking Trojans.

 

As Clausewitz would counsel, Hector is seeking the decisive battle, one that will afford him the opportunity to destroy his enemy, deterring future attacks on Troy. This, however, proves to be a fatal error.

 

Had Hector allowed his enemy to withdraw, he would have restored the prewar status quo, ending the war on terms favorable to Troy. True, this decision would have allowed the Greeks to return home, rebuild their strength and perhaps return to attempt to raze Troy in the future, but it would also have afforded Troy an opportunity to rebuild it defenses. Having prevailed once, the Trojans would have been confident of doing so again if the Greeks returned.

 

The lesson here for Washington is that in a conflict with China, America should pursue the limited aim of a return to the pre-existing status quo as quickly as possible. Should China seek to alter the status quo by attempting to conquer Taiwan or take control of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, Washington’s goal should be to evict the PLA without escalating the war by, for example, attacking the Chinese mainland.

 

While this may be difficult—any mainland-based assets used to strike U.S. or allied forces will be tempting targets—it would be easier to de-escalate the conflict if Beijing does not feel that it faces an existential threat. Washington should leave open a door for China to exit the conflict with honor, perhaps even with the ability to claim victory, much as it did after its disastrous invasion of Vietnam in 1979. This will increase the odds of the war being concluded on terms favorable to the present regional order.

 

The Iliad tells the story of a war between two great powers, one that is fought over a minor issue and brings great suffering to both. A conflict over territory in the East or South China Seas, the future of Taiwan or the Korean Peninsula holds the potential to do the same today. Though war in the short-to-medium term appears unlikely, American strategists should heed the enduring strategic concepts illuminated in Homer’s epic poem.

 

Stephen Fallon is a freelance writer focusing on strategic issues. He is a graduate of the Australian National University’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre and a researcher at Wikistrat.

 

 

 

 

 

[Soraoi_empire]

Dapat masimulan na yung oil and gas exploration sa Recto Bank baka maunahan pa tayo ng china. Meron na nga pumupuntang chinese vessels dun para magpatrol.

[maxiev]

Here Is The Chinese Fighter Jet That Harassed A U.S. Surveillance Plane

By Alberto Riva@albertoriva

on August 22 2014 2:40 PM http://s1.ibtimes.com/sites/www.ibtimes.com/files/styles/v2_article_large/public/2014/08/22/chinese-j-11.jpg?itok=3HLkDytF The Chinese J-11 plane photographed by the crew of a U.S. P-8A Poseidon U.S. Navy The U.S. Navy has released on Friday photographs of the close encounter last week between one of its patrol planes and a Chinese fighter jet, which U.S. officials said came very close and maneuvered dangerously around the American plane.

 

U.S. defense officials told the Washington Free Beacon on Thursday that a Chinese interceptor flew within 50 feet (15 meters) of a Poseidon surveillance aircraft earlier this week The officials said the fighter jet made a barrel roll over the top of the American jet, a move they described as threatening and dangerous.

 

The images show that the Chinese plane was a J-11, a locally produced version of the Sukhoi Su-27, an advanced Russian-made fighter jet.

 

On Friday, Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon's press secretary, confirmed that the Chinese plane had engaged in dangerous maneuvers, in fact as close as 20 to 30 feet (7 to 10 meters), and said the incident happened on Tuesday 135 miles (200 km) east of Hainan Island.

 

The United States has lodged a formal protest with the Chinese government, the Pentagon spokesman said. The incident took place over international waters, according to the Pentagon.

 

The images published Friday show that the J-11, while turning away from the U.S. plane, showed the crew the air-to-air missiles it carried under the wings -- a procedure not unusual in this type of situation, when the intercepting airplane shows that it has the means of shooting down an intruder. However, intercepts over international waters are typically conducted with the fighter jet maintaining a safe distance from its target. Barrel rolls and aggressive maneuvers are not part of the commonly followed procedure.

 

The American plane was a Boeing P-8A Poseidon, a maritime patrol derivative of the civilian 737 and the latest addition to the U.S. lineup of surveillance aircraft. Equipped with a powerful radar and anti-shipping weapons, the Poseidon is able to find and hit ships and submarines at great distances, as well as conducting electronic surveillance.

 

It has recently been employed in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in the Indian Ocean.

 

In April 2001, an in-flight collision between a Chinese interceptor and a U.S. spy plane over international waters resulted in the crash of the Chinese jet, killing the pilot, and the emergency landing of the American plane on Hainan Island, where the crew was detained for ten days.

 

http://s1.ibtimes.com/sites/www.ibtimes.com/files/styles/v2_article_large/public/2014/03/17/p-8-poseidon-display-flight.jpg?itok=Ln4t8Yfj A U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon during its display at the Dubai air show on November 18, 2013 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Alberto Riva

The Chinese may have modern and sophisticated aircraft. But Chinese pilots are basically untried and untested unlike American pilots who have decades of experience in aerial combat. In a dogfight between an American fighter and a Chinese one, I'm putting my money on the Americans.

[Bugatti Veyron]

http://news.yahoo.com/philippines-displays-ancient-maps-debunk-chinas-sea-claims-110706447.html

 

 

Philippines displays ancient maps to debunk China's sea claims

http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/d/0c/d0c3eb8ca18907492a4b337b5cec5193.jpeg By Manuel Mogato 4 hours ago

MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines on Thursday put on display dozens of ancient maps which officials said showed that China's territorial claims over the South China Sea did not include a disputed shoal at the centre of an acrimonious standoff.

 

The Philippines is in dispute with China over parts of the South China Sea, including the Scarborough Shoal, an area believed to be rich in oil and natural gas as well as fisheries resources.

 

China seized control of the shoal in June 2012 and has prevented Philippine fishermen from getting close to the rocky outcrop, a rich fishing ground.

 

Philippine officials said the exhibition of old maps at a university showed that for almost 1,000 years, from the Song Dynasty in the year 960 until the end of the Qing Dynasty early in the 20th century, China's southernmost territory was always Hainan island, just off the Chinese coast.

 

"We should respect historical facts, not historical lies," said Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, who has done extensive research on the territorial disputes.

 

The facts were graphically illustrated on the ancient maps, both official and unofficial, he said.

 

Carpio said the exhibition could be viewed online and it would help everyone in all claimant states understand the facts, "either to restrain extreme nationalism fuelled by historical lies or give hope to a just and durable settlement of disputes".

 

China claims nearly the entire South China Sea.

 

But Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan also have claims in the sea, which is traversed each year by ship-borne trade worth about $5 trillion.

 

Exhibition organisers said the Scarborough Shoal never appeared in any old Chinese maps. But on numerous ancient maps made by foreigners and Filipinos, from as early as 1636, the rocky outcrop was consistently shown to be Philippine territory.

 

Carpio, in an earlier lecture, said the shoal was also used as a naval gunnery range by U.S. and Philippine armed forces from the 1960s to the 1980s, and neither China nor any other country protested against the bombing practice.

 

In June, China unveiled a new official map of the country, giving greater play to its claims on the South China Sea.

 

The Philippines, a close U.S. ally, has brought a case to the U.N. arbitral court in The Hague, seeking clarification on its entitlements under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.

 

China has refused to take part in the arbitration. A ruling is expected late next year.

 

 

 

[PTherapist]

Please keep this topic alive.For our country's sake.

[maxiev]

Please keep this topic alive.For our country's sake.

Indeed.

[sonnyt111]

This is what our naval vessels potentially face if China decides to increase the ante.

 

http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/watch-these-russian-missiles-completely-tear-through-a-1636002082

[oscartamaguchiblackface]

http://theweek.com/article/index/264774/why-the-chinese-military-is-only-a-paper-dragon

 

Why the Chinese military is only a paper dragon

 

Corruption, bad neighbors, inflation, and a demographic time bomb — these are just a few of Beijing's woes By Kyle Mizokami, War is Boring | 9:39am ET Why the Chinese military is only a paper dragon Corruption, bad neighbors, inflation, and a demographic time bomb — these are just a few of Beijing's woes By Kyle Mizokami, War is Boring | 9:39am ET 23 98 28 It looks imposing, but… (China Photos/Getty Images) In appearance it is very powerful, but in reality it is nothing to be afraid of — it is a paper tiger. — Mao Zedong on the United States, 1956</p>China's rise over the past 30 years has been nothing short of spectacular.

 

After decades of double-digit growth, today China is the world's second largest economy — and possesses an increasingly sophisticated military that's among the planet's most powerful. Despite China bordering a number of unstable countries, its borders are secure.

 

That wasn't always the case. In 2,000 years, China has suffered invasions, revolutions, and humiliations from the outside world — plus its own internal rebellions. It has been brutalized, conquered, and colonized.

 

No longer. China's defense spending has increased tenfold in 25 years. Beijing is building a powerful blue-water navy, developing stealth fighters, and carefully experimenting with peacekeeping and expeditionary operations.

 

China's military buildup, along with an aggressive foreign policy, has inspired a fair amount of alarm in the West. Some American policymakers consider Beijing to be Washington's only "near-peer competitor" — in other words, the only country with the military might to actually beat the U.S. military in certain circumstances.

 

But they're wrong. Even after decades of expensive rearmament, China is a paper dragon — a version of what Mao Zedong wrongly claimed the United States was … in 1956.

 

China's military budget has grown by double-digits year after year, but inflation has eaten away at the increases. China's army, navy, air force, and missile command are wracked by corruption — and their weapons are, by and large, still greatly inferior to Western equivalents.

 

Yes, the People's Liberation Army is slowly becoming more technologically advanced. But that doesn't mean Beijing can mobilize its armed forces for global missions. Unlike the world's main expeditionary powers — the United States and the U.K., to name two — China is surrounded by potential enemies.

 

Russia, Japan, and India are all neighbors … and historic adversaries. China's aggressive foreign policy targeting smaller states isn't encouraging submission but resistance, as countries such as The Philippines and Vietnam ally with the United States, Japan, and India.

 

China's other neighbors are weak or failed states, such as Pakistan and North Korea. Their instability — or their outright collapse — could have serious security repercussions for China, and help explain why Beijing lavishes funds on its armed forces.

 

Order of battle

 

 

China has the world's largest military, with no fewer than 2.3 million men and women in uniform. Another 800,000 people serve in China's reserves and militias.</p>The PLA ground forces number 1.25 million men and women divided into 18 group armies, each similar to an American corps. Each army consists of three to five infantry and mechanized divisions — China has only one tank division.

 

These ground troops are mostly for homeland defense. For power projection outside its borders, China has three airborne divisions, two marine divisions, and three marine brigades. Major equipment includes more than 7,000 tanks and 8,000 artillery pieces.

 

China's navy commands 255,000 sailors and 10,000 marines. The People's Liberation Army Navy is divided into the North, East, and South Seas Fleets, together possessing one aircraft carrier, 23 destroyers, 52 frigates, 49 diesel attack submarines, and five nuclear attack subs. China has at least three Jin-class ballistic missile submarines, representing Beijing's nuclear deterrent at sea.

 

The People's Liberation Army Air Force has 330,000 active personnel spread out over 150 air and naval aviation bases. The PLAAF and naval air arm of the PLAN together possess 1,321 fighter and attack aircraft — including hundreds of J-7s, pictured — plus 134 heavy bombers and tankers and 20 airborne early warning planes. China also operates more than 700 combat helicopters.

 

Unique to the PLA is the Second Artillery Corps, a separate branch of the military in charge of land-based conventional and nuclear missiles. The Second Artillery includes between 90,000 and 120,000 personnel divided into six missiles brigades.

 

The Second Artillery fields more than 1,100 conventional short-range ballistic missiles with ranges of 1,000 kilometers or less, another 300 or so conventional medium-range ballistic missiles, and an estimated 120 long-range nuclear ballistic missiles.

 

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimated China's 2013 defense budget at $188 billion dollars. That's about nine percent of global military spending and just under half of all spending in Asia. The same year, the United States spent $640 billion on defense, Russia $88 billion, India $47 billion, and Japan $48 billion.

 

Yes, China's spending seems like a lot. But it's not, really — especially considering how dangerous China's corner of the world can be.

 

Unenviable position

 

 

http://media.theweek.com/img/generic/ChineseMilitaryEmbed2.jpg(Feng Li/Getty Images)

 

It's probably difficult to walk through Beijing's most prosperous neighborhoods or Shanghai's glittering streets and grasp that you are in a country that borders three of the most unstable places in the world — Pakistan, Afghanistan, and North Korea.

 

After thousands of years of incursions and invasions, China has finally built up strong borders. Beijing is doing a good job of maintaining peace and relative prosperity in a rough, impoverished neighborhood.

 

"China's land borders have never been more secure than they are today," M. Taylor Fravel, an associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told War is Boring.

 

"Although disputes with Bhutan and India remain, China no longer faces the prospect of a significant threat on land," Fravel continued. "Clashes could occur on the border with India, but they would be contained by geography and unlikely to escalate into a wider war."

 

This hasn't always been the case. Invaded by the Mongols, the Russians, Western colonialists, and most recently Japan, China suffered greatly at the hands of outsiders for millennia. Given this history, it makes sense that Beijing would want strong defenses.

 

Vietnam fought China in 1979 and killed 9,000 People's Liberation Army troops in a single month. Japan's occupation of China in the 1930s and '40s killed millions of Chinese. India fought China as recently as 1962. China and Russia waged a short, undeclared war in 1969.

 

China borders 14 countries, tying Russia for the most neighbors. But while many of Russia's neighbors are peaceful — Estonia, Finland, Norway, and Latvia come to mind — China borders Afghanistan, North Korea, Myanmar, and Pakistan. Two of these states have nuclear weapons.

 

North Korea is particularly dangerous. Not only does it practice diplomacy through spontaneous violence, it has nukes. Nobody knows when — or if — the North Korean government will collapse, but the idea of 24 million starving people suddenly finding themselves without a government is a frightening one for Beijing.

 

Last year we found out China has contingency plans to deal with a post-collapse North Korea. That would likely involve the PLA moving into North Korea to set up a buffer zone. Perhaps in reaction to this disclosure, Pyongyang described Beijing as a "turncoat and an enemy."

 

China is experiencing a prolonged period of peace and prosperity unprecedented in its modern history. At the same time, its neighborhood headaches are as numerous as ever. That's one good reason China's military budget is $188 billion a year and rising.

 

All alone

 

 

http://media.theweek.com/img/generic/ChineseMilitaryEmbed3.jpg(China Photos/Getty Images)

 

At the same time, China is remarkably lacking in real, dependable allies. In the Pacific alone, the United States can count Japan, Taiwan, Australia, South Korea, New Zealand, and The Philippines as close allies — and maintains cordial relations with others including Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

 

China's list of allies in the Pacific, on the other hand, is a short one. Russia. Globally, China's allies include Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and the countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization — Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. All are despotic or near-despotic states, many are unstable and many have long records of human rights abuses.

 

Beijing embraces its worst neighbors in part to keep them in check. This worked with Pakistan, but failed with North Korea. In Myanmar, China cozied up with the oppressive military regime only for it to suddenly open up and seek ties with the West and Japan. China's net gain was years of condemnation for supporting the junta — which is to say, a net loss.

 

Where China has really failed, however, is in simply getting along with nearby countries. Before the recent confrontation with The Philippines over the Ayungin Shoal, relations between Manila and Beijing had never been better. The same went for much of Southeast Asia before China declared sovereignty over 90 percent of the South China Sea.

 

Even relations with Japan, China's historical enemy, were cordial if staid.

 

Sometime around 2010, Beijing decided to stop playing nice. China began pushing long-dormant territorial claims — and tried its hardest to split the alliance between Japan and the U.S. China's relations with pretty much every country in East and Southeast Asia have chilled.

 

It's hard to say what China really hoped to gain. Some argue that China is attempting to "Finlandize" smaller Asian states — that is, intimidate them into expressing neutrality in order to deny them to the Americans. Others argue that China wanted those disputed territories but also fundamentally has a problem with treating other countries as equals.

 

Whatever the case, China's recent actions have left it largely friendless. Today its most important relationships with other countries are strictly economic in nature.

 

This has obvious implications for China's military posture. While the U.S. Navy can sail across the Pacific and call on practically dozens of ports, China's warships can sail just outside its territorial waters and, other than the Russian port of Vladivostok, have nowhere to go.

 

This places China at an enormous strategic disadvantage. Beijing has no allies to provide bases, share burdens, pool intelligence, or lend moral support.

 

Race with inflation

 

 

http://media.theweek.com/img/generic/ChineseMilitaryEmbed4.jpg(ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images)

 

Since 1990, China's defense spending has swelled by at least 10 percent annually, resulting in a tenfold overall budget increase in just 24 years. Some observers point to China's seemingly huge military outlays as evidence of sinister intent.

 

But the budget boosts aren't nearly as big as they seem.

 

China's economic growth over the past two and a half decades has been meteoric, and has allowed the country to spend more on a modern military. But as a proportion of its economy, China's defense budget is in line with international norms.

 

And if you take into account inflation, China's real increase in defense spending is actually in the single digits annually — hardly the massive influx of cash that alarmists decry.

 

It's important to view China's arms spending in historical context. A quarter-century ago, Beijing's military was big and low-tech. In 1989, the PLA had 3.9 million people on its payroll — many of them leg infantry lacking vehicles and sophisticated weaponry. The army's main tank was a version of the Soviet T-55, a design dating to the early 1950s.

 

The air force and navy were capable only of coastal defense. China had a single nuclear missile submarine, which was rumored to have caught fire and sunk in port.

 

China was a poor country. Its GDP was $451 billion. By comparison, the USA's GDP in 1989 was $8.84 trillion. That year, Beijing spent $18.33 billion on defense. By comparison, the same year Japan spent $46.5 billion and tiny New Zealand, $1.8 billion.

 

China's 1989 defense budget amounted to spending $4,615 per soldier. At the same time, the United States appropriated $246,000 per individual service member.

 

In the late '80s, China's military doctrine still emphasized "People's War," a defensive strategy for drawing an enemy deep into the Chinese interior and then destroying him with conventional and guerrilla warfare. It was based on China's wartime experiences … and was totally inadequate.

 

In 1991, Beijing watched in shock and horror as a U.S.-led coalition easily smashed Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army and ejected it from Kuwait. An air campaign lasting several weeks and a ground offensive just 100 hours in duration destroyed a numerically superior Iraqi force.

 

Suddenly, China's large, impoverished military looked like a liability.

 

Beijing had a lot of work to do reforming its armed forces. That required money. The good news for China was that, thanks to a booming economy, it actually didn't have to devote a larger share of national output to defense in order to invest more in competent troops and modern weaponry.

 

One way to look at defense spending is as a percentage of GDP. China's major neighbors, with the exception of Japan, allocate more to their militaries as a percentage of their respective GDPs. India allocates 2.5 percent, South Korea 2.8 percent, and Russia 4.1 percent. The United States, with the best-equipped military on the planet, spends 3.8 percent of its GDP on defense.

 

The paradox of China's military budget is that spending has risen even as defense's share of the economy has dropped. As a percentage of the economy, China's arms spending has actually fallen by a little more than 20 percent. Beijing spent 2.6 percent of GDP on defense in 1989. Between 2002 and 2010, it appropriated an average of 2.1 percent. In 2013, China's military budget accounted for just two percent of GDP.

 

The PLA's slice of the economic pie has gotten smaller. It's just that the pie itself is much, much bigger than it was 25 years ago.

 

Public security

 

 

http://media.theweek.com/img/generic/ChineseMilitaryEmbed5.jpg(China Photos/Getty Images)

 

By some calculations, in 2013 China spent more on "public security" — Internet censorship, law enforcement, and the paramilitary People's Armed Police — than it did on external defense. China's internal security budget for 2014 is a secret, leading to speculation that once again, the Chinese Communist Party is spending more to defend itself from its own people than from other countries.

 

The Party knows what it's doing. Many Chinese are unhappy living under a totalitarian regime. Environmental damage, labor abuses, corruption and, land grabs can — and do — quickly escalate into riots.

 

On top of that, China must contend with low-level unrest in the far western province of Xinjiang — where ethnic Uighurs resent colonization by the rest of China — and in Tibet.

 

Under the status quo, China has no choice but to spend so heavily on public security. While that's bad for the Chinese people, it's actually a good thing for the region. Much of the military might that Beijing buys every year gets directed inward and never projects externally.

 

Matching U.S. military spending as a percentage of GDP would require China to spend 5.8 percent on internal and external defense. That's just not a realistic prospect. Only three countries devote that much of their economy to their armies — Saudi Arabia, Oman, and South Sudan.

 

Moreover, the dollars China does spend on external military force don't stretch as far as most observers assume. "Throughout much of the post-1978 reform era, the real-world effects of China's nominal defense spending have been mitigated heavily by rampant inflation," wrote Andrew Erickson, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College.

 

In 2008, China's spent 14.9 percent more on defense than it did in 2007. But that 14.9-percent increase coincided with 7.8-percent inflation, resulting in a net military-budget boost of only 7.1 percent. In 2010, defense spending rose 7.8 percent and was devoured by a 6.7-percent inflation rate, for a net gain of just 1.1 percent.

 

Adjusted for inflation, between 2004 and 2014, China's defense spending increased by an average of 8.3 percent in real terms. That's still a lot of money, particularly as defense spending has been falling in most of the West. But the PLA's budget isn't really growing by double digits, as many alarmists claim.

 

PLA, Inc. and the 'rank factory'

 

 

http://media.theweek.com/img/generic/ChineseMilitaryEmbed6.jpg(Guang Niu/Getty Images)

 

Corruption is a huge and largely invisible problem for the PLA. Officials sell government property for their own profit. Contractors charge inflated fees for substandard work. Cronyism results in promotions for unqualified personnel.

 

For years, the PLA generated extra income — and food staples — by farming and raising its own livestock. As China's economy took off, these survival efforts evolved into businesses. To farming and ranching, the PLA added hotels, theaters, and bars — the profits from which as often as not ended up in top officers' pockets.

 

In 1998, the Chinese Communist Party ordered the PLA to cut ties with commercial enterprises in order to improve military readiness. An infantry unit didn't need to raise its own pork anymore — the defense budget could accommodate soldiers' food needs. Units could get on with the business of soldiering.

 

But instead of ending them, corrupt military leaders simply obscured their profit ventures.

 

The business of illegally selling military license plates to wealthy civilians has been a particularly lucrative one. Plate bearers — who are often civilians with only tangential connections to the PLA — mount red lights and sirens on their cars to push through regular street traffic. Holders are often entitled to free gasoline.

 

The situation got so bad that in 2013, the PLA banned expensive imports — from Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Porsche, and Bentley — from having military license plates.

 

Beijing has occasionally cracked down on corrupt officers. In 2007, a judge handed down a suspended death sentence to Vice Adm. Wang Shouye for embezzling $25 million in PLA funds.

 

As deputy director of the PLA's General Logistics Department between 1997 and 2001, Wang was in a position to approve new military housing. The government accused Wang of receiving kickbacks from contractors.

 

Police arrested Wang in 2006 after the admiral refused blackmail demands from one of his many mistresses. Investigators found more than $8 million dollars stashed in microwave ovens and refrigerators in Wang's homes in Beijing and Nanjing and another $2.5 million in a washing machine. There was evidence of an additional $8 million in pilfered funds in Wang's bank accounts.

 

In March, police detained Xu Caihou, a retired general and former member of the powerful Central Military Commission, on allegations he made millions of dollars selling military ranks. Xu was in charge of high-level army promotions from 2004 to 2013.

 

We don't know exactly how much money Xu made. However, the general's subordinate Gu Junshan — who is also in custody and under investigation — gave Xu's daughter a debit card worth $3.2 million as a wedding gift.

 

Gu reportedly sold "hundreds" of military ranks. "If a senior colonel [not in line for promotion] wanted to become a major general, he had to pay up to $4.8 million," a source told Reuters.

 

That's a lot of money. In most professional militaries, such bribes wouldn't be worth it. But in the PLA, a payoff like that is an investment. The higher an officer's rank, the greater the opportunities for self-enrichment.

 

Daniel Hartnett, a China analyst at CNA Corporation, told War Is Boring that corruption could damage the PLA's military capabilities, not the least by "hinder[ing] the PLA's ability to develop its officer corps."

 

"If officers are purchasing promotions, as recent allegations have claimed, it could mean that those who should be promoted due to merit might not be. And those that arebeing promoted, shouldn't necessarily be," Hartnett said.

 

Graft could hurt the PLA in other ways, Hartnett explained. "Although PLA procurement processes are often a black box, it'd be a plausible conclusion that some — maybe even many — procurement decisions are not necessarily made with the PLA's best interests in mind. Purchase this item, and receive a kickback, even if that item is sub-quality or not necessarily need."

 

Corruption could also open a rift between the Chinese people and the PLA. "If the military is seen as a corrupt institution, as it was during the early 1980s in China, overall support for the PLA could be undermined," Hartnett said. "This would go heavily against the military's narrative that it is the keeper of [Chinese] honor and integrity that it has worked so hard to develop over the past two-plus decades."

 

Morale in the PLA officer corps has tanked in the wake of the Gu Junshan scandal, According to Reuters. "Many fear punishment. Those who are able but passed over for promotion are disgruntled."

 

Since assuming office in 2013, Chinese president Xi Jinping has made the news several times urging the PLA to "prepare for combat." That might sound bellicose, but in light of the PLA's corruption problem, Xi could be telling officers to stop making money and just do their jobs.

 

"No country can defeat China," a leading PLA commissar wasquoted as saying in Foreign Policy. "Only our own corruption can destroy us and cause our armed forces to be defeated without fighting."

 

Museum pieces

 

 

http://media.theweek.com/img/generic/ChineseMilitaryEmbed7.jpg(China Photos/Getty Images)

 

Despite a growing defense budget, China's arsenals still overflow with outdated equipment. The PLA possesses 7,580 main battle tanks — more than the U.S. Army. But only 450 of those tanks — the Type 98As and Type 99s — are anywhere near modern, with 125-millimeter guns, composite armor, modern suspension, and advanced fire control systems.

 

All of America's roughly 5,000 M-1 tanks are modern.

 

The other 7,130 Chinese tanks — some of which are pictured here — are the same descendants of Soviet T-55s that comprised Beijing's armored force in the late 1980s … and were obsolete even then.

 

China also has a lot of fighter planes. Between the People's Liberation Army Air Force and the air arm of the People's Liberation Army Navy, China boasts no fewer than 1,321 fighter aircraft, an aerial armada only slightly smaller than America's.

 

But China's air forces likewise maintain mostly obsolete jets. Of 1,321 fighters, only 502 are modern — 296 variants of the Russian Su-27 and 206 J-10s of an indigenous design. The remaining 819 fighters — mostly J-7s, J-8s and Q-5s — are 1960s designs built in the 1970s. They wouldn't last long in a shooting war.

 

The navy is in the best shape, but that's not saying much. The PLAN's destroyers and frigates are fairly new, but its first aircraft carrier Liaoning is a rebuilt Soviet ship from the 1980s. After a nine-year refit, Liaoning started sea trials in 2011.

 

Liaoning is half the size of an American Nimitz-class supercarrier and carries half as many planes. As Liaoning lacks a catapult, China's J-15 naval fighters must use a ski ramp to take off — and that limits their payload and range. Liaoning lacks the radar and refueling planes that give American flattops their long-range striking power.

 

Submarines are another problem area for the PLAN. Just over half of China's 54 submarines are modern — that is, built within the last 20 years. Beijing's modern undersea fleet includes the Shang, Han, Yuan, and Song classes. All four classes are Chinese-built. All are markedly inferior to Western designs.

 

The rest of China's submarines, especially its 1980s-vintage Mings, are totally obsolete.

 

The PLAN halted production of the nuclear-powered Shang class after only building just three boats — an ominous sign. Moreover, Beijing has placed an order with Russia for up to four Kalina-class subs, signalling a lack of faith in local designs.

 

Unknown unknowns

 

 

http://media.theweek.com/img/generic/ChineseMilitaryEmbed8.jpg(Guang Niu/Getty Images)

 

One of the most visible signs of China's military rise is all the new, locally-designed and -produced hardware. Beijing is building new ships, aircraft, drones and tanks that, on the outside, appear to be matches for Western weapons. But we know very little about China's homemade weaponry. Specifically, we don't know if any of it really works.

 

In an early effort to modernize the PLA, in the 1980s China strengthened ties with Western defense contractors. Beijing bought helicopters, aircraft, engines, naval electronics, and munitions. Then, in 1989, the Chinese government massacred pro-democracy students near Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing. The U.S. and Europe promptly imposed an arms embargo.

 

China turned to Russia, but Russia would rather sell finished products to China than help its neighbor develop its own industry. Beijing realized it would have to develop weaponry all on its own.

 

That's not easy. In all the world, only the United States still has the technology, expertise, and industrial capacity to develop all of its own military hardware. It's very, very expensive.

 

Many of China's "new" weapons are actually foreign designs that Beijing's state companies have licensed, stolen, or painstakingly reverse-engineered. The Changhe Z-8 helicopter was originally the French Super Frelon. The Harbin Z-9 scout helicopter started life as the Eurocopter Dauphin. The Type 99 tank is an updated Soviet T-72.

 

To be sure, not all of the PLA's new hardware is a knock-off. But "homemade" does not necessarily equal "good." In many cases, we can only guess at the weapon's quality. After all, China has no free press.

 

The J-20 stealth fighter prototype, for example, has flown scores of test flights since first appearing in late 2010. The large, angular plane appears to boast long range and a large payload, but its stealthiness is hard to gauge. Its avionics, aerodynamic controls, weapons, and sensors — and especially its engines — are equally questionable.

 

The J-20's designers appear to be waiting on new, Chinese-developed engines to replace the prototype's Russian-made AL-31Ns. China has been working on those engines, without visible success, since the early 1990s.

 

It's important to remember that America's latest F-35 Joint Strike Fighter first flew in 2006 and won't be ready for combat until 2016. The United States has experience developing stealth fighters; China does not. If we allow China 10 years from first flight to combat readiness, the J-20 won't be a front-line fighter until 2021. At the earliest.

 

The specifications of the PLAN's Type 052C/D air-defense destroyers make them seem very similar to Western warships, such as the U.K.'s Darings or the American Arleigh Burkes. But we don't know how difficult the ships were to build, how well their air-defense system works with the associated phased-array radar or how accurate and reliable the ships' missiles are.

 

When it comes to developing arms, China is starting out far behind Russia and the West and is struggling to catch up. And we must not forget that the very government developing all this hardware is also the only source of information about the new gear. For now, it's wise to be skeptical of Chinese weaponry.

 

Neighborhood watch

 

 

http://media.theweek.com/img/generic/ChineseMilitaryEmbed9.jpg(Guang Niu/Pool/Getty Images)

 

China's aggressive behavior, in the East and South China Seas has prompted many of its neighbors to band together or seek the support of larger, more powerful allies. Japan is the hub for many of these of these cooperative agreements.

 

Politically and constitutionally limited in what kind of direct action it can take to counter China, Japan is building relationships with China's other disgruntled neighbors and with Western powers. Tokyo is currently in talks with Australia, the U.K., India, Indonesia, The Philippines, Vietnam, Canada, and the U.S.

 

Logistics cooperation, co-development of military equipment, intelligence sharing, joint exercises, and security-related aid are all on the table.

 

Vietnam, a historical enemy of China, has begun building a military specifically tailored to counter the PLA. It has procured Russian Su-27 and Su-30 fighters and four Gepard frigates. Vietnam has even bought its first submarines — six Improved Kilo diesel-electrics from Russia that are more advanced than the Chinese navy's own Kilos.

 

Hanoi is strengthening foreign ties. India will train Vietnam's submariners. Vietnam has also hinted at letting foreign fleets use the harbor at Cam Ranh Bay, but is likely holding back as that would be a serious provocation to China.

 

The Philippines, locked in a standoff with China over the Ayungin Shoal, has begun rebuilding its navy and air force, purchasing retired U.S. Coast Guard cutters for its navy and a dozen South Korean TA-50 light fighters for the air force. Manila has agreed to host American facilities — and American troops — on its military bases.

 

Asia probably won't assemble a new NATO-like alliance in the near future. China's opponents aren't willing to accept such close military integration. Most are unwilling to fight for someone else. Many of these countries, despite being wary of Chinese aggression, still have strong economic ties to Beijing.

 

Still, the level of cooperation would complicate any military moves by China. Not that Beijing necessarily intends to invade … anyone. Ever. Military, diplomatic and economic power are intertwined forces that enable a government to shape its environment — peacefully and against a rival's will.

 

The big question is, when does China catch up to America militarily?

 

Never.

 

"China will grow old before it gets rich" is, by now, a cliche among China-watchers. But it's true. The same demographic wave that has gifted China with an abundance of labor will soon also transform the country into the world's biggest retirement home.

 

Beijing's "one-child" policy has sharpened the trend. Today China has 16 retirees per 100 workers. Projections see that increasing to 64 retirees per 100 workers by 2050, resulting a much grayer population than in America.

 

This has indirect — but serious — implications for China's defense. Most Chinese do not have retirement benefits and in their old age must rely on personal savings or family … a difficult proposition when there is only one child to take care of two parents.

 

If Beijing wants to preserve household savings and productivity, it will have to build some kind of social welfare system. And that means making some difficult choices.

 

China's borders are secure. The U.S., Japan, and India cannot bring down the Chinese government. But tens of millions of desperate Chinese families could do so — and just might, if Beijing can't find some way to care for them as they age.

 

China has nuclear weapons. It's ruled by a deeply nationalistic, authoritarian regime with a history of brutality towards its own citizens. It has territorial claims that clash with those of other countries — and a defense budget rising by 8 percent annually. It's wise to keep a watchful eye on China.

 

Yet China is a hobbled giant with many deep, systemic problems. Some of these problems — particularly the technological ones — are solvable. The demographic issue is not. And it's the biggest reason the paper dragon does not pose a major threat to the rest of the world over the long term.

 

From drones to AKs, high technology to low politics, War is Boring explores how and why we fight above, on, and below an angry world. Sign up for its daily email update here or subscribe to its RSS Feed here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[camiar]

They're selling us again the idea of reviving the Southeast-Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) or a larger Pan-Asian equivalent.

 

http://asia.nikkei.com/Viewpoints/Geopolitico/Anders-Corr-China-threat-requires-an-Asian-NATO

 

Anders Corr: China threat requires an Asian NATO

 

"...The increasing belligerence of China in the East and South China seas, and towards India, has fundamentally destabilized the security dynamics of Asia. Japan is seeking a closer alliance with India, and is likely seeking advanced offensive weapons from the U.S. Vietnam is considering a U.S. alliance. China increasingly makes common cause with Russia, using unethical and illegal practices in trade and geopolitics.

 

While existing bilateral alliances go partway towards defending against the resurgent autocratic threat, only a formalized multilateral treaty organization would provide the coordination necessary to defend democracy and international law in Asia against emerging threats. To survive, Asian democracies must create what might be called an Asian Treaty Organization, patterned after the successful North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Europe and North America..."

 

 

I have a different idea.

 

"The only way to eliminate an enemy is to make him your friend."

[maxiev]

They're selling us again the idea of reviving the Southeast-Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) or a larger Pan-Asian equivalent.

 

http://asia.nikkei.com/Viewpoints/Geopolitico/Anders-Corr-China-threat-requires-an-Asian-NATO

 

I have a different idea.

 

"The only way to eliminate an enemy is to make him your friend."

Hmmm....how are we supposed to make friends with a country that's claiming that what legally belongs to us actually belongs to them based on some ancient map or some distorted interpretation of history?

 

I think the only way we can make China our friend is to relinquish all our claims to the South China Sea. That's something I don't think is going to happen any time soon.

[sonnyt111]

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/david-vs-goliath-the-south-china-sea-the-philippines-vs-11534

David vs. Goliath in the South China Sea: The Philippines vs. China

Richard Javad HeydarianOctober 23, 2014In a dramatic display of strategic naiveté, the Philippines decided (early-October) to suspend the repair and upgrade of its age-old airstrip on the Spratly island of Thitu (Pagasa to the Filipinos), among the biggest and most prized land features in the South China Sea, which can generate its own 200-nautical-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). The airstrip is critical to the Armed Forces of Philippines’ (AFP) ability to project power and defend its maritime claims beyond its immediate territorial waters.

 

For years, the Philippines has not fielded even a single modern fighter aircraft; South Korea is expected to deliver twelve FA 50 lead-in fighter jets (worth $415.7 million) in the coming years, while the Philippine Navy has gradually beefed up its miniscule, antiquated fleet. Thanks to the strategic foresight of the late Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos (1966-1986), who recognized the importance of establishing permanent, defensible structures over contested features in the South China Sea, the Philippines has managed to exercise effective and continuous sovereignty over the island, which hosts a permanent civilian community and boasts its own mayor. But the advantage has been slipping away.

 

Manila tried to justify the controversial move by emphasizing the (supposed) importance of maintaining “the moral high ground” amid the country’s pending legal complaint, at a special Arbitral Tribunal in The Hague, against China’s expansive maritime claims, as well as increasingly aggressive posturing within the Philippines’ 200-nautical-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). In short, the Philippines has prioritized an inherently uncertain legal maneuver at the expense of investing in tangible mechanisms, which can actually protect the areas under its control.

 

Meanwhile, Manila and Washington have faced renewed legal and political obstacles to the implementation of the recently concluded Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), which seeks to upgrade the U.S.-Philippine military alliance amid rising Chinese assertiveness. Other claimant states, from Vietnam to Taiwan, have accelerated their efforts at fortifying their position in Asia’s emerging maritime battlefront. Even nonclaimant states, such as Indonesia, have stepped up their efforts to counter what they see as a “real threat” (from China) to their maritime domain.

 

Strategic Innocence

 

As Jay Batongbacal, a leading maritime expert in the Philippines, recently told me, the Philippines’ case at The Hague, contrary to the position of some Filipino officials, “is not a slam dunk”. China has consistently refused to recognize the jurisdiction of any international body over territorial delimitation and sovereignty-related issues. No wonder, Beijing has adamantly rejected the whole arbitration process, accusing the Philippines of unnecessarily provoking a crisis by internationalizing what it sees as an essentially bilateral territorial dispute, which should be resolved primarily through diplomatic channels.

 

With China boycotting the whole arbitration process, and refusing to even clarify the exact coordinates of its notorious “nine-dash-line” doctrine, it is far from certain whether the Philippines can expect an expeditious, conclusive adjudication, which could tangibly support its claims in the South China Sea. Even if the Philippines manages to secure a favorable legal outcome, China can simply ignore it. After all, the arbitral tribunal is neither designed to conclusively settle sovereignty-related issues, nor does it possess a compliant-enforcement mechanism to ensure the proper implementation of its final decisions. Ultimately, China is more interested in de facto—rather than de jure—domination of the Western Pacific, which it treats as its natural backyard.

 

At best, a favorable outcome would simply enhance the Philippines’ “moral case” against a rising maritime power—China (which has, so far, withstood external diplomatic pressure on issues that it considers “core interests,” from the maritime disputes in the Western Pacific to the intensifying anti-Beijing movements in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Taiwan and Tibet).

 

In a nutshell, the Philippines’ legal strategy makes sense so long as it is part and parcel of a broader strategy to protect the country’s maritime claims amid China’s day-to-day operations aimed at changing facts on the ground. Theoretically, it would have been best if the Philippines leveraged the threat of filing a legal complaint—rather than actually filing it—to bring China to the negotiating table, or, alternatively, jointly submitted its case along with like-minded states, such as Vietnam. But the legal maneuver has effectively become the Philippines’ primary weapon against an increasingly militarized maritime dispute with China.

 

Since the end of Cold War, the Philippines has been progressively overshadowed by its rivals across the disputed waters. As the former Philippine national security advisor Roilo Golez recently told me, “[For long] the AFP concentrated too much on internal security…[but] the security environment changed in the 1990s. The leadership should have seen China’s move towards the South China Sea [earlier].” Efforts at modernizing the AFP fell short of addressing the emerging threat within the Philippines’ EEZ, because as Golez points out, newly allocated funds “were [channeled to] minor items like field communications equipment, and night vision equipment,” rather than “ the procurement of big ticket items like multirole fighters and Navy assets”, which are crucial to maritime defense.

 

Catch Up Time

 

The Philippines has sought to compensate for its vulnerability, which became patently obvious after China wrested control of the Philippine-claimed Mischief Reef in 1994, by inviting U.S. forces back to the country. The United States dramatically reduced its military presence after the termination of the U.S.-Philippine Military Bases Agreement in 1991. China wasted no time exploiting the temporary power vacuum that the departure of American forces from Subic and Clark bases in the Philippines created. The Obama administration, however, has refused to clarify whether Washington will come to the rescue of the Philippines if a war with China erupts over the disputed features.

 

Meanwhile, the two allies have struggled to fully upgrade their military alliance, since constitutional restriction over the establishment of permanent U.S. military bases in the country have prevented the immediate implementation of the EDCA, which is ostensibly designed to enhance the Philippines’ minimum deterrence capability against China’s maritime designs. In recent days, U.S.-Philippine relations have been tested by the public outrage over the alleged killing of a Filipino citizen by a U.S. Marine. The incident has rekindled age-old concerns over criminal abuses by foreign troops. Nationalist figures and movements have also stepped up their opposition to what they see as a violation of Philippine sovereignty by the presence of American troops on Philippine soil. Leading Senators such as Miriam Defensor-Santiago have called for the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) to be scrapped, while others have called for a review of the bilateral agreement. Criminal jurisdiction continues to be a sensitive political issue in the Philippines, since the 1998 VFA stipulates that the host country does not have full jurisdiction over criminal cases involving American troops. The alleged killer is currently in the custody of American authorities (aboard the warship USS Peleliu) in Subic, who have sought to dampen the political fallout of the incident by promising a full and thorough investigation.

 

With China stepping up its construction activities—having built a military airstrip across the Woody Island (Paracels) and building a similar facility on the Fiery Cross (Spratly)—other rival claimant states, including Taiwan, have fortified their position. For instance, Taiwan is building a $100 million port on Itu Abu (Tai Ping to Taiwanese), which already has a well-maintained military airstrip. The new port, expected to finish by 2015, could accommodate coast guard cutters and heavy naval frigates. Taiwan is also upgrading the airstrip to accommodate its Hercules C-130 transport planes, while finishing an ambitious project of surveying the entire South China Sea through high-resolution satellite imagery. This would give Taiwan a more complete picture of the developments across disputed features, providing valuable intelligence for legal and military contingencies.

 

Unlike the Philippines, practically all other South China Sea claimant states have maintained robust, high-level dialogue with Beijing. Chinese president Xi Jinping has yet to hold a formal dialogue with his Filipino counterpart, Benigno Aquino, who is entering his final years in office. And there are no signs that such an event will take place anytime soon. Interestingly though, Japan, a major strategic partner of the Philippines, has vigorously pushed for a dialogue between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Xi. Reports suggest that Abe has agreed to acknowledge the disputed nature of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea in order to secure a historic meeting with the Chinese leader. The Philippines will carefully follow the Abe-Xi meeting, since any rapprochement between the two Asian powers could have implications for the Philippines’ efforts to secure maximum external support against China.

 

To resolve the recent oil-rig crisis, Vietnam engaged in a proactive diplomatic offensive, culminating in the visit of Vietnam’s Politburo member Le Hong Anh to Beijing in late-August. Since then, bilateral tensions have subsided, with both countries seeking to enhance existing crisis-management mechanisms to avoid a similar crisis in the future. Back in 2012, the foreign ministries of both countries established a hotline, which covers a comprehensive set of issues including maritime disputes. In 2013, Vietnam’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and China's Ministry of Agriculture also set up a hotline to prevent risks and disputes concerning fishery resources. Most recently, the two countries, according to Vietnamese officials, have also agreed to establish a hotline between their defense ministries. Based on recent conversations with a Vietnamese diplomat, it is clear that the real challenge is to operationalize these mechanisms during an actual crisis: during the mid-2014 oil-rig crisis, which sparked huge protests across Vietnam and brought the two Communist countries dangerously close to an armed conflict, there was limited utilization of the existing hotlines. It remains to be seen how the new reported hotline between the two defense ministries will prevent a similar crisis, but it is clear that Vietnam is committed to using all possible diplomatic instruments to avoid another major showdown with China.

 

With its recent acquisition of two Russian-made, state-of-the-art Kilo-class submarines, Vietnam has also beefed up its minimum deterrence capabilities. Hanoi has also welcomed Washington’s decision to relax existing restrictions on arms exports to Vietnam, which could aid Vietnam’s efforts at developing its civilian law-enforcement capabilities.

 

Given the expansive nature of Chinese maritime claims and paramilitary patrols, Indonesia has also accelerated its efforts at streamlining its maritime policy, under a proposed Sea Security Agency (Bakamla), while expanding defense spending to transform the country into a “global maritime nexus.” Indonesia, which has openly criticized China’s “nine-dash-line” doctrine, is heavily concerned with Beijing’s posturing near the hydrocarbon-rich Natuna Islands.

 

Overall, it is clear that China’s rivals in the Western Pacific have hedged their bets by rapidly developing their maritime capabilities, while astutely maintaining critical diplomatic channels with the leadership in Beijing. The Philippines, meanwhile, seems to have placed almost all of its strategic eggs in the (uncertain) legal basket.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[oscartamaguchiblackface]

http://www.usnews.co...obal-superpower

 

China's Long Road to Superpower Status

 

China lacks the political, economic and civil freedoms to become a world leader.

 

By Jonathan AdelmanNov. 10, 2014 | 12:00 a.m. EST+ MoreIn the last decade, the notion of China becoming the world's next superpower has become almost an idee fixe for many. Compared to the other so-called BRICS – Brazil, Russia and India – China shines like the moon. Since Deng Xiaoping created the Four Modernizations in 1978, China has surged from being a marginal player on the global stage to a powerhouse that has attracted $2 trillion of foreign direct investment.

 

Its economy ranks first in the world in building modern infrastructure, global exports ($2.2 trillion), Internet usage (600 million people), college graduates (7 million per year), rate of economic growth (10 percent from 1980 to 2010), movement of peasants to the city (400 million from 1980 to 2013), high-speed rail under construction (40,000 miles) and major airports (43). By 2025, it will likely have the world's largest gross national product.

Politically, the United States had the world's first democratic government in 1789 and expanded the franchise ever since. By contrast, after 65 years in power, the Chinese communist government has not even begun to make the transition towards a semi-democratic state. Rather, the government, whose think tanks in the 1990s used to talk of managing a democratic transition, has cracked down on movements in minority areas and in Hong Kong. There are no democratic elections at any level. Without this transition, the People's Republic of China faces the serious possibility of falling apart like the Soviet Union did in 1991.

 

Economically, while the United States has a strong, relatively open capitalist economy, Chinese economic freedom is so poor that the Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom ranks China 137th in the world alongside Cameroon and Tajikistan. As a result, the Conference Board, citing the negative roles of state run capitalism and growth-fixated monetary policy, estimates Chinese economic growth to slide to only 4 percent by 2020.

 

Militarily, the United States has hundreds of bases around the world, 11 aircraft carrier battle fleets, tens of thousands of strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, well trained officers and numerous major allies around the world. China, whose military spending is less than 30 percent of American spending, is still working on its first aircraft carrier (bought from Ukraine), imports major weapon systems from Russia, and has a small strategic nuclear force. A large number of its officers are of peasant origins. It lacks any major allies.

 

The United States created a government of laws, an independent judiciary and the protection of civil liberties. In China, the government does not allow free speech, assembly, an independent judiciary or religion. Massive corruption has allowed high Chinese Communist government or party officials to reap fortunes of hundreds of millions, even billions, of dollars.

 

 

The United States has been a world leader in quality of life, with more than 60 percent of the population owning their own homes and over 90 percent owning cars. By contrast, with 50 percent of the population still living in dire conditions in the countryside and massive air, water and soil pollution killing 1.2 million people a year, Chinese quality of life is quite poor. A recent poll showed that more than 60 percent of the wealthiest Chinese want to leave the country.

 

Finally, in a world increasingly dominated by advances in high technology, China lags far behind the United States. While the United States has the majority of leading high-tech companies – Google, Apple, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Oracle and others – China has almost none. Neo-Confucianism and Communism have suppressed Chinese creativity. Since 1950, not a single Chinese scientist working in China has won a Nobel Prize in Science. By contrast, the United States since 1945 has won a staggering 235 Nobel Prizes in science.

 

Overall, then China has come a long way but still has a long way to go to become a global superpower.

[Bugatti Veyron]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-china-wont-asias-dominant-power-051729819.html

[oscartamaguchiblackface]

http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/trend-lines/14491/vietnam-s-modernizing-navy-confronts-china-s-sea-power

 

 

Vietnam’s Modernizing Navy Confronts China’s Sea Power

http://static.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/14491/l_vietnam_navy_11192014.png Vietnam People’s Navy honor guard at the ASEAN defense ministers meeting, Hanoi, Vietnam, Oct. 12, 2010 (U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Jerry Morrison).

 

 

As China attempts to assert maritime claims against neighboring Vietnam, Vietnam in turn has been expanding its navy and courting new allies, such as India. In an email interview, Abhijit Singh, a research fellow at India’s Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, discusses the capabilities of the Vietnamese navy, known as the Vietnam People's Navy.

 

WPR: What is Vietnam’s naval capacity, and how operationally prepared is its navy?

 

Abhijit Singh: Vietnam’s navy has modernized from a small coastal patrol force with limited capacity in the 1980s into a seagoing, fairly competent, combat-worthy navy. Equipped with old Soviet-era hardware and an assortment of small seagoing vessels until a decade ago, it has now upgraded itself into a modern, though still compact, fighting force. The force today consists of frigates, corvettes, patrol craft, missile boats, maritime patrol aircraft (MPA) and even submarines. Unable to effectively defend its maritime stakes for much of the 1990s and 2000s, the recent improvements in the Vietnamese navy’s operational capability have expanded its ability protect its waters.

 

WPR: What are Vietnam’s maritime interests, and how effective is its navy at protecting them?

 

Singh: Vietnam’s maritime interests lie in defending its sovereign stakes in the South China Sea. This includes patrolling its legitimate Exclusive Economic Zone and maintaining its claims over the Spratly and Paracel islands, even though the latter are controlled by China. Vietnam’s principle challenge has been to counter Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea. And although it continues to remain inferior to the People’s Liberation Army Navy, the Vietnamese navy has improved its effectiveness in protecting its maritime interests.

 

WPR: What steps is Vietnam taking to increase its naval capacity, and who are its main naval partners in terms of supplies and training?

 

Singh: Vietnam’s essential strategy has been to build up its navy through strategic partnerships and high-profile procurement deals. Vietnam’s principal strategic partners are Russia and India. Moscow supplied Hanoi with two Gepard class ASW frigates in 2011, and more recently delivered three submarines as part of a $1.8 billion deal for six diesel-powered 636 Kilo-class boats. Two of these have even begun operational deployments in Vietnamese waters. Russia also recently signed a contract for the supply of 12 Su-30 Mk-2 multirole fighter aircraft to provide air cover to its naval fleet. Meanwhile India, Vietnam’s other strategic collaborator, has offered assistance in procuring patrol boats using a $100 million credit line. Besides procuring naval platforms from India and Russia, Vietnam has been dealing with the Netherlands for the future supply of four high-end Sigma-class corvettes, and has also acquired three twin Otter MPAs from Canada.

 

India, which in the past had supplied spare parts for Russian-made Petya-class warships and OSA-II class missile boats to the Vietnamese navy, is today Hanoi’s main training partner. The Indian navy has begun training a large number of Vietnamese sailors in submarine operations and underwater warfare at its INS Satavahana submarine school in Visakhapatnam. With its experience since the mid-1980s of operating Russian Kilo-class submarines, Indian assistance is seen as an invaluable asset, not only for the submarine training program, but also for the training of Sukhoi pilots and for assisting Vietnamese military personnel in improving their information technology and English-language skills.