Amid the daily cut and thrust surrounding the disputed South China Sea – a dangerous arena clouded by diplomatic bluster and military posturing – some events are more telling than others.
The PLA Navy’s recent deployment of a fully equipped amphibious task force to stage a neatly choreographed show of sovereignty at an isolated shoal in the maritime heart of Southeast Asia is one move that will not be easily forgotten.
James Shoal is also claimed by Malaysia – it is just 80 kilometres off its coast and also close to Brunei – and is well south of the Spratlys archipelago, which can be seen as the epicentre of the broader dispute that involves Vietnam, the Philippines and Brunei as well as Malaysia and China (and Taiwan). It is a territorial tangle that now resonates internationally.
Tag Archives: China Daily
A Chinese show of force to remember in the South China Sea
Putin: A Korean Incident Could Make Chernobyl Seem Like a Fairy Tale
Vladimir Putin has said a war in Korea could be more devastating than the Chernobyl disaster as Pyongyang was warned against another nuclear test.
The Russian President said he was “worried about the escalation on the Korean peninsula, because we are neighbours”.
And Mr Putin, who also praised a US decision to postpone a planned missile test as part of efforts to reduce tensions, said he feared a situation worse than that in Chernobyl after a nuclear accident that was later linked to thousands of deaths.
“If, God forbid, something happens, Chernobyl which we all know a lot about, may seem like a child’s fairy tale,” he said.
“Is there such a threat or not? I think there is … I would urge everyone to calm down … and start to resolve the problems that have piled up for many years there at the negotiating table.”
Well, I don’t think we can argue about Putin’s statement. An incident could quickly suck in the US and China, then it could quickly go nuclear. Also, I am sure Russia would get sucked in as well.
I think this is representative of the idea that the world has reached a tipping point. While cooler heads will prevail for awhile, eventually someone is going to figure out that nuclear war is likely and just launch a nuclear preemptive strike.
Putin also made a similar comment about the consequences of a western attack on Iran: Attacking Iran: Putin Says Consequences Would be ‘Truly Catastrophic’ with Unimaginable Scale – http://goo.gl/kHnli
What about the following conflicts which have the ability to tip the great-powers into nuclear war:
China daily warns of ‘small-scale war’ with Philippines – http://goo.gl/BhxFt
Dangerous Waters: China-Japan Relations on the Rocks – International Crisis Group – http://goo.gl/1TfFw
Why A War Between China And Vietnam Is Inevitable – Business Insider – http://goo.gl/UBrB9
Russia says action on Syria, Iran may go nuclear | Reuters – http://goo.gl/iUNv9
Now that we have started to experience rumors of war and nuclear war, it implies that the possibility of a great-power nuclear war is closer than ever. Cooler heads might not prevail: Art Cashin: It’s During Times Like These I Think About How World War I Started – http://goo.gl/HaI3D
Also, there are signs that 2013 looks a lot like 1913:
Why 2013 eerily looks like the world of 1913, on the cusp of the Great War – http://goo.gl/kgNZv
If you are going to do something to protect yourself, then you had better start getting serious.
China to ‘intensify’ WPH Sea patrols – Manila Standard Today
Beijing announced on Monday that it planned to “intensify” its supervision and control over disputed territories in the West Philippine Sea.
Beijing made the announcement a few days after it rejected Manila’s notification inviting China to participate in the arbitration of the dispute before the United Nation’s Arbitral Tribunal.
Wu Zhuang, chief of the South China Sea Fishery Bureau under the Ministry of Agriculture, told China Daily that on top of their priorities for this year, was to make more patrols on the Spratly Islands, one of the three major islands in the area.
He added that patrol missions will be carried out around the Xisha Islands (also called the Paracel Islands), Beibu Gulf and the Huangyan Islands. As far as China enlarges the fleet of patrol vessels, the number of supervision missions will increase.
China to ‘intensify’ WPH Sea patrols – Manila Standard Today
Daily fishery patrols in S China Sea in 2014 | chinadaily.com.cn
China will conduct daily fishery administrative patrols in the South China Sea in 2014 to better safeguard the legitimate interests of domestic fishermen, a fishery official said Thursday.
Wu Zhuang, chief of the South China Sea Fishery Bureau under the Ministry of Agriculture, said the timeframe for the patrols is based on his bureau’s growing law enforcement capacity.
“A noticeable improvement will be seen in our enforcement capacity in the next two years, as the bureau has entered a period of rapid development, ” he said.
Describing 2012 as “a most challenging year,” Wu said his bureau has taken a very strong position regarding fishery patrols and protection.
He said the bureau’s fishery patrol ships stayed at sea for a record high of 183 days on average last year.
“Thanks to our more frequent patrols and quicker responses, no Chinese vessels engaging in normal fishery operations in the Nansha waters were illegally seized by foreign countries last year,” he said.
Daily fishery patrols in S China Sea in 2014|Politics|chinadaily.com.cn
One can see the overall level of tension in the South China Sea rising thanks to the actions of China. Chinese vessels engaged in illegal fishing in the waters of other countries cannot be seized.
What happens now?
Do things just stay like this , or should we expect the situation to get worse? Perhaps some boats might be sunk, since they can’t be seized.
The risks of a clash between China and Japan are rising—and the consequences could be calamitous
CHINA and Japan are sliding towards war. In the waters and skies around disputed islands, China is escalating actions designed to challenge decades of Japanese control. It is accompanying its campaign with increasingly blood-curdling rhetoric. Japan, says the China Daily, is the “real danger and threat to the world”. A military clash, says Global Times, is now “more likely…We need to prepare for the worst.” China appears to be preparing for the first armed confrontation between the two countries in seven decades (see article).
The Senkaku/Diaoyu islands: Dangerous shoals | The Economist
Japan to handle ‘invasive’ jets with int’l standards, China on high alert – People’s Daily Online
On Jan. 15, the reporter from Global Times confirmed from Japanese Defense Ministry that firing light tracers is included in the established rule of Japanese Self-Defense Forces. Light tracer is a signal of attack, said a Chinese expert who has flown planes before.
With the increasing tensity in Diaoyu Islands’ dispute, are China and Japan moving toward a terrible war? Chinese military expert said that a modern warfare will not be triggered at once and China will not declare war because of a light tracer. But if Japan did so, China would not make concession.
Japan to handle ‘invasive’ jets with int’l standards, China on high alert – People’s Daily Online
Ecosystem Crises: How Flickering Predicts System Collapse | Sci-Tech | chinadaily.com.cn
They’ve applied a mathematical model to a real-world situation, Erhai Lake in China’s Yunnan province, to help prove a theory that suggests that an ecosystem “flickers”, or fluctuates dramatically between healthy and unhealthy states, shortly before its eventual collapse.
“We chose Erhai Lake for this study because we had a great deal of background information from previous studies and also knew that there were recent problems with water quality from 2000 onward that we could study in the context of critical transitions,” Professor John Dearing, head of Geography at the University of Southampton, told China Daily.
“We’ve worked at Erhai Lake since about 2001,” he said. “We wanted to prove that this ‘flickering’ occurs just ahead of a dramatic change in a system — be it a social, ecological or climatic one — and that this method could potentially be used to predict future critical changes in other impacted systems in the world around us.”
Chinese, UK scientists pioneer technique to predict ecosystem crises |Sci-Tech |chinadaily.com.cn
When a stable system is near collapse then small things can cause relatively large impacts – flickering. This indicates the system is at an inflection point. This continues for awhile then some small event causes a complete collapse.
We can see this flickering in the world today. The outsized Chinese reaction over the Japanese government’s purchase of the Senkaku Islands. The Russian threats of nuclear war over western interference in the Middle East. Those are just two of the latest examples indicating the current international order is at an inflection point – collapse is near.
Chinese Plan To Board Ships In Disputed Waters – Business Insider
Starting January 1 police in the southern Chinese island province of Hainan will board ships which enter what China considers its territory in the South China Sea, Ben Blanchard and Manuel Mogato of Reuters report.
“Activities such as entering the island province’s waters without permission … and engaging in publicity that threatens national security are illegal,” the China Daily said. “If foreign ships or crew members violate regulations, Hainan police have the right to take over the ships or their communication systems.”
Chinese Plan To Board Ships In Disputed Waters – Business Insider
ASEAN chief voices alarm at China plan to board ships in disputed waters
China’s plan to board and search ships that illegally enter what it considers its territory in the disputed South China Sea could spark naval clashes and hurt the region’s economy, Southeast Asia’s top diplomat warned on Friday.
…
“The Chinese have painted themselves into a corner with the South China Sea issue by raising it to a fundamental issue of national sovereignty on a par with Tibet or Taiwan that makes compromise difficult,” Bitzinger said.
ASEAN chief voices alarm at China plan to board ships in disputed waters
China can pick and choose the vessels its wants to board. Slowly implementing this strategy now will allow China to escalate its ability in the future. That means US military vessels and non-compliant vessels from other countries (Philippines, Japan) will be at risk in the future.
China is taking us along a path to the unacceptable. We have now just entered the territory of unacceptable, and China is not likely to stop here. Making things worse is that Chinese leaders probably can’t stop and can’t back down due to the nationalistic sentiment of the Chinese people. The road ahead is looking more dangerous.
Ideology, vested interests: Why China’s reforms have hit brick wall – CNN.com
The official China Daily has reported that the top 1% of Chinese families owns 41.4% of the nation’s wealth, while a survey by the People’s Daily indicated that 91% of respondents thought the “nouveau riche” in China had benefited from their political ties to the CCP leadership.
Reform has become nigh impossible because any change of the political or economic status quo will threaten the vested interests — and finances and earnings — of these near-omnipotent CCP clans.
Politburo member and Guangdong Province Party Secretary Wang Yang admitted this earlier this year. “At the early stage of reform, the obstacles [to liberalization] were mainly due to ideological differences,” he said. “Now, the major problems faced by reform come from the configuration of interest groups [at the top].”
Ideology, vested interests: Why China’s reforms have hit brick wall – CNN.com
China Pressured The US Into Canceling A Key Part Of Its Huge Japanese Military Drill – Business Insider
From The New York Times:
But the Japanese government canceled a joint amphibious landing on a remote island in what experts described as an effort not to provoke China, which is locked in an emotional dispute with Japan over control of uninhabited islands near Okinawa in the East China Sea.
The friction has been intensifying for months. In a more direct challenge to Japanese control, Chinese patrol ships have for more than two weeks been entering waters around the disputed island group, known as the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.
China Daily reports the portion of the drill that was supposed to reclaim the remote uninhabited island of Irisunajima has been called off, “to avoid further aggravating already soured ties with neighboring China.”
