tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73834378586404070062024-03-13T11:50:31.736+07:00Hundred Viet's (Bai Yue)Focused on the East Sea Dispute and Solution . Contact via email: trankinhnghi@gmail.comAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06601450641503959947noreply@blogger.comBlogger166125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7383437858640407006.post-68920388679401289112015-05-19T16:54:00.001+07:002015-05-19T17:01:55.237+07:007 Reasons China Will Start a War By 2017<em style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><strong style="color: #0071b8; text-decoration: none;"> <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/04/seven_reasons_china_will_star_a_war_by_2017.html" rel="external nofollow" style="color: #0071b8; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">American Thinker</a></strong>.</em><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', trebuchet, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.9em; font-weight: bold;">By</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', trebuchet, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.9em; font-weight: bold;"> </span><a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/author/david_archibald/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #0033cc; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', trebuchet, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.9em; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">David Archibald</a><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">China will <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/04/a_century_later_not_the_guns_of_august_but_perhaps_september.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: inherit !important;">start</a> its <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/03/why_china_will_lose_the_war_it_is_planning.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: inherit !important;">war</a> for a number of reasons:</span></span></div>
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<li style="font-size: inherit !important; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-size: inherit !important; font-weight: 700;">Regime Legitimacy</span></span></span></li>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Very few people in China believe in communism anymore, including almost all of the 80 million members of the Chinese Communist Party. The party itself is now a club for mutual enrichment. The legitimacy of the party ruling China is derived from the notions that democracy does not suit China and that the party is the organisation best placed to run the country. The latter is based on an ongoing improvement in conditions for the bulk of the population. In the absence of economic improvement, some other reason must be found for the population to rally around the party’s leadership. This may explain the sudden <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/05/chinas_mobile_national_territory.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: inherit !important;">base-building</a> that started in the Spratly Islands in October 2014. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">China’s public debt grew from US$7 trillion in 2007 to US$28 trillion in 2014. This is on an economy of US$10 trillion per annum. A high proportion of the economic growth of the last seven years is simply construction funded by debt. The real economy is much smaller.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">The Chinese government is likely to see the contracting economy and realise that issuing more debt won’t have an effect on sustaining economic activity. Thus the base-building was accelerated to allow the option of starting their war. This is a life and death matter for the elite running the party. They are betting the farm on this. If this gamble does not work out then there is likely to be a messy regime change.</span></span></div>
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<li style="font-size: inherit !important; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-size: inherit !important; font-weight: 700;">Chosen Trauma</span></span></span></li>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Japan treated the Chinese as sub-humans during World War 2. Before that, Japan starting mistreating China by attacking it in 1895, not long after they started industrializing themselves. That was followed by Japan’s 21 demands on the Chinese state in 1915. The Nationalist government in China started observing National Humiliation Day in the 1920s. Then followed the Mukden Incident of 1931 and China’s start to World War 2 in 1937.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">During the poverty of the Mao years, the Japanese were forgiven for World War 2. Mao and Deng were pragmatists and said that Japan couldn’t be punished forever. China’s recent prosperity has allowed the indulgence of Japan-hating to be resurrected as a form of state religion. National Humiliation Day is observed again on the 18<span style="font-size: inherit !important; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">th</span> September. The party has directed that television take up the theme of Japanese aggression. Today 70% of prime time television in China is movies about World War 2. There are at least 100 museums in China dedicated to the Japanese aggression of World War 2.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">The regime generates and sustains anti-Japanese sentiment to give it the option to go to war.</span></span></div>
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<li style="font-size: inherit !important; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-size: inherit !important; font-weight: 700;">Being Recognised As Number One</span></span></span></li>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">The Chinese are a proud nation. They actually resent the fact that the United States is considered to be the number one nation on the planet. China also realises that to be recognised as number one, they have to defeat the current number one in battle. This is why it won’t be just creeping increments in Chinese aggression. They need a battle for their own psychological reasons.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">This means that they will attack the United States at the same time that they attack Japan. Because surprise attacks are more successful, it will be a surprise attack on US bases in Asia and the Pacific and perhaps well beyond. This most likely will include cyber-attacks on US utilities and communications.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">China has structured its armed forces for a short, sharp war. Of any country on the planet, they are possibly the most prepared for war. They have one year of grain consumption in stock and even a strategic pork reserve. They have just filled up their strategic petroleum reserve of about 700 million barrels.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">China’s war has nothing to do with securing resources or making their trade routes secure. Some western analysts have projected those notions onto China to rationalise what China is doing. The Chinese themselves have not offered these excuses. To China it is all about territorial integrity, which is sacred and not the profane stuff of commerce.</span></span></div>
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<li style="font-size: inherit !important; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-size: inherit !important; font-weight: 700;">Humiliating The Neighbours</span></span></span></li>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">The importance of the Spratly Islands and the Chinese <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-dotted_line" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: inherit !important;">nine-dash claim</a> is that it divides Asia. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><img alt="" src="http://admin.americanthinker.com/images/bucket/2015-04/194496_5_.png" style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit !important; height: 739px; max-width: 100%; width: 600px;" /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Nine-dash claim (U.S. Central Intelligence Agency via Wikimedia Commons)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">China claims that the whole of the sea within its claim is Chinese territory, not just the islands. When China gets around to enforcing that claim, foreign merchant vessels and aircraft will have to apply for permission to cross it. Non-Chinese warships and military aircraft will not be allowed to enter it. The Chinese claim extends to 4° south, almost to the equator.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">The worst affected country will be Vietnam, which will be bottled up to within 80 km of its coast. Japan realises that its ships from Europe and the Middle East will have to head further east before heading up north through Indonesia and east of the Philippines. Singapore will be badly affected because the passing trade will drop off.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Japan will become quite isolated because its aircraft will have to head down through the Philippines to almost the equator before heading west. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">China ranks the countries of the world in terms of their comprehensive national power, which the Chinese consider to be the power to compel. This is a combination of military power, economic power and social cohesion. When it is enforced, the nine-dash claim will do a lot of compelling of China’s neighbours.</span></span></div>
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<li style="font-size: inherit !important; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-size: inherit !important; font-weight: 700;">Strategic Window</span></span></span></li>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Chinese strategists see a window of strategic opportunity for China early in the 21<span style="font-size: inherit !important; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">st</span> century, though they haven’t publicly outlined the basis for that view. But we can make a good stab at it. Firstly, an air of inevitability is important in winning battles. While China is perceived to have a strong, growing economy that is crushing all before it, that perception of inevitability rubs off on China’s military adventures. To use that perception, China has to attack before its economy contracts due to the bursting of its real estate bubble. This explains the current rush to build the bases in the Spratly Islands. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Another problem for China is that its aggression and increased military spending has caused its neighbors to rearm and form alliances. China is better off attacking before its neighbors arm themselves further. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Another consideration is the US presidential electoral cycle. President Obama is perceived to be a weak president and the Chinese might rather attack before he is replaced. President Obama has made the right noises, though, about Chinese irredentism and the coming war remains quite popular in the US military, in that the different services are jockeying for position, which means they have official blessing to the highest level. President Obama does have some inconsistent policies that aid China, though, in that while a strong economy is needed to fight China, his administration is doing its best to choke the US economy with carbon dioxide-related regulations. The two ends are mutually exclusive.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">President Obama spent a period of his childhood in Indonesia and would have heard a lot of anti-Chinese sentiment (the Chinese were and are more successful merchants and shopkeepers) in those formative years. As with Valerie Jarrett’s childhood in Iran, this will affect policy.</span></span></div>
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<li style="font-size: inherit !important; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-size: inherit !important; font-weight: 700;">Great-State Autism</span></span></span></li>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">This is a term created by the strategist Edward Luttwak to describe the fact that China is seemingly oblivious to the effects of its actions on its neighbours. China sees itself as the center of the world and purely through the lens of its own self-interest. This has the practical result that China could not perceive the possibility of things not going the way it wants them to. Luttwak also considers that the Chinese overestimate their own strategic thinking. He says that China doesn’t have a strategy so much as a bag of stratagems, most of which involve deception.</span></span></div>
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<li style="font-size: inherit !important; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-size: inherit !important; font-weight: 700;">President Xi Jinping</span></span></span></li>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">While preparation for this war started in the 1980s, the recent ramp up in aggression has been at the direction of President Xi who, in his formative years as a party apparatchik, was impressed by how the war with Vietnam in 1979 was used to consolidate power in the politburo. President Xi has accumulated more power than any Chinese leader since Deng Xiaoping. He is using an anti-corruption campaign to purge political opponents. Chinese leaders are supposed to only rule for ten years before standing aside. Just two years into his presidency, Xi’s supporters have raised the possibility of resurrecting the position of chairman of the party (abolished by Deng to stop another Mao) so that Xi could continue to rule from that position. President Xi is a nasty piece of work who has been toughened up by his life experiences. At the age of 15, he was sent to live and work with peasants in the yellow earth country after his father was purged. His accommodation was a cave. His stepsister suicided due to his father’s oppression by the Red Guards.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-size: inherit !important; font-weight: 700;">Japan</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Japan sees this war being thrust upon it and is approaching it with a great deal of foreboding. It sees it as being inevitable, though Prime Minister Abe did ask to meet President Xi in Indonesia recently. President Xi intends to kill many tens of thousands of Prime Minister Abe’s countrymen, so the meeting was strained. Yesterday, Prime Minister Abe <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/04/29/japan-shinzo-abe-joint-session-of-congress-speech/26566135/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: inherit !important;">addressed a joint session</a> of the US Congress, part of his making the rounds to make sure everyone is on the same page with respect to absorbing and repelling the Chinese attack.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-size: inherit !important; font-weight: 700;">United States</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">The United States believes that a rules-based wold order needs to be maintained for global security and prosperity, including its own prosperity, because that relies upon world trade to a large extent. So for the United States, this war will be about preserving access to the global commons. The US military establishment has not kept the public up to date with all of China’s preparations for war, probably because they do not want to be perceived to be causing escalation. But the US military is in no doubt that China will start a war. The main unknown is the timing.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Chinese aggression has been a godsend to the US Navy, which had lacked a credible threat and had faced ongoing shrinkage. There is a tendency to overstate the efficacy of enemy weapons systems. The Chinese would have read the US Navy reports on their weapons systems, which would have emboldened them further.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-size: inherit !important; font-weight: 700;">How The War Will Be Conducted</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">There will be two main theatres of operation: the East China Sea north of Taiwan and the South China Sea west of the Philippines.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">China claims sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands (last occupied by the Japanese about 100 years ago) and the entire Ryuku chain from the Yaeyama Islands at the southern end to Okinawa in the north. If it is going to seize the Senkaku Islands, it might as well seize the Yaeyama Islands at the same time. To that end, China is building up a military base in the Nanji Islands about 300 km west of the Senkakus. This includes a 10-pad helicopter refuelling base which suggests that the initial assault will be led by helicopters overflying Japan’s coast guard vessels around the Senkakus.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">China has a substantial fishing vessel fleet and merchant shipping totalling 70 million tons. It has been using its fishing fleet to harass the Japanese coast guard around the Senkakus and as far east as the Osagawa Islands, which includes Iwo Jima. This suggests that fishing vessels could be used to land Chinese Special Forces to widely attack Japanese bases that would normally be considered to be well back from the front line. These forces would be used sacrificially to cause maximum mayhem to dispirit the Japanese defense. In the north, the Chinese approach would be to seize and hold against the Japanese and US counter attack.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">In the South China Sea, China is building seven massive forts and one airstrip. The forts are designed with flak towers standing out from the corners so that each tower has at least a 270° field of fire. The forts seem to be designed to take a large amount of punishment and hold out until they can be relieved. China wins if it is still in the possession of these forts by the end of the war.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">China is likely to start the war in the south with attacks on other countries’ bases in the Spratly Islands and US bases in the region, as far east as Guam. A long war will be bad for China in that the run down to the Spratly Islands from Hainan Island is very exposed, both for ships and aircraft. Vietnam has been upgrading its radars and one hopes all the non-Chinese combatants will be sharing targeting information. US AWACS over the Philippines will be able to track Chinese targets handed over from Vietnam. Singapore is likely to operate its F-15s out of Cam Ranh Bay. Chinese aircraft that survive the run down will be at the end of their range by the time they get to the Spratly Islands. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">The US Marines have taken up a number of bases in the Philippines with the intention of mounting the attack that will remove the Chinese from their newly constructed forts. A number of US weapons systems, such as the USS Zumwalt, may have to be rushed into service to that end. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">In the bigger picture, Japan and China will try to blockade each other, mostly with their submarine forces. Japan’s navy has a qualitative edge over China and is most likely to win the blockade battle. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Industry throughout Asia will be badly affected by the war, but Chinese industry in particular is likely to grind to a halt quickly, and this will eventually cause social disruption. The longer the war goes on, the worse China’s relative position becomes. Meat will disappear from the Chinese diet. Unsold soybeans will pile up in US warehouses. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">The removal of the Chinese bases in the Spratly Islands will allow a peace settlement with whoever ends up running China. It will be one of the most pointless, stupid and destructive wars in history, but that is what is coming.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><em style="font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: inherit !important; font-weight: 700;">David Archibald, a visiting fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., is the author of </span></em><span style="font-size: inherit !important; font-weight: 700;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Twilight-Abundance-Century-Nasty-Brutish/dp/1621571580/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1398825391&sr=1-1&keywords=twilight+of+abundance" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: inherit !important;">Twilight of Abundance</a> </span><em style="font-size: inherit !important;"><span style="font-size: inherit !important; font-weight: 700;">(Regnery, 2014)</span></em></span></span></div>
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</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06601450641503959947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7383437858640407006.post-34739804212373501742015-04-01T05:43:00.003+07:002015-04-01T05:43:58.175+07:00Mistranslation and misunderstanding – the unlikely origins of China’s ‘U-shaped line’ claim in the South China Sea<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
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<i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">By Bill Hayton, Author of ‘The South China Sea: the struggle for power in Asia’ </span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Yale 2014</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGhWqqSU9t_gmTIEqpAcv41VfTI3y8RiiNM5qkjiMYkef-GHqYQPyZ-pnn677T0_zDnR2bj_31abWB5ipZLFADfqPV0Ky7d0Zzbn29rWwotw3G0_-mqkGuZ47PqggIKOrQrzHIokz1Fgc/s1600/V%C3%B9ng+ch%E1%BB%93ng+l%E1%BA%A5n+t%E1%BA%A1i+B%C4%90.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGhWqqSU9t_gmTIEqpAcv41VfTI3y8RiiNM5qkjiMYkef-GHqYQPyZ-pnn677T0_zDnR2bj_31abWB5ipZLFADfqPV0Ky7d0Zzbn29rWwotw3G0_-mqkGuZ47PqggIKOrQrzHIokz1Fgc/s1600/V%C3%B9ng+ch%E1%BB%93ng+l%E1%BA%A5n+t%E1%BA%A1i+B%C4%90.jpg" height="400" width="321" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">demographic map only bay Hundred Viet's </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">How did China come to claim an underwater feature over 1500km from Hainan as its ‘southernmost</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">territory’? Answering this question will help us understand how the authorities of the Republic of China</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">came to draw the ‘U-shaped line’ in the South China Sea. In the process we will see how one of the most</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">dangerous territorial disputes in the world today has its origins in early 20th century misunderstandings</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">among Chinese nationalists about Southeast Asia’s history and British maps.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">The James Shoal (<i>Zengmu Ansha </i>in Chinese, <i>Beting Serupai </i>in Malay) lies 22 metres below the surface of the</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">South China Sea. Hydrographic charts clearly demonstrate that the Shoal is not part of China’s</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">continental shelf; wide areas of deep sea separate it from the mainland. There are no grounds under the</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">United Nations’ Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) for any state to claim the James Shoal as</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">‘territory’. It lies more than 12 nautical miles from any coast and is therefore simply part of the seabed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">There are no historic documents showing evidence of Chinese interest in the Shoal and no old Chinese</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">maps marking it. Yet none of these difficulties prevent PLA-Navy ships visiting the Shoal from time to</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">time to assert Chinese sovereignty over it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">The origins of this situation lie in what Chinese commentators call ‘The Century of National Humiliation’</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">and particularly the series of so-called ‘unequal treaties’ between the Qing Dynasty and the colonial</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">powers. One result was a profound anxiety among the Chinese elite about the extent of ‘their’ territory.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">As anti-colonial sentiment gave rise to a ‘national revival’ movement among this elite, agitators and</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">intellectuals formed new understandings about the nature of China itself and its historic relationships with</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Southeast Asia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">These understandings moved from private discussions into state policy as the Qing Dynasty collapsed. In</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">March 1909 Chinese fishermen discovered a Japanese entrepreneur, Nishizawa Yoshiji, and around</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">hundred workers on Pratas Island, a coral reef 400 kilometres southwest of (Japanese-occupied) Taiwan</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">and about 260 kilometres from the Chinese mainland. They were digging up guano to sell as fertiliser.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Nishizawa declared that he had discovered the island and it now belonged to him.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">When news reached Canton (Guangzhou), one group of nationalist agitators, the Self-Government</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Society, launched a boycott of Japanese goods and demanded the Qing authorities do something. The</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">authorities in Tokyo offered to recognise Chinese sovereignty if its claim could be proved. 1 On 12</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">October 1909 the Viceroy of Canton and the Japanese consul in the city agreed that Japan would</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">recognise Chinese sovereignty and Mr Nishizawa would vacate the island in exchange for 130,000 silver</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">dollars in compensation. 2</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">At this time, official Chinese maps (whether national, regional or local) showed Hainan Island as the</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">southernmost point of Chinese territory. This had been the case on maps published in 1760, 1784, 1866</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">and 1897.3 But in May 1909, while the negotiations over Pratas unfolded, the Governor of Guangdong,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Zhang Yen Jun, despatched a boat to the Paracel Islands. According to a contemporary account by a</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">French businessman P.A. Lapique, the expedition (guided by two Germans from the massive trading firm</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Carlowitz and Company) spent two weeks at anchor off Hainan waiting for good weather and then sped</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">to the Paracels on 6 June 1909 before returning to Canton/Guangzhou the following day.4 In the</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">aftermath of the expedition a new map of Guangdong was published showing, for the first time on any</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Chinese map, the Paracel Islands as part of the province. 5</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">After the overthrow of the Qing, one of the first acts by the new republican government was the</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">publication, in 1912 of an official <i>Almanac. </i>The <i>Almanac</i>included an official map of China: a highly</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">unusual map since it showed no borders at all. The new national leadership was avowedly ‘modern’ – it</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">aspired to become part of the international system – but as William Callahan has pointed out, it couldn’t</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">resolve the contradiction between China’s new identity as a nation-state and its old one as the centre of a</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">mandala</span></i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">-based series of hierarchical relationships with the wider region. The first constitution of the</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Republic of China illustrated this perfectly when it asserted that ‘The <i>sovereign territory </i>of the Republic of</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">China continues to be the same as the <i>domain </i>of the former Empire.’ This simple equation of the old</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">‘domain’ with the new ‘sovereign territory’ fundamentally misconstrues the historic relations between</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Chinese dynasties and Southeast Asia and underpins the current disagreement over ‘borders’ in the South</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">China Sea. 6</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">The discussion about the extent of Chinese territory continued among nationalist intellectuals throughout</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">the first half of the 20th Century. Zou Keyuan has shown how, in December 1914, a private cartographer</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Hu Jinjie, published the <i>New Geographical Atlas of the Republic of China </i>containing the first Chinese map to</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">include a line drawn across the South China Sea. Hu entitled the map the ‘Chinese territorial map before</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">the Qianglong-Jiaqing period’. In other words the line purported to represent the extent of Chinese state</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">‘control’ before 1736. Significantly, the only islands within the line were Pratas and the Paracels. It went</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">no further south than 15° N. 7</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">In 1916 the Central Cartographic Society in Shanghai published a ‘Map of National Humiliation’ showing</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">the territories lost to foreigners. Interestingly, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Tonkin were prominently marked</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">but no mention was made of anywhere else in the South China Sea.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">In July 1933, France formally annexed six islands in the Spratly archipelago. It’s clear from contemporary</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">accounts in, for example, the <i>Shen Bao </i>newspaper, that the RoC authorities did not know the location of</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">these islands. They instructed the Chinese consul in Manila, Mr KL Kwong, to ask the American colonial</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">authorities there for a map showing their location. Only then was the government in Nanjing able to</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">understand that these islands were not in the Paracels and then decide not to issue any formal protest.8 A</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">once-secret report for the RoC’s Military Council, from 1 September 1933 seems to confirm this, “All our</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">professional geographers say that Triton Island [in the Paracels] is the southernmost island of our</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">territory.”9 (There are claims by some writers that the Chinese government did issue a formal protest but</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">I have seen no evidence.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">On 7 June 1933, shortly before the French annexation (perhaps as rumours of a French expedition began</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">to circulate), the RoC established the ‘Review Committee for Land and Water Maps’. While the</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">committee deliberated, another private cartographer, Chen Duo, published his <i>Newly-Made Chinese Atlas </i>in</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">which the Chinese sea border stretched down to 7° N – firmly including those Spratly Islands which</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">France had just claimed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">It seems that this influenced the Committee because the first volume of its journal, published in January</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">1935, included Chinese names for 132 features in the South China Sea that the Committee believed</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;"><i></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">rightfully belonged to China. 28 were in the Paracels and 96 in the Spratlys. The list was not a collection</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">of traditional Chinese names for the features but transliterations and translations of the Western names</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">printed on British navigation charts. In the Spratly Islands, for example, North Danger became <i>Be </i></span><i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">̆</span></i><i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">i xia</span></i><i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">̆</span></i><i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">n</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">(the Chinese for ‘north danger’) and Spratly Island became <i>Si-ba-la-tuo </i>(the Chinese transliteration of the</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">English name). In the Paracels, Antelope Reef (named after a British survey vessel) became <i>Líng yang </i>(the</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">Chinese word for antelope) and Money Island (named after William Taylor Money, the Superintendent of</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">the Bombay Marine) became <i>J</i></span><i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">ī</span></i><i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">n yín D</span></i><i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">ǎ</span></i><i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">o </span></i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">(money island).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">But how to translate ‘shoal’? It’s a nautical word meaning an underwater feature. It’s derived from an Old</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">English word for ‘shallow’. But the Committee didn’t seem to understand this obscure term because they</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">translated ‘shoal’ as ‘<i>tan’ </i>- the Chinese word for beach or sandbank – a feature that is usually above water.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">The Committee – never having visited the area seems to have declared James Shoal/<i>Zengmu Tan </i>to be a</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">piece of land and therefore a piece of China.10</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">In April 1935, the Committee published <i>The Map of Chinese Islands in the South China Sea </i>taking the</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">country’s sea border right down to James Shoal, only 107 kilometres from the coast of Borneo.11 Then</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">one of China’s most eminent geographers, Bai Meichu, added his own innovation. Bai had been one of</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">the founders of the China Geographical Society. He was also an ardent nationalist and in 1930 had drawn</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">his own version of the ‘Chinese National Humiliation Map’ to educate his countrymen about how much</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">territory they had lost to foreigners. 12</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">In 1936, at the age of 60, he created his most enduring legacy: a map in his <i>New China Construction Atlas</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">including a U-shaped line snaking around the South China Sea as far south as James Shoal. This was then</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">copied by others. Between 1936 and 1945 versions of the line were published on 26 other maps. Some</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">stretched down to the James Shoal, though most only included the Spratlys. 13</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">In 1947 the Republic’s cartographers revisited the question of China’s ocean frontier. They adopted Bai’s</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">line, formally including would become known as the ‘U-shaped line’ on the country’s map. It seems that</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">they looked at the list of Chinese names, assumed that <i>Zengmu Tan </i>was above water and included it within</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">the line. A non-existent island became the country’s southernmost territory. Only then was the <i>tan</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">redesignated an <i>ansha </i>(reef) – but by then the line had been drawn. Thus it would seem that China’s claim</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">in the South China Sea is, to some extent, based on a translation error.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">END</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06601450641503959947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7383437858640407006.post-77684554841007032612015-03-28T07:06:00.000+07:002015-03-28T07:06:13.425+07:00‘China alone in claims to sea’<h1 class="mst-detail-title" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 30px; line-height: 1.1; margin: 0px 0px 5px;">
<strong style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">By <span class="mst-detail-info-author" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #c92629;">Vito Barcelo</span></strong><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"> </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">| Mar. 27, 2015 at 12:01am</span></h1>
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NO nation in the world recognizes China’s nine-dash claim in the South China Sea and the weakness of its legal base is the reason Beijing is undertaking massive reclamation in disputed waters, according to Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario.</div>
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“It reaffirms the belief that no country in the world recognizes that the nine-dash line is a valid claim on the part of China,” Del Rosario said at a forum of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines.</div>
<figure class="caption" style="box-sizing: border-box; float: right; margin: 1em;"><img alt="" height="434" src="http://manilastandardtoday.com/panel/_files/image/2015_mar27_news3.jpg" style="border: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); box-sizing: border-box; padding: 5px; vertical-align: middle;" width="300" /><figcaption style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #777777; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; margin-top: 8px;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Right is might. Foreign Affairs Secretary<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Albert del Rosario answers questions during a<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />forum of the Foreign Correspondents<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Association of the Philippines in Manila where<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />he stressed that no country in the world<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />recognizes China’s claim in the South China<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />and West Philippine Seas. AFP PHOTO /<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />NOEL CELIS</strong></em></figcaption></figure><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 10px;">
Del Rosario accused China of accelerating its expansionist agenda by changing the size, structure and physical attributes of land features in the South China Sea and have even rammed Filipino vessels in the West Philippine Sea, endangering the lives of fishermen.</div>
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“China is aware it has to engage in a battle of public opinion and shape the narrative in its favor given the weak legal case it is standing on,” Del Rosario said, adding that the Philippines chose to pursue international arbitration “to preserve a valued friendship” with China.</div>
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The DFA chief highlighted the international community’s significant support for the Philippines’ advocacy for a peaceful and rules-based settlement of disputes in accordance with universally recognized principles of international law.</div>
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Del Rosario welcomed the growing international support after United States Senators John McCain, Bob Corker, Jack Reed and Bob Menendez warned that China’s land reclamation and construction in the region could be considered “a direct challenge, not only to the interests of the United States and the region, but to the entire international community.”</div>
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Del Rosario described the US lawmakers view as very helpful, saying it brings into focus with the international community the differences in terms of what is being said and what is happening on the ground.</div>
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“We welcome the statements made and we also welcome the call for a more substantive support and focus on the Asia rebalance strategy of the United States,” he added.</div>
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Del Rosario said a comprehensive US strategy on Chinese reclamation would likewise add an important voice to Manila’s arbitration case against China.</div>
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The Philippines likewise welcomed the Vietnam’s and Indonesia’s stand against China’s continue expansionism in the south China, adding describing it as helpful in terms of promoting the rule of law and in finding peaceful and nonviolent solutions to the South China Sea claims.</div>
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Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has earlier announced that part of China’s claims to almost the entire the South China Sea has no legal basis.</div>
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“The ‘nine-dash line’ that China says marks its maritime border has no basis in any international law,” Jokowi said.</div>
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Vietnam Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Hai Bin said his government told the Permanent Court of Arbitration that Vietnam fully rejected “China’s claim over the Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelagoes and the adjacent waters.”</div>
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China claimed sovereignty over 90% of the water and all the islands in the South China Sea by drawing a nine-dash line covering 90% of that sea, prompting her neighbors to protest that her claim contradicts international law, specifically the 1982 UNCLOS.</div>
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“Even as the Philippines filed arbitral proceedings under Article 287 of UNCLOS, however, China continues to undertake unilateral measures that form part of a pattern of forcing a change in the regional status quo in order to advance and realize its ‘nine-dash line’ claim of undisputed sovereignty over nearly the entire South China Sea,” Del Rosario said.</div>
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“As the arbitration case proceeds, everyone should have a deep appreciation of the case, in the context of our policy on the West Philippine Sea,” he said.</div>
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China backs the level of the resources it has poured on consolidating its presence in the South China Sea with an aggressive public diplomacy campaign, in its domestic public, the region and international community, and – as some of you may have noticed -- even in the Philippine public.</div>
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He said China is aware that it has to engage in the battle of public opinion and shape the narrative in its favor given the weak legal base that its claims are standing on.</div>
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“That said, it is my hope that all Filipinos can work together with us in standing behind our country’s position,” Del Rosario said.</div>
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“Ours is a principled position. The challenge, therefore, is to continue communicating effectively and efficiently our principled position on the West Philippine Sea issue. Even as we face a formidable challenge, we have the law on our side. International law is the great equalizer,” he said.</div>
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Del Rosario expressed confidence that doing the right thing will help the Philippines get what it think is right.</div>
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“We are, moreover, in the right. And right is might, ” Del Rosario concluded.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06601450641503959947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7383437858640407006.post-3039068686642386182015-03-16T08:46:00.000+07:002015-03-16T08:46:53.787+07:00The Coming Chinese Crackup<header class="article_header module" style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; margin: 0px 10px 6px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="zonedModule" data-module-id="8" data-module-name="article.app/lib/module/articleHeadline" data-module-zone="article_header" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
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The endgame of communist rule in China has begun, and Xi Jinping’s ruthless measures are only bringing the country closer to a breaking point</h2>
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<img alt="Chinese President Xi Jinping, front center, and other Chinese leaders attend the opening meeting on Thursday of the third session of the National People’s Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing." data-enlarge="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-HG952_cover_M_20150306105233.jpg" data-in-at4units-src="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-HG952_cover_P_20150306105233.jpg" data-in-base-src="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-HG952_cover_J_20150306105233.jpg" data-intent="" src="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-HG952_cover_J_20150306105233.jpg" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; display: block; left: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 540px;" title="Chinese President Xi Jinping, front center, and other Chinese leaders attend the opening meeting on..." /><span class="image-enlarge" style="background: url(data:image/png; border: 0px; bottom: 10px; cursor: pointer; height: 50px; left: 12px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; text-indent: -9999px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 50px; z-index: 999;">ENLARGE</span></div>
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<span class="wsj-article-caption-content" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Chinese President Xi Jinping, front center, and other Chinese leaders attend the opening meeting on Thursday of the third session of the National People’s Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.</span> <span class="wsj-article-credit" itemprop="creator" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 11px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 2px; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="wsj-article-credit-tag" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 2px; vertical-align: baseline;">PHOTO: </span>XINHUA/ZUMA PRESS</span></div>
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<span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; color: #666666; display: inline-block; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">By</span> <div class="author hasMenu" data-scrim="{"type":"author","header":"David Shambaugh","subhead":"The Wall Street Journal","list":[]}" itemprop="author" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; color: #666666; display: inline-block; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span itemprop="name" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;">DAVID SHAMBAUGH</span></div>
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<time class="timestamp" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; color: #666666; display: block; font-family: 'Whitney SSm', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 2.2rem; margin: 0px 0px 4px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">March 6, 2015 11:26 a.m. ET</time><div class="comments-count-container" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; display: inline-block; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; right: 0px; top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
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On Thursday, the National People’s Congress convened in Beijing in what has become a familiar annual ritual. Some 3,000 “elected” delegates from all over the country—ranging from colorfully clad ethnic minorities to urbane billionaires—will meet for a week to discuss the state of the nation and to engage in the pretense of political participation.</div>
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Some see this impressive gathering as a sign of the strength of the Chinese political system—but it masks serious weaknesses. Chinese politics has always had a theatrical veneer, with staged events like the congress intended to project the power and stability of the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP. Officials and citizens alike know that they are supposed to conform to these rituals, participating cheerfully and parroting back official slogans. This behavior is known in Chinese as<em style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> biaotai,</em> “declaring where one stands,” but it is little more than an act of symbolic compliance.</div>
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Despite appearances, China’s political system is badly broken, and nobody knows it better than the Communist Party itself. China’s strongman leader,<a href="http://topics.wsj.com/person/J/Xi-Jinping/6475" style="background: 0px 0px; color: #0080c3; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Xi Jinping</a>, is hoping that a crackdown on dissent and corruption will shore up the party’s rule. He is determined to avoid becoming theMikhail Gorbachev of China, presiding over the party’s collapse. But instead of being the antithesis of Mr. Gorbachev, Mr. Xi may well wind up having the same effect. His despotism is severely stressing China’s system and society—and bringing it closer to a breaking point.</div>
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Predicting the demise of authoritarian regimes is a risky business. Few Western experts forecast the collapse of the Soviet Union before it occurred in 1991; the CIA missed it entirely. The downfall of Eastern Europe’s communist states two years earlier was similarly scorned as the wishful thinking of anticommunists—until it happened. The post-Soviet “color revolutions” in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan from 2003 to 2005, as well as the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, all burst forth unanticipated.</div>
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<img alt="The Gate of Heavenly Peace in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, the site of pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989." data-enlarge="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/RV-AP781_CHINA__M_20150306183250.jpg" data-in-at4units-src="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/RV-AP781_CHINA__P_20150306183250.jpg" data-in-base-src="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/RV-AP781_CHINA__P_20150306183250.jpg" data-intent="" src="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/RV-AP781_CHINA__P_20150306183250.jpg" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; display: block; left: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 300px;" title="The Gate of Heavenly Peace in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, the site of pro-democracy demonstrations in..." /><span class="image-enlarge" style="background: url(data:image/png; border: 0px; bottom: 10px; cursor: pointer; height: 50px; left: 12px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; text-indent: -9999px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 50px; z-index: 999;">ENLARGE</span></div>
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<span class="wsj-article-caption-content" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Gate of Heavenly Peace in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, the site of pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989.</span> <span class="wsj-article-credit" itemprop="creator" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 11px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 2px; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="wsj-article-credit-tag" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 2px; vertical-align: baseline;">PHOTO: </span>NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC/GETTY IMAGES</span></div>
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China-watchers have been on high alert for telltale signs of regime decay and decline ever since the regime’s <a class="icon none" href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124394384728776431" style="background: 0px 0px / 30px 30px no-repeat; color: #0080c3; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_self">near-death experience in Tiananmen Square in 1989</a>. Since then, several seasoned Sinologists have risked their professional reputations by asserting that the collapse of CCP rule was inevitable. Others were more cautious—myself included. But times change in China, and so must our analyses.</div>
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The endgame of Chinese communist rule has now begun, I believe, and it has progressed further than many think. We don’t know what the pathway from now until the end will look like, of course. It will probably be highly unstable and unsettled. But until the system begins to unravel in some obvious way, those inside of it will play along—thus contributing to the facade of stability.</div>
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Communist rule in China is unlikely to end quietly. A single event is unlikely to trigger a peaceful implosion of the regime. Its demise is likely to be protracted, messy and violent. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that Mr. Xi will be deposed in a power struggle or coup d’état. With his aggressive anticorruption campaign—a focus of this week’s National People’s Congress—he is overplaying a weak hand and deeply aggravating key party, state, military and commercial constituencies.</div>
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The Chinese have a proverb, <em style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">waiying, neiruan</em>—hard on the outside, soft on the inside. Mr. Xi is a genuinely tough ruler. He exudes conviction and personal confidence. But this hard personality belies a party and political system that is extremely fragile on the inside.</div>
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Consider five telling indications of the regime’s vulnerability and the party’s systemic weaknesses.</div>
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<img alt="A military band conductor during the opening session of the National People’s Congress on Thursday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing." data-enlarge="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-HG956_cover_M_20150306105731.jpg" data-in-at4units-src="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-HG956_cover_P_20150306105731.jpg" data-in-base-src="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-HG956_cover_M_20150306105731.jpg" data-intent="" src="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-HG956_cover_M_20150306105731.jpg" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; display: block; left: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 940px;" title="A military band conductor during the opening session of the National People’s Congress on Thursday..." /><span class="image-enlarge" style="background: url(data:image/png; border: 0px; bottom: 10px; cursor: pointer; height: 50px; left: 12px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; text-indent: -9999px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 50px; z-index: 999;">ENLARGE</span></div>
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<span class="wsj-article-caption-content" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A military band conductor during the opening session of the National People’s Congress on Thursday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.</span><span class="wsj-article-credit" itemprop="creator" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 11px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 2px; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="wsj-article-credit-tag" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 2px; vertical-align: baseline;">PHOTO: </span>ASSOCIATED PRESS</span></div>
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First, China’s economic elites have one foot out the door, and they are ready to flee en masse if the system really begins to crumble. In 2014, Shanghai’s Hurun Research Institute, which studies China’s wealthy, found that 64% of the “high net worth individuals” whom it polled—393 millionaires and billionaires—were either emigrating or planning to do so. Rich Chinese are sending their children to study abroad in record numbers (in itself, an indictment of the quality of the Chinese higher-education system).</div>
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<a class="icon none" href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/us-agents-raid-alleged-maternity-tourism-anchor-baby-businesses-catering-to-chinese-1425404456" style="background: 0px 0px / 30px 30px no-repeat; color: #0080c3; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_self">Just this week, the Journal reported</a>, federal agents searched several Southern California locations that U.S. authorities allege are linked to “multimillion-dollar birth-tourism businesses that enabled thousands of Chinese women to travel here and return home with infants born as U.S. citizens.” Wealthy Chinese are also buying property abroad at record levels and prices, and they are parking their financial assets overseas, often in well-shielded tax havens and shell companies.</div>
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Meanwhile, Beijing is trying to extradite back to China a large number of alleged financial fugitives living abroad. When a country’s elites—many of them party members—flee in such large numbers, it is a telling sign of lack of confidence in the regime and the country’s future.</div>
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Second, since taking office in 2012, Mr. Xi has greatly intensified the political repression that has blanketed China since 2009. The targets include the press, social media, film, arts and literature, religious groups, the Internet, intellectuals, Tibetans and Uighurs, dissidents, lawyers, NGOs, university students and textbooks. The Central Committee sent a draconian order known as Document No. 9 down through the party hierarchy in 2013, ordering all units to ferret out any seeming endorsement of the West’s “universal values”—including constitutional democracy, civil society, a free press and neoliberal economics.</div>
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A more secure and confident government would not institute such a severe crackdown. It is a symptom of the party leadership’s deep anxiety and insecurity.</div>
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<img alt="A protester is pushed to the ground by a paramilitary policeman March 5, 2014, in Beijing before the opening of the National People’s Congress nearby." data-enlarge="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/RV-AP780_CHINA__M_20150306183139.jpg" data-in-at4units-src="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/RV-AP780_CHINA__P_20150306183139.jpg" data-in-base-src="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/RV-AP780_CHINA__P_20150306183139.jpg" data-intent="" src="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/RV-AP780_CHINA__P_20150306183139.jpg" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; display: block; left: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 540px;" title="A protester is pushed to the ground by a paramilitary policeman March 5, 2014, in..." /><span class="image-enlarge" style="background: url(data:image/png; border: 0px; bottom: 10px; cursor: pointer; height: 50px; left: 12px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; text-indent: -9999px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 50px; z-index: 999;">ENLARGE</span></div>
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<span class="wsj-article-caption-content" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A protester is pushed to the ground by a paramilitary policeman March 5, 2014, in Beijing before the opening of the National People’s Congress nearby.</span> <span class="wsj-article-credit" itemprop="creator" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 11px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 2px; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="wsj-article-credit-tag" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 2px; vertical-align: baseline;">PHOTO:</span>ASSOCIATED PRESS</span></div>
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Third, even many regime loyalists are just going through the motions. It is hard to miss the theater of false pretense that has permeated the Chinese body politic for the past few years. Last summer, I was one of a handful of foreigners (and the only American) who attended a conference about the “China Dream,” Mr. Xi’s signature concept, at a party-affiliated think tank in Beijing. We sat through two days of mind-numbing, nonstop presentations by two dozen party scholars—but their faces were frozen, their body language was wooden, and their boredom was palpable. They feigned compliance with the party and <a class="icon none" href="http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015/02/25/a-guide-to-chinas-new-normal-of-slogans-and-cliches" style="background: 0px 0px / 30px 30px no-repeat; color: #0080c3; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_self">their leader’s latest mantra</a>. But it was evident that the propaganda had lost its power, and the emperor had no clothes.</div>
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In December, I was back in Beijing for a conference at the Central Party School, the party’s highest institution of doctrinal instruction, and once again, the country’s top officials and foreign policy experts recited their stock slogans verbatim. During lunch one day, I went to the campus bookstore—always an important stop so that I can update myself on what China’s leading cadres are being taught. Tomes on the store’s shelves ranged from Lenin’s “Selected Works” to Condoleezza Rice’s memoirs, and a table at the entrance was piled high with copies of a pamphlet by Mr. Xi on his campaign to promote the “mass line”—that is, the party’s connection to the masses. “How is this selling?” I asked the clerk. “Oh, it’s not,” she replied. “We give it away.” The size of the stack suggested it was hardly a hot item.</div>
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Fourth, the corruption that riddles the party-state and the military also pervades Chinese society as a whole. Mr. Xi’s anticorruption campaign is more sustained and severe than any previous one, but no campaign can eliminate the problem. It is stubbornly rooted in the single-party system, patron-client networks, an economy utterly lacking in transparency, a state-controlled media and the absence of the rule of law.</div>
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Moreover, Mr. Xi’s campaign is turning out to be at least as much <a class="icon none" href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-anticorruption-campaign-targets-party-cliques-1425335633?tesla=y" style="background: 0px 0px / 30px 30px no-repeat; color: #0080c3; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_self">a selective purge </a>as an antigraft campaign. Many of its targets to date have been political clients and allies of former Chinese leader <a href="http://topics.wsj.com/person/Z/Jiang-Zemin/7146" style="background: 0px 0px; color: #0080c3; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Jiang Zemin</a>. Now 88, Mr. Jiang is still the godfather figure of Chinese politics. Going after Mr. Jiang’s patronage network while he is still alive is highly risky for Mr. Xi, particularly since Mr. Xi doesn’t seem to have brought along his own coterie of loyal clients to promote into positions of power. Another problem: Mr. Xi, a child of China’s first-generation revolutionary elites, is one of the party’s “princelings,” and his political ties largely extend to other princelings. This silver-spoon generation is widely reviled in Chinese society at large.</div>
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<img alt="Mr. Xi at the Schloss Bellevue presidential residency during his visit to fellow export powerhouse Germany in Berlin on March 28, 2014." data-enlarge="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-HG954_cover_M_20150306105515.jpg" data-in-at4units-src="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-HG954_cover_P_20150306105515.jpg" data-in-base-src="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-HG954_cover_P_20150306105515.jpg" data-intent="" src="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-HG954_cover_P_20150306105515.jpg" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; display: block; left: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 540px;" title="Mr. Xi at the Schloss Bellevue presidential residency during his visit to fellow export powerhouse..." /><span class="image-enlarge" style="background: url(data:image/png; border: 0px; bottom: 10px; cursor: pointer; height: 50px; left: 12px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; text-indent: -9999px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 50px; z-index: 999;">ENLARGE</span></div>
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<span class="wsj-article-caption-content" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mr. Xi at the Schloss Bellevue presidential residency during his visit to fellow export powerhouse Germany in Berlin on March 28, 2014.</span> <span class="wsj-article-credit" itemprop="creator" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 11px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 2px; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="wsj-article-credit-tag" style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 2px; vertical-align: baseline;">PHOTO: </span>AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES</span></div>
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Finally, <a class="icon none" href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-gdp-growth-is-slowest-in-24-years-1421719453" style="background: 0px 0px / 30px 30px no-repeat; color: #0080c3; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_self">China’s economy</a>—for all the Western views of it as an unstoppable juggernaut—is stuck in a series of systemic traps from which there is no easy exit. In November 2013, Mr. Xi presided over the party’s Third Plenum, which unveiled a huge package of proposed economic reforms, but so far, they are sputtering on the launchpad. Yes, consumer spending has been rising, red tape has been reduced, and some fiscal reforms have been introduced, but overall, Mr. Xi’s ambitious goals have been stillborn. The reform package challenges powerful, deeply entrenched interest groups—such as state-owned enterprises and local party cadres—and they are plainly blocking its implementation.</div>
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These five increasingly evident cracks in the regime’s control can be fixed only through political reform. Until and unless China relaxes its draconian political controls, it will never become an innovative society and a “knowledge economy”—a main goal of the Third Plenum reforms. The political system has become the primary impediment to China’s needed social and economic reforms. If Mr. Xi and party leaders don’t relax their grip, they may be summoning precisely the fate they hope to avoid.</div>
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In the decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the upper reaches of China’s leadership have been obsessed with the fall of its fellow communist giant. Hundreds of <a class="icon none" href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303755504579207070196382560" style="background: 0px 0px / 30px 30px no-repeat; color: #0080c3; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_self">Chinese postmortem analyses</a>have dissected the causes of the Soviet disintegration.</div>
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Mr. Xi’s real “China Dream” has been to avoid the Soviet nightmare. Just a few months into his tenure, he gave a telling internal speech ruing the Soviet Union’s demise and bemoaning Mr. Gorbachev’s betrayals, arguing that Moscow had lacked a “real man” to stand up to its reformist last leader. Mr. Xi’s wave of repression today is meant to be the opposite of Mr. Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost. Instead of opening up, Mr. Xi is doubling down on controls over dissenters, the economy and even rivals within the party.</div>
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But reaction and repression aren’t Mr. Xi’s only option. His predecessors, Jiang Zemin and <a href="http://topics.wsj.com/person/J/Hu-Jintao/5422" style="background: 0px 0px; color: #0080c3; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Hu Jintao</a>, drew very different lessons from the Soviet collapse. From 2000 to 2008, they instituted policies intended to open up the system with carefully limited political reforms.</div>
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MORE SATURDAY ESSAYS</h4>
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They strengthened local party committees and experimented with voting for multicandidate party secretaries. They recruited more businesspeople and intellectuals into the party. They expanded party consultation with nonparty groups and made the Politburo’s proceedings more transparent. They improved feedback mechanisms within the party, implemented more meritocratic criteria for evaluation and promotion, and created a system of mandatory midcareer training for all 45 million state and party cadres. They enforced retirement requirements and rotated officials and military officers between job assignments every couple of years.</div>
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In effect, for a while Mr. Jiang and Mr. Hu sought to manage change, not to resist it. But Mr. Xi wants none of this. Since 2009 (when even the heretofore open-minded Mr. Hu changed course and started to clamp down), an increasingly anxious regime has rolled back every single one of these political reforms (with the exception of the cadre-training system). These reforms were masterminded by Mr. Jiang’s political acolyte and former vice president, Zeng Qinghong,who retired in 2008 and is now under suspicion in Mr. Xi’s anticorruption campaign—another symbol of Mr. Xi’s hostility to the measures that might ease the ills of a crumbling system.</div>
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Some experts think that Mr. Xi’s harsh tactics may actually presage a more open and reformist direction later in his term. I don’t buy it. This leader and regime see politics in zero-sum terms: Relaxing control, in their view, is a sure step toward the demise of the system and their own downfall. They also take the conspiratorial view that the U.S. is actively working to subvert Communist Party rule. None of this suggests that sweeping reforms are just around the corner.</div>
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We cannot predict when Chinese communism will collapse, but it is hard not to conclude that we are witnessing its final phase. The CCP is the world’s second-longest ruling regime (behind only North Korea), and no party can rule forever.</div>
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Looking ahead, China-watchers should keep their eyes on the regime’s instruments of control and on those assigned to use those instruments. Large numbers of citizens and party members alike are already voting with their feet and leaving the country or displaying their insincerity by pretending to comply with party dictates.</div>
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We should watch for the day when the regime’s propaganda agents and its internal security apparatus start becoming lax in enforcing the party’s writ—or when they begin to identify with dissidents, like the East German Stasi agent in <a class="icon none" href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB117098557826003157" style="background: 0px 0px / 30px 30px no-repeat; color: #0080c3; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_self">the film “The Lives of Others”</a> who came to sympathize with the targets of his spying. When human empathy starts to win out over ossified authority, the endgame of Chinese communism will really have begun.</div>
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<em style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Dr. Shambaugh is a professor of international affairs and the director of the China Policy Program at George Washington University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. His books include “China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation” and, most recently, “China Goes Global: The Partial Power.”</em></div>
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<span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Corrections & Amplifications: </span><br />A photo shows a protester in Beijing being pushed to the ground by a Chinese paramilitary policeman before the opening of the National People’s Congress in March 2014. An earlier version of this article contained a photo caption that incorrectly said the incident was this month. (March 9, 2015)</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06601450641503959947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7383437858640407006.post-45654555291895633192015-03-15T15:11:00.000+07:002015-03-15T15:11:28.584+07:00China’s territorial line lacks legal foundation, says expert<div class="middle-top" style="box-sizing: border-box;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">Feb 4, 2015 By </span><a href="http://www.vietmaz.com/author/dtinews/" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">DTINEWS</a></div>
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“China’s nine-dash (territorial) line is ambiguous and is open to various interpretations. It is in China’s interest to keep matters this way. Historical evidence and international law support the view that the nine-dash line is unsustainable and has no legal foundation”.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://static.vietmaz.com/files/2015/02/760305-1-b3b81.jpg" style="clear: left; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img height="320" src="http://static.vietmaz.com/files/2015/02/760305-1-b3b81.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: justify;">Professor Carl Thayer</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">So says Professor Carl Thayer, a leading expert on Southeast Asia at the Australian Defence Forces Academy, who was talking to reporters about maritime disputes in the South China Sea at the International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ) last week.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Here are some of the questions posed to him by Vietnamese journalists and his answer, as selected by DTI:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Vietnam has shown historical evidence to support for its territorial claim for the Paracel and Spratly islands, but China has occupied the Paracels and is reaching to the Spratlys. What’s your opinion about the so-called nine-dash line?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Paracel and Spratly archipelagos present two sets of different issues. Under contemporary international law great weight is given to evidence of continuous occupation and administration in territorial and sovereignty claims. Vietnam’s claims to the Paracels are strong because of the Hoang Sa Brigade (Doi Hoang Sa) and French rule when the Kingdom of An Nam was a protectorate. Vietnam’s claims to several of the islands and features are even stronger because they were acquired by China by aggressive force in January 1974.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Vietnam’s claim to the Spratlys has a sound historical basis and Vietnam’s occupation and administration has been established.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">China’s nine-dash line is ambiguous and open to various interpretations. It is in China’s interest to keep matters this way. Historical evidence and international law supportthe view that the nine-dash line is unsustainable and has no legal foundation. The People’s Republic of China modified the Republic of China’s original 11-dash line map of 1947/1948. China has also published maps showing the nine-dash line that are inconsistent. Finally, China’s claim that James Shoal near Malaysia is China’s most distant land is absurd. James Shoal is 20 or more metres underwater. China’s claims is based on a translation error.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">You said in late November that tensions in the East and South China Sea should remain low for perhaps six months. Do you think China is now satisfied with the situation in South China Sea?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It is clear that China reassessed its tactics last year in the South China Sea. China suffered damage to its prestige and witnessed a rise in concern by regional states. China is now quietly consolidating its presence in the South China Sea through land reclamation, an increased presence of fishing fleets and larger mother ships, larger Coast Guard vessels and more military exercises by the People’s Liberation Army Navy. At the same time, China is advancing a larger agenda through its proposals for land and maritime “Silk Roads”. Time appears to be on China’s side. China must “neutralise” Asean; that is, keep it from aligning with the United States and Japan. China has close relations with Malaysia, this year’s Asean Chair.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Malaysia prefers to keep South China Sea disputes quiet. This will suit China. China will react when it perceives that its interests are threatened. So far, the Philippines has adopted a low-key approach to its dispute with China so as not to jeopardise its claim to the Arbitral Tribunal. This also suits China.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This leads me to believe that all will be quiet on the South China Sea front this year.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">What do you think China’s next move will be?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">China will keep on with land reclamation. It will continue to urge its fishermen to push south in to the EEZs (exclusive economic zones) of other littoral states. China maritime enforcement ships will intervene to protect the fishermen. China will conduct more frequent and larger military exercises. In short, it will be business as usual for China.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">How likely is it that China will establish an air defense identification zone in the South China Sea to support its sovereignty claims, and what would such a move mean for nations with interests in the sea, including Vietnam and the United States?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">China does not yet possess the means to enforce an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the South China Sea. It could do so over the Paracel Islands because it has air force planes based on Hainan Island. At present and in the near-term future China cannot enforce an ADIZ over the southern reaches of the South China Sea, even with its present land reclamation and construction activities. If China’s ADIZ interfered with internationally recognised air routes, the United States would deliberately fly through the zone to uphold international law. China has not interfered with US planes that pass through its ADIZ in Northeast Asia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">What are the chances for the Asean bloc and China to achieve a code of conduct this year under Malaysia’s chairmanship to defuse sea tensions and ensure peace, stability and freedom of navigation in the South China Sea?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">There is little prospect for Asean and China reaching final agreement on a binding code of conduct (COC) for the South China Sea this year. China has insisted that the implementation of the Declaration on Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) be implemented first. Although a number of working groups have been set up under the DOC, and China has made funding available, not one confidence-building project has been approved. So far the Asean-China consultations have agreed only on the structure and general form of the COC. Specific details remain to be worked out. Thailand, as Asean’s country co-ordinator for relations with China, increased the number of working group meetings last year. This is a positive development. However, ASEAN wants a binding COC. It is unlikely that China will agree to a COC with treaty status.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">People say the role and the voice of Asean doesn’t have much power against China’s claims of the nine-dash line. What’s your opinion?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Last year, during the HD 981 crisis, Asean foreign ministers issued a stand-alone statement expressing their concern. Although this statement did not mention China, it was the first time that Asean has expressed a view on tensions arising from the China-Vietnam dispute over the Paracels and surrounding waters. In this case, this had an impact on China for two reasons. It indicated Asean unity, and because (of that) it provided a basis for the US, Japan, Australia and other countries to support Asean. Having said this, Asean as a body is not a direct party to the South China Sea disputes. Asean has its limitations. It must function by consensus. Asean is, at best, a diplomatic community and can only exert political influence on China. This is a necessary condition to resolve the South China Sea disputes, but it is not sufficient.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In the escalation of territorial disputes in the East Sea (South China Sea), Asean wants to speed up the code of conduct with China to make it an effective tool to maintain peace in the East Sea. However, China has tried to delay and hinder the realisation of the COC and push the negotiation to a stalemate. What is the solution to breaking this stalemate?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Asean and China agreed to move forward on the basis of consensus. This provision was included in the 2002 Declaration on Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC). This makes is very difficult for Asean to speed up consultations on a code of conduct if China is unwilling. China, however, has shown a willingness to respond to Asean’s concerns. Asean must maintain unity and the current Asean Chair must continually press China to hurry up the speed of talks. Asean foreign ministers and government leaders can also use their annual ministerial and summit meetings to add pressure. Asean needs to set out a road map and a check list showing what progress has been made.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">What are your comments on the role and statement of Vietnamese scholars in international conferences and forums on topics related to the East Sea dispute? What are the strengths and weaknesses of their research?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Over the last four years I have attended an average of 16 international conferences each year; most focus on the South China Sea. The Vietnamese participants invariably hail from the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam. They are the elite of the elite. They are well trained and fluent in English. They conduct primary research and are well informed. I hold them in highest respect. There are also Vietnamese scholars who are studying abroad who participate. They are committed to legal and historical research on the South China Sea and they are collectively an impressive group. One great strength of Vietnamese scholars is their originality when writing opinion editorial pieces in the foreign press. I value highly their responses to Chinese opinion writers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">If I detect any weaknesses it is that Vietnam needs more scholars fluent in Chinese language who have access to Chinese language sources. Vietnam should issues a comprehensive White Paper on the South China Sea setting out the legal argument for Vietnam’s claims to both the Paracel and Spratly archipelagos.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06601450641503959947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7383437858640407006.post-60905593719400412852015-01-17T18:24:00.001+07:002015-01-17T18:24:40.242+07:00East Sea: Are artificial islands more dangerous than oil rigs?<div class="content-title pdb10" style="background-color: white; color: #85001d; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; text-align: justify;">
<em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">VietNamNet Bridge – Though it is slow and difficult to identify, China’s strategy of building artificial islands in the South China Sea (Bien Dong Sea – East Sea) is dangerous because of its strategic value and the ability to change face that benefits China once the island chain is fully developed .</em></div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The "abrasive" move and China's long-term attempt</strong></div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><img alt="East Sea, China, artificial islands" src="http://img.cdn2.vietnamnet.vn/Images/english/2015/01/09/16/20150109163659-1.jpg" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" title="East Sea, China, artificial islands" width="600" /></strong></div>
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<em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">China conducts illegal construction activities on Gac Ma (Johnson South Reef) of the Truong Sa Archipelago (Spratly Islands) of Vietnam. Photo: Armed Forces of the Philippines/BBC.</em></div>
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<b>China’s East Sea policy has a clear delineation between short term and long term.</b></div>
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The strategy to maintain a continuous presence in the undisputed waters to gradually turn them into disputed areas has been resolutely pursued by Beijing. The 981 oil rig incident is a typical example. China used this oil rig as a "mobile sovereignty landmark " to maintain its presence in the undisputed waters, even in the areas that are completely within the exclusive economic zone of its neighboring countries.</div>
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The objective of turning from "no dispute" to "dispute", from "theirs" to "ours", have been implemented in accordance with the motto of the Chinese people, "What is mine is mine, what's yours, we can negotiate."</div>
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Along with that move, China’s strengthening and expansion of the construction of artificial islands has shown their long-term strategic calculations in the East Sea. The 981 oil rig is a pretty risky move, but it is substantially easier to manage and attract the support of the international community for a small country like Vietnam. Meanwhile, though it takes place slowly and is difficult to identify, the artificial island building strategy is more dangerous.</div>
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Another way to evaluate China’s East Sea strategy is through changes of targets in certain stages. These are intentional changes. We will see the same thing when considering China's maritime strategy from 2009 to present. For example, how could China say that the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) - signed in 2002 and the guidelines for implementing the DOC signed in 2011 – would be the lodestar navigation of the parties, when the use of force is still a key tool in Beijing's policy.</div>
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Currently, what we can see most clearly in China's steps are the consistency of the overall goal to increase the ability to control the entire East Sea. What is not clear is the specific objectives and tasks that every single department of China will perform.</div>
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This is considered the main difficulty, because Vietnam in particular and more broadly, the ASEAN countries and the international community in general, will find it difficult to know in detail what the Chinese agencies in charge of the East Sea will do what, when and where.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Keep calm</strong></div>
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Therefore, Vietnam should not be so focused on predicting the short-term and specific goals of China, but on learning about the nature and long-term strategy of China.</div>
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Vietnam should probably determine the correct perspective and develop a comprehensive strategy for the East Sea before going into each small act of China. From there, from the overall view, Vietnam can build detailed objectives and plans for each phase.</div>
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This raises the need to focus on building a long-term and overall strategy to deal with the long-term goal of China. A sound strategy with clear objectives and specific division of tasks will help ensure efficient utilization of resources within and outside the country, thereby creating advantages in the field and on the negotiating table. Without an overall strategy, Vietnam will be unable to cope with the inconsistent statements and actions of China.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Luc Minh Tuan - Vu Thanh Cong</em></strong></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06601450641503959947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7383437858640407006.post-81887903593911341492015-01-15T13:08:00.000+07:002015-01-15T13:08:05.358+07:00CHINA’S ‘NINE-DASH LINE’ CLAIM: US MISUNDERSTANDS – ANALYSIS<div class="post-featured-image" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #2b2b2b; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">By </em><span style="background-color: transparent; text-align: justify;">By Ye Qiang and Jiang Zongqiang* / </span><em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">RSIS- EAURASIA 14/1/2015</em></div>
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China claims to South China Sea</div>
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The US Department of State’s Paper on China’s Maritime Claims in the South China Sea was published on 5 December 2014. It has confused China’s “dash-line” claim.</div>
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China’s controversial “nine-dash line” claim in the South China Sea has triggered long-running misunderstanding in the United States government due to its perennial anxiety and repeated cross-examinations. This misunderstanding basically originates from the different thoughts over territorial and maritime legal matters between China and the West.</div>
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This has been reflected in the recent US DoS Paper on China’s Maritime Claims in the South China Sea, put out by the Department of State, which focuses on the coordinates of the dashes, and on the terminologies regarding the maritime laws and Notes Verbales of China, and comes to confusing conclusions.</div>
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The localised dimension</div>
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However, the US government ignored the inconvenient truth that the “dash-line” should not be seen as stricto sensu – that is, in the strict sense – a frontier in the Chinese context of the 1940s. That means it would be pointless to interpret the implications of the line from the perspective of modern international law. Therefore, any research, in the first place, should be confined to the localisation context of China; and the direction of end-point should go down the path of globalisation. These are two inseparable dimensions to understand China’s “dash-line” claim.</div>
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The localisation context refers to the Chinese traditional territorial and maritime legal thought in and before the 1930s and 1940s. In traditional Chinese thought, oceans cannot be monopolised by anyone and are open to all countries and peoples. Before the 20th century, China had never claimed any maritime sovereignty. This was unlike what the West did.</div>
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From the 13th century onwards, European countries have been embroiled in an increasingly fierce race for influence at sea. These countries imposed taxes and levies, and prohibited foreigners from fishing and sailing in the maritime zones they controlled, which broke the established maritime order. This situation was obviously not conducive to the interests of the Dutch, which was a maritime trading power at that time.</div>
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As a result, the Dutch jurist Grotius published The Mare Liberum in 1609, proposing the famous notion of the freedom of the seas. But Grotius was refuted and attacked by many British scholars headed by John Selden, who published The Mare Clausum in a bid to defend maritime sovereignty. Selden’s ideas prevailed in the 17th century, and European countries actively embarked on the policy of maritime sovereignty.</div>
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In the centuries-long debate about oceans, China has always maintained an open maritime policy. For the last thousands of years, China has been conducting economic activities, such as fishing, in the South China Sea, and has been living in peace with neighbouring countries in the process of developing and utilising oceans.</div>
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More than two thousand years ago, China opened up a maritime silk road and shared the prosperity of maritime trade with West Asian and European countries. Even in the Ming Dynasty, when Zheng He’s fleet pushed China’s navigation achievement to the peak, China never controlled sea lanes or impaired the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.</div>
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What did the “dash-line” of the 1940s enclose?</div>
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In the second half of the 17th century, the principle of freedom of the seas was generally espoused, which was actually inseparable from the need of European countries to expand global trade and open up overseas market. When the vessels of all countries enjoyed the freedom of navigation across the world’s high seas, China still viewed land as the pillar of its economy and coastal defence remained lacking. Since the late Qing Dynasty, China has always been a victim in terms of the idea of territorial sovereignty, including the insular features.</div>
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After the middle of the 20th century, China gradually achieved national liberation and independence, and was able to take part in the international affairs as an equal actor. After the Second World War, China gradually recovered the lost sovereign rights and maintained its jurisdiction over major insular features in the South China Sea.</div>
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Therefore, it is easy to understand that, in February 1948, the Chinese government released a Map of the Location of South China Sea Islands, with the main purpose of clarifying China’s inherent territorial sovereignty under the post-war international order. Therefore, when publicising the map with the “dash-line”, China claimed the sovereignty over all the insular features rather than the maritime jurisdiction.</div>
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The globalisation dimension</div>
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The path of globalisation indicates that, according to modern law of the sea, China is entitled to maritime jurisdiction in certain maritime zones in light of Chinese sovereignty. That is the reason why China claims “sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea and the adjacent waters” and “sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the relevant waters as well as the seabed and subsoil thereof” in the 2009 Notes Verbales.</div>
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Ironically, these maritime rights and jurisdictions are not created by China. These new concepts originate from Western-dominated law of the sea. China has claimed and exercised maritime jurisdiction in light of the four conventions established in 1958 during the first United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea and the 1982 UNCLOS. The maritime jurisdiction currently claimed by China follows the claims and practice of the international community, especially Western countries, and has never gone beyond the mainstream of the international community.</div>
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In addition, it refers to the development and evolution of the principles and rules of modern law of the sea. For example, the free sea is a relative idea. Along with the progress of the times, acts at sea are bound to meet with more and more regulations. This helps to promote maritime safety and sustainable development, conforms to the principle of balance between generations, and serves the common interests of mankind. This is especially true in the enclosed and semi-enclosed seas.</div>
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Therefore, China believes, on the one hand, that it enjoys all kinds of rights provided for in the Law of the Sea Convention as well as the customary international law within the “dash-line” other than the territorial sovereignty over insular features. On the other hand, it has been carefully evaluating whether or not to exercise each specific right, and the scope of the rights as well as the manner to exercise.</div>
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These are the reasons why China has not yet clarified the title of rights within the “dash-line”, and has not yet claimed specific maritime rights through an accurate frontier composed of coordinate points.</div>
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* Ye Qiang and Jiang Zong-qiang are Research Fellows at the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, China. They contributed this specially to RSIS Commentary.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06601450641503959947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7383437858640407006.post-83673584943950166762014-12-15T20:34:00.003+07:002014-12-15T20:34:39.589+07:00PLA deploys frigate to S China Sea<div class="article-header" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18.2000007629395px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
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<img alt="The photo of the confrontation between the Cangzhou, left and the Dinh Tien Hoang on the Johnson South Reef released on the Chinese website. (Internet photo)" class="photo" src="http://www.wantchinatimes.com/newsphoto/2014-12-13/450/20141213000088.jpg" style="border-width: 0px; display: block; height: auto; width: 459px;" title="The photo of the confrontation between the Cangzhou, left and the Dinh Tien Hoang on the Johnson South Reef released on the Chinese website. (Internet photo)" /><br />
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The photo of the confrontation between the Cangzhou, left and the Dinh Tien Hoang on the Johnson South Reef released on the Chinese website. (Internet photo)</div>
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The map of disputed islands over South China Sea. (File photo/CNA)</div>
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A Type 053 guided-missile frigate missile was deployed to the waters of Johnson South Reef last month to defend China's land reclamation project in the area from Vietnamese warships according to our sister newspaper Want Daily, citing a photo recently released on a Chinese internet forum.</div>
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The Forum of South China Sea Studies, an online message board based in mainland China released a photo on Dec. 11 which shows the standoff between Chinese and Vietnamese warships near the Johnson South Reef. Apparently, the Chinese warship in the picture is the Cangzhou, a Type 053 guided missile frigate. It was sent to the disputed waters to confront the Dinh Tien Hoang, a Vietnamese Gepard-class stealth frigate in the waters of Johnson South Reef.</div>
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The Dinh Tien Hoang and its sister ship, the Ly Thai To had just completed their visit to Indonesia, Brunei and the Philippines. Under the leadership of Nguyen Van Kiem, the deputy chief of staff of the Vietnamese navy, both Gepard-class stealth frigates arrived at the Southwest Cay of the Spratly islands currently under Vietnamese control to entertain the troops on the islet. Officials from the Vietnamese government said that the visit was not aimed to provoke China.</div>
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However, the picture released by the Forum of South China Sea Studies suggests that the Dinh Tien Hoang was sent to the waters of Johnson South Reef to monitor the Chinese land reclamation program in the area. The Cangzhou was apparently sent to Johnson South Reef to defend its workers there according to Want Daily. Once China constructs a 2,000-kilometer runway on the Johnson South Reef, its fighters such as the Su-30, the J-10 and the J-11 can attack all targets in the region of the Strait of Malacca.</div>
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When China completes its land reclamation programs on Gaven Reef, Johnson South Reef, Cuarteron Reef and Hughes Reef, a new forward operation base will allow the People's Liberation Army to project its power into the region. This new base is 830 km from Ho Chi Minh City, 890 km from Manila, 490 km from Western Malaysia, 1,500 km from Kuala Lumpur and 1,500 km from the Strait of Malacca.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06601450641503959947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7383437858640407006.post-45819560749546996562014-12-13T16:52:00.001+07:002014-12-13T16:52:34.582+07:00Vietnam Launches Legal Challenge Against China’s South China Sea Claims<h1 class="postTitle" itemprop="name" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.125em; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; text-align: justify;">Vietnam lodges a submission at The Hague and rejects Chinese position paper on the South China Sea.</span></h1>
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By <a href="http://thediplomat.com/authors/prashanth-parameswaran/">Prashanth Parameswaran</a></div>
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The Diplomat, December 12, 2014</div>
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Vietnam and China moved their saber-rattling over the South China Sea into the legal arena this week as Hanoi lodged a submission with an arbitral tribunal at The Hague and rejected a Chinese position paper. Beijing swiftly dismissed Vietnam’s challenge.</div>
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In a statement on Thursday, the Vietnamese foreign ministry <a href="http://www.thanhniennews.com/politics/vietnam-dismisses-chinas-position-paper-on-east-sea-claims-35200.html">rejected</a> China’s December 7 <a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-12/07/content_19037946.htm">position paper</a>, which laid out <a href="http://thediplomat.com/2014/12/chinas-maritime-machinations-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/">Beijing’s legal objections</a> to an arbitration case that the Philippines had filed against it.</div>
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“Vietnam’s established position is to resolutely object to China’s claims over Hoang Sa, Truong Sa islands and adjacent waters,” Vietnamese foreign ministry spokesman Le Hai Binh said, using the Vietnamese names for the Paracel and Spratly Islands.</div>
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Binh also suggested that Hanoi had sent a statement to the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) at The Hague, which is currently examining the Philippines’ case against China over the South China Sea disputes.</div>
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According to the South China Morning Post, Vietnam’s statement to the PCA, submitted last Friday, made <a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1661364/china-rejects-vietnam-claims-arbitration-submission-over-south-china-sea">three main claims</a> in opposition to China’s stand. First, it recognized the court’s jurisdiction over the case submitted by the Philippines, which Beijing does not. Second, it requested that the court give “due regard” to Vietnam’s own legal rights and interests in the Spratlys, Paracels, and in its exclusive economic zone and continental shelf while deliberating on the case. Third and lastly, it rejected China’s infamous nine-dash line – which lays claim to about 90 percent of the South China Sea – as being “without legal basis.”</div>
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Hanoi’s actions are part of a concerted effort to respond to China’s growing assertiveness in the South China Sea, which has continued in 2014. In May, a Chinese state-owned oil company <a href="http://thediplomat.com/2014/08/vietnam-china-and-the-oil-rig-crisis-who-blinked/">dispatched a deep sea drilling rig</a> off the coast of Vietnam in disputed waters south of the Paracel Islands, which led to deadly boat clashes and anti-Chinese violence and plunged diplomatic relations to an all-time low. In response, Vietnamese prime minister Nguyen Tan Dung had <a href="http://www.voanews.com/content/vietnam-considering-legal-action-against-china-reu/1920048.html">said</a> that Hanoi was “considering various actions, including legal actions in accordance with international law.”</div>
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By lodging a statement with the court – as opposed to directly joining the Philippines in its case – Vietnam has found a way to make its views heard but not alienate Beijing, which has <a href="http://www.voanews.com/content/vietnam-considering-legal-action-against-china-reu/1920048.html">warned</a> Hanoi against joining Manila’s legal challenge. Beyond the legal realm, Vietnam has also taken a number of other actions, including slowly moving towards closer ties with the United States – made easier by the <a href="http://thediplomat.com/2014/10/the-political-significance-of-american-lethal-weapons-to-vietnam/">partial lifting</a> of a U.S. lethal weapons embargo – and <a href="http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/389675/news/nation/vietnam-warships-visit-phl-amid-south-china-sea-dispute">making</a> its first-ever port call to the Philippines last month.</div>
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Predictably, China dismissed Vietnam’s sovereignty claims in its foreign ministry statement, labeling them “illegal and invalid” and emphasizing that “China will never accept such a claim.”</div>
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“China urges Vietnam to earnestly respect our territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and resolve relevant disputes regarding Nansha with China on the basis of respecting historical facts and international law so as to jointly maintain peace and stability on the South China Sea,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei <a href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-12/12/c_133848818.htm">said</a>, using the Chinese name for the Spratly Islands.</div>
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The legal tussle between Beijing and Hanoi comes as the December 15 deadline nears for China to submit its defense in the arbitration case brought about by the Philippines. China is not expected to submit anything in response to the tribunal’s deadline, having already declared in its position paper that it would “neither accept nor participate in the arbitration.”</div>
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Two days before China released its position paper, the U.S. State Department published a <a href="http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/234936.pdf">study</a> that questioned the validity of Beijing’s nine-dash line. China <a href="http://english.cri.cn/12394/2014/12/09/3961s855842.htm">dismissed</a> the study, claiming that it ignored basic facts and legal principles and was unhelpful in resolving the South China Sea issue.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06601450641503959947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7383437858640407006.post-77091383003497712562014-12-08T13:24:00.001+07:002014-12-08T13:24:07.028+07:00How to steal the Sea, Chinese style<br />
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By Lieveillyn King, December 1, 2014 – 5:02 pm </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ-JsoHJHHKWiCFB-i4K1BECF0X5yQZLeqG2aPHcCGLR-soZ26GKyKBoqgaH1ggSwAcSYCwlwGED90CMhLeDRNxd9xqySpQ9Cf-aIeYLifcfK3BgDjmQs0wJWWL3suufxcVcAMe8ZuNio/s1600/Ph%C3%BA+L%C3%A2m+base.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ-JsoHJHHKWiCFB-i4K1BECF0X5yQZLeqG2aPHcCGLR-soZ26GKyKBoqgaH1ggSwAcSYCwlwGED90CMhLeDRNxd9xqySpQ9Cf-aIeYLifcfK3BgDjmQs0wJWWL3suufxcVcAMe8ZuNio/s1600/Ph%C3%BA+L%C3%A2m+base.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a>In history, countries have sought to increase their territory by bribery, chicanery, coercion and outright force of arms. But while many have sought to dominate the seas, from the Greek city states to the mighty British Empire, none has ever, in effect, tried to take over an ocean or a sea as its own. </div>
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But that is what China is actively doing in the ocean south of the mainland: the South China Sea. Bit by bit, it is establishing hegemony over this most important sea where the littoral states — China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam — have territorial claims. </div>
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The importance of the South China Sea is hard to overestimate. Some of the most vital international sea lanes traverse it; it is one of the great fishing areas; and the ocean bed, near land, has large reserves of oil and gas. No wonder everyone wants a piece of it — and China wants all of it. </div>
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Historically China has laid claim to a majority of the sea and adheres to a map or line — known as the nine-dash map, the U-shape line or the nine-dotted line — that cedes most of the ocean area and all of the island land to it. The nine-dash map is a provocation at best and a blueprint for annexation at worst. </div>
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The mechanism for China’s filching of one of the great seas of the world is control of the three island archipelagos, the Paracel, Spratly and Pratas islands, and several other smaller outcroppings, as well as the seamounts, called the Macclesfield Bank and the Scarborough Shoal. Between them, they consist of about 250 small islands, atolls, keys, shoals, sandbars and reefs. Very few of these are habitable or have indigenous people. Some are permanently submerged, and many are only exposed at low tide. </div>
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Yet if China can claim title to them, it can use them to extend its hegemony into the area around them. First, it can claim the standard 12 miles of territorial waters around each land mass and it also can claim an economic zone of influence of 200 miles from the most dubious “island.” Ergo, China can connect the dots and grab a large chunk of the South China Sea. </div>
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China is reclaiming land – actually building a new artificial island — in the disputed Spratly Islands. The two-mile-long island will have an airfield that, China's foreign ministry claims, will be used for air-sea operations. The other claimants, think otherwise, especially Vietnam. The United States has called for China to halt the island project. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
China has been both stealthy and obvious about its strategy. It has increased its trade with the claimants; and in some cases has made generous contributions to their infrastructure development, but not in the South China Sea. In its maritime provocations, China has been careful to use its coast guard, not its navy, as it extends its grasp on the archipelagos, and inches forward to total domination of anything that looks like land in the waters off its southern coast. </div>
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The Philippines has sought international legal redress under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a treaty which the United States has not ratified, limiting its legal maneuvering, according to Barry Nolan of the Boston Forum, a policy analysis group that has studied the South China Sea crisis this year. China denies the legitimacy of international law in what is says is an internal matter. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
To my mind, we are seeing is a new kind of imperialism from China, a gradual annexation of whatever it wants; quiet aggression, just short of war but relentless. This is China's modus operandi in Southeast Asia, Africa and other places. It squeezes gently and then with greater strength, like a lethal constrictor snake. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Southeast Asian countries are arming, but China’s naval forces are growing faster. Also, it has the cash and the people to do what it wants. The U.S. “pivot to Asia” has done little to reassure China’s neighbors. Their nervousness is compounded by the ease with which Russia was able to annex Crimea and is proceeding into Eastern Ukraine unchecked. What’s to stop China grabbing some useless islands, and then a whole sea? </div>
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<br /></div>
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The ancient concept of oceans as commons is under threat. The Chinese dragon walks and swims. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06601450641503959947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7383437858640407006.post-35022292348607742102014-11-29T23:53:00.000+07:002014-11-29T23:53:13.684+07:00Vietnam, the US, and Japan in the South China Sea<h1 class="postTitle" itemprop="name" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.125em; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.25em;">Prospects for regional security hinges heavily on how these actors relate to the South China Sea issue.</span></h1>
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By <span itemprop="author">Alexander L. Vuving</span></div>
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<span itemprop="datePublished">November 26, 2014</span></div>
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Between May and July 2014, China unilaterally <a href="http://thediplomat.com/2014/08/vietnam-china-and-the-oil-rig-crisis-who-blinked/" style="color: #cc0000; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">deployed a giant drilling rig</a> in waters claimed by Vietnam as its exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The move led to a fierce <a href="http://thediplomat.com/2014/11/vietnam-the-us-and-japan-in-the-south-china-sea/The%20prospects%20of%20regional%20security%20hinges%20heavily%20on%20how%20these%20actors%20relate%20to%20the%20South%20China%20Sea%20(SCS)%20issue" style="color: #cc0000; text-decoration: none;">confrontation between Chinese and Vietnamese government vessels</a> and saw relations between the two countries deteriorate to their lowest point since 1988. The standoff also served as a litmus test to identify who will side with whom in this conflict. While most of the world remained neutral, several states came out in support of Vietnam in one form or another. Among these supporters, the United States and Japan stood out as the most powerful and staunchest.</div>
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The fault line between Vietnam, the U.S., and Japan on one side and China on the other can be seen as one between <a href="http://thediplomat.com/2014/03/us-china-relations-thucydidean-trap-or-prisoners-dilemma/" style="color: #cc0000; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">status quo and revisionist powers</a>. The former share the same objective of maintaining the balance of power that has kept the region in peace for the last two decades. China, with its long period of rapid economic growth in the last three decades, appears to be determined to use its newfound power to assert its sovereignty claims, which in end effect would amount to its dominance of the region. The prospects for regional security hinges heavily on how these actors relate to the South China Sea (SCS) issue.</div>
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<b>The Stakes</b></div>
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The prevailing narrative portrays the SCS issue as a territorial dispute driven by conflict over natural resources between the littoral states. This provides a very truncated picture that fails to illuminate the identity and motives of the stakeholders. Besides its economic value, the SCS also has an enormous strategic value for several countries and an increasing symbolic value for some of the disputants.</div>
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China claims a vast area of the SCS that lies within a unilaterally drawn U-shape line as its own territories and waters, while Vietnam claims sovereignty over the Paracel and Spratly Islands and the EEZ and continental shelf surrounding its mainland’s coasts. The SCS is believed to be rich in fish stocks, energy reserves, and mineral ores. Some estimates put the oil and gas reserves in the SCS at about 80 percent of Saudi Arabia’s. With roughly ten percent of the world’s catch, the region also has one of the largest fishing stocks in the world.</div>
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The SCS constitutes one of the inner seas that lie within what China’s strategic planners and analysts term the “first island chain.” Offering easy access to the industrial centers of the country, these maritime zones are critical to the defense of the Chinese homeland against invaders coming from the seas. The SCS is even more important to the defense of Vietnam. If it is sometimes likened to China’s backyard, it is literally the front door to Vietnam.</div>
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The SCS has strategic value not only for the littoral states but also for other regional and major powers from outside. The shortest shipping routes between the Indian and the Pacific Ocean, the sea lines of communication that pass through the SCS carry nearly one-third of world trade and a half of the global oil and gas shipping. Not only the economies of Southeast Asia but also those of Northeast Asia are heavily dependent on these trading routes. About 80 percent of the oil and gas imports of China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are shipped through the SCS.</div>
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While all players in the SCS issue share a large stake in its waterways, powers with hegemonic ambitions such as the United States and China have an additional interest based on the strategic value of those sea lines. Given its location as a chokepoint on the Asian lifeline and one of the global arteries, control of access to the SCS is a sine qua non for naval supremacy in the Western Pacific, which in turn is a critical pillar of regional primacy in East Asia.</div>
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Besides its economic and strategic value, the SCS also has an enormous symbolic value for China and Vietnam. Conflicts and stakes in this region have made it a strong symbol of identity for both nations. Vietnam, for example, has declared the Paracel and Spratly Islands to be its territories in the new constitution of 2013.</div>
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<b>Vietnam’s Strategies</b></div>
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No single strategy can describe how Vietnam is dealing with the SCS issue. Instead, Vietnam pursues a multitude of approaches that employ a wide range of mechanisms stretching from hard to soft power. At least seven distinct strategies can be identified.</div>
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At the hard extreme of the spectrum, Vietnam tries to strengthen its presence and forces, both military and non-military, in the SCS. During the “scramble for the Spratlys” in 1988, when Beijing and Hanoi competed for foothold on the Spratly Islands, Vietnam set up permanent military garrisons on 11 land features in the archipelago, increasing its possessions here from 10 to 21 land features. From 1989 to 1991, Vietnam went out to occupy six underwater shoals on its continental shelf southwest of the Spratlys by putting up permanent high-pillar structures and manning them with garrisons. Slowly but surely, Vietnam continues to consolidate and increase its presence in these areas with more troops, facilities, equipment, and civilians. Since 2007, Vietnam started to populate the largest of its possessions in the Spratly Islands with permanent civilian habitants. Taking a leaf out of China’s playbook, Vietnam decided in 2012 to create a fisheries surveillance force as a third force, after the navy and the coast guard, to patrol its maritime waters, and in 2014, after the oil rig crisis, to lightly arm these vessels. To build a minimum deterrent force on the sea, Vietnam continued to modernize its navy and air force. A key element in this deterrent force is a submarine fleet it is building with six Kilo-class vessels.</div>
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Vietnam is well aware that it cannot rely on military force alone to deter China. One strategy to compensate for this deficit is to get powerful third parties involved. Vietnam’s application of this strategy is, however, limited to the oil and gas industry in the SCS only. But perhaps Hanoi has no other option but to give concessions in the oil blocks that lie within China’s U-shaped line to large companies from major powers, something it has done so far to ExxonMobil from the United States, ONGC from India, and Gazprom from Russia. The extent to which Vietnam has limited its pursuit of this strategy is remarkable; it has repeatedly pledged that it will not form an alliance with any other country against a third party, a coded statement to reassure China of Vietnam’s non-aligned posture.</div>
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Instead of forming alliances with powerful partners, Vietnam places more emphasis on internationalization of the issue to interlock and deter China. During most of the 1990s and 2000s, Vietnam remained largely modest in its attempt to internationalize the SCS issue. But responding to Chinese assertiveness in the region since 2008, Vietnam has become increasingly proactive and determined to bring the issue to the world’s attention and enlist the support of foreign partners. For example, international conferences on the SCS issue have become a thriving industry in Vietnam since 2009. Hanoi has also tried to include the SCS issue as an agenda item in its talks – and as a rhetorical device, in the joint statements – with most other foreign governments. Starting with the ASEAN and ARF meetings, international forums such as EAS, APEC, the UN, and ASEM have become diplomatic battlegrounds for Vietnam over the SCS dispute.</div>
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Vietnam’s effort to internationalize and multilateralize the issue does not come at the expense of its bilateral dialogues with China. Not only does Vietnam take advantage of all possible channels to talk with China, it is also proud of being able to maintain those channels. Besides the government-to-government channel, Vietnam also cultivates ties between the two Communist Parties and the two militaries to keep special access to China. The uniqueness of the party-to-party and the military-to-military relations between Vietnam and China lies in the fact that both sides emphasize their ideological bonds and, particularly for the militaries, their common interests in opposing the West. With regard to negotiation to resolve the territorial disputes, Vietnam accepts a bilateral approach to the Paracel Islands while insisting on a multilateral approach to the Spratly Islands, arguing that the multilateral nature of the dispute over the latter requires multilateral negotiation.</div>
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Toward the soft end of the spectrum, self-restraint and self-constraint to reassure China is also a key element in Vietnam’s approach to the SCS. Hanoi’s political leaders and military strategists reason that China, mindful of its superior forces, will seize the moment when Hanoi lets itself be provoked to escalate the conflict and overwhelm Vietnam. But for Hanoi, self-restraint and self-constraint are not only a tactic to avoid being provoked; they are a systematic approach based on the belief that it can convince Beijing of Hanoi’s benign intentions. Hanoi has, for instance, tried to erase public memories of Vietnam’s military conflicts with Communist China, both on the land borders and in the SCS during the 1970s and 1980s. To reassure Beijing, Hanoi has also unilaterally set tight limits on its room of action. One example is its “three no’s” policy, under which Vietnam vows not to participate in any military alliance, not to allow any foreign military bases on its soil, and not ally with any other country against a third country.</div>
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Softer than self-restraint, deference is also a principal element of Vietnam’s strategy toward China. Many Vietnamese leaders and strategists argue that combining resistance with deference is key to Vietnam’s ability to survive in China’s shadow for thousands of years. Acts of deference signaled Vietnam’s acceptance of its subordinate position to China in a hierarchy of states, and Hanoi continues to show deference to Beijing. Two recent examples include visits to China by Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh and Defense Minister Phung Quang Thanh in the wake of the oilrig crisis. Minh used a trade fair in Nanning, China to go to China before traveling to the United States in September 2014. In October, Thanh led a delegation of thirteen high-ranking military officers to China, preceding the long-planned visit to Vietnam by the U.S. secretary of defense in November.</div>
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While preparing for the contingency of a military showdown with China in the SCS, Vietnam hopes that ideological bonds will prevent the worst and serve to isolate, compartmentalize, and attenuate the conflict. Predicated on solidarity between the two communist regimes, this strategy enjoys powerful support among the military leadership and Communist Party conservatives. The underlying thinking is best articulated by General Le Van Dung, then-head of the Political General Directorate of the Vietnam People’s Army. In an interview in December 2009, Dung <a href="http://tuoitre.vn/tin/chinh-tri-xa-hoi/20091222/tim-moi-cach-giai-quyet-van-de-bien-dong/354571.html" style="color: #cc0000; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">said</a>: “As concerns our issue with China in the East Sea, we are trying our best to resolve it, and in the near future we will be discussing, negotiating, and delimit the maritime borders with our friend. So the situation will be gradually stabilized and we keep strengthening our relations with China in order to fight the common enemy.” Although China’s increasing assertiveness in the SCS, most notably its deployment of the HSYS-891 drilling rig in Vietnamese waters during the summer of 2014, has shattered much of Vietnam’s trust in Beijing, the military leadership in Hanoi continues to cling to solidarity as a strategy to deal with Beijing and the SCS issue.</div>
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None of these strategies has been pursued to its fullest capacity, and the intensity and scope with which they have been practiced has varied over time. For most of the period between 1990 and 2008, Vietnam did little to internationalize the issue. The strategies most salient during this period were a gradual and low-key consolidation of presence and forces, self-restraint and self-constraint, and solidarity. The rising tide of tensions since 2009 has changed the intensity and scope of Vietnam’s strategies, with a focus now on strengthening of presence and forces and internationalization. Overall, Vietnam’s approach to the SCS issue combines deterrence with reassurance. While having stabilizing effects, this “hedging” approach has its own problems: Combining deterrence and reassurance undermines the credibility of both. With the increasing tension in the last few years, this hedging approach has proven increasingly ineffective, creating growing frustration with the policy.</div>
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<b>The U.S. Commitment</b></div>
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The United States stands out among outside stakeholders to the SCS with its intense interest in the region. Since 2010, American leaders have repeatedly <a href="http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/texttrans/2010/07/20100723164658su0.4912989.html" style="color: #cc0000; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">declared</a> that Washington has a “strong national interest” in freedom of navigation and a “strong interest” in the peaceful and lawful settlement of the disputes there. Both the U.S. economy and U.S. global power and regional primacy in the Asia-Pacific depend to various extents on freedom and peace in the waterways running through the SCS.</div>
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In fact, the impact of a blockade in the SCS on the U.S. economy would be significant but not extremely high. Less tangible but more important is the role of the SCS for U.S. global power. U.S. naval supremacy in the Western Pacific, of which the SCS is a critical part, is a key to its regional primacy in the Indo-Pacific, which in turn is a major pillar undergirding the U.S.-led liberal world order. Important as it is, this link from the SCS to U.S. interests is not direct and not very visible and tangible. This fact makes it harder to convince the American public of the significance of the SCS to their interests.</div>
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American commitment to the SCS is limited by the U.S. need for breathing space after two expensive wars and a severe economic crisis. China has acted to take advantage of this virtual power vacuum, intensifying its revisionist actions in the region. However, as those revisionist actions become more visible to the American public, U.S. commitment to this critical region may once again strengthen.</div>
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<b>Japan’s Role</b></div>
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Japan’s interests in the SCS derive primarily from its dependence on the waterways there and its preference for a U.S.-led regional order. If China dominates this chokepoint, it will be able to switch off at will about 60 percent of Japan’s energy supplies, and it will likely replace the United States as the sponsor and leader of a new regional order. A Chinese-led regional order will most likely be far less liberal and favorable to Japan than the current U.S.-led order. Japan thus shares with both the United States and Vietnam a strong interest in maintaining the status quo in the region. What role can Japan play in maintaining stability in the SCS?</div>
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First, Japan – and the United States, for that matter – is ill-suited to act as an honest broker to the dispute. The honest broker must be trusted as such by both sides of the dispute, and Japan hardly fits that bill with China, particularly given its own dispute with China in the East China Sea.</div>
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Second, Japan is unable to play the role of an external deterrent. Lacking nuclear weapons and perhaps more dependent on China economically than vice versa, Japan is simply unable to deter China in general.</div>
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Balancing, therefore, remains the only possible role for Japan to play. Japan is willing to support Vietnam against China, as evidenced by<a href="http://thediplomat.com/2014/08/vietnam-to-acquire-japanese-maritime-surveillance-ships/" style="color: #cc0000; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Tokyo’s provision of coast guard ships as gifts to Vietnam</a> during its oilrig crisis with China recently. But does Japan, even when joining forces with Vietnam, have the capacity to balance China? This is an interesting question that needs more study, but a look at the combined military and economic power of the two suggests that they cannot. China possesses several key advantages over a Japan-Vietnam coalition, most obviously its nuclear weapons and its central role in Asia’s economy.</div>
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The most effective role for Japan to play in the SCS is to facilitate a coalition with the United States, Vietnam, the Philippines, and other countries that share a common interest in maintaining the status quo. Only a U.S.-led coalition can balance Chinese power in the region. Given its high stakes in the SCS – and the perception of those stakes by its elites – Japan is likely to be willing to play this role. But there is an issue with the coalition leader: With its geographic and psychological distance to the SCS, Washington may be the least willing among this coalition’s members. This may be a factor that prevents the coalition from unilaterally escalating the conflict, but it may also be a factor that encourages China to underestimate the resolve of its rivals and become dangerously provocative.</div>
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That in turn suggests the potential for a new era of instability and tension in the SCS, with each stakeholder playing their own role.</div>
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<i>Alexander L. Vuving is an associate professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu</i><i>. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the U.S. Government.</i></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06601450641503959947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7383437858640407006.post-18193128566312652772014-11-20T07:05:00.000+07:002014-11-20T07:05:04.671+07:00Q&A: Peter Navarro on America's Death by China<h1 class="headline" itemprop="name headline" style="border: 0px; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 2.3em; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
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<div class="share_buttons" data-headline="Q&A: Peter Navarro on America's Death by China " data-host="http://analytics.bloomberg.com/images/analytics-bw/dot1.gif" data-id="843d5a66-e7da-11e1-88c2-d8d38560fdc0" data-ping-uri="/,/lifestyle,/lifestyle/media-and-marketing,/lifestyle/china,/lifestyle/economy,/lifestyle/entertainment,/authors/2516-venessa-wong" data-pub-date="2012-08-22 16:24:32 -0400" data-summary="If America is to prosper again, it needs to toughen up against China, says Navarro" data-type="story" data-uri="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-22/q-and-a-peter-navarro-on-americas-death-by-china" style="border: 0px; color: #444444; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.0029983520508px; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
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<img alt="Workers on a production line at a toy factory in China" data-image-id="75977864" src="http://images.bwbx.io/cms/2012-08-22/0822_deathbychina_630x420.jpg" height="420" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Q&A: Peter Navarro on America's Death by China " width="630" /><br />
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Workers on a production line at a toy factory in China</div>
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<em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Bloomberg Businessweek</em> speaks with Peter Navarro, a business professor at the<a href="http://merage.uci.edu/Faculty/FacultyDirectory/FacultyProfiles.aspx?FacultyID=1589" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgb(255, 102, 0); color: #007cd5; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">University of California, Irvine</a>, about his new documentary <a href="http://www.deathbychina.com/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgb(255, 102, 0); color: #007cd5; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Death By China.</em></a> The film, based on the eponymous book he co-authored with Greg Autry in 2011, opened in Los Angeles on Aug. 17 and comes to New York on Aug. 24. Reviews have described it as <a href="http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117948072/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgb(255, 102, 0); color: #007cd5; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“a lucid wake-up call”</a> and criticized it for being <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/death-by-china-film-review-363303" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgb(255, 102, 0); color: #007cd5; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“heavy handed”</a> and containing <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-death-by-china-capsule-20120817,0,6401510.story" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgb(255, 102, 0); color: #007cd5; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">“xenophobic hysteria.”</a> Navarro reponds, “The film accurately depicts the devastation China’s unfair trade practices are having on Americans. Critics giving bad reviews should get out into the heartland of America more. Viewers are deeply moved by the film if our L.A. opening is any indicator.”<br />
<span class="inline_image center" style="border: 0px; clear: both; display: block; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin: 12px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: auto;"><img alt="Poster for the movie 'Death By China'" src="http://images.bwbx.io/cms/2012-08-22/0822_deathbychina_inline_405.jpg" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" /><span class="figcaption" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-size: 0.71em; line-height: 1em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 405px;">Poster for the movie 'Death By China'</span></span><br />
<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Death By China.</em> That’s a pretty grim prognosis. Is China killing us?</strong><br />
We’re billing this as the feel-good movie of the year. [Laughs.] There’s nothing subtle about what’s happening. It’s an economic death because of China’s unfair trade practices and the loss of the U.S. manufacturing base. Also, literal death because of the loss of consumer safety: toothpaste, baby formula, a dizzying array of products. There are also human rights abuses—China’s forced labor camps. There’s a chilling discovery in the film about how people are being taken out of labor camps and their organs are harvested. Also, the military buildup of China. It’s an evocative title, yes, and it has multiple meanings.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Is it about declining U.S. dominance?</strong><br />
That would be jingoistic. It doesn’t matter to me who’s the most powerful or profitable country in the world. All countries want to be prosperous. What’s happening is a zero-sum game between China and the U.S. where their gain is our loss. It’s about the fact that we don’t make things any more, that we lost our manufacturing base, the 25 million people who can’t find a decent job in this country, the zero wage growth. I want consumers to connect the dots, to go to any store and look at the label and connect the dots between buying cheap China products, which is better for the wallet, and all the other things we lose, like jobs.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Some would argue that the U.S. shifting away from a manufacturing economy to a knowledge- and service-based economy is a good thing.</strong><br />
The best counterfactual argument to that is Germany. Germany is one of the strongest, most stable economies, and 25 percent of their workforce is in manufacturing, compared with 9 percent in the U.S. The service-sector opium they tried to sell us in 1990s and early 2000s hasn’t worked. Manufacturing is the seed corn for other jobs in the U.S.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Would you call yourself a protectionist?</strong><br />
The way that my view on this is often derided is using the P word. It’s a very inflammatory word in my profession. There’s a big difference between self-defense against unfair trade practices and protectionism. The biggest protectionist in the world now is China. If you want to go into China now, you can’t without a joint venture Chinese partner, and you have to give them your tech. The logical result of that is they take your IP and then you’re obsolete. This is not protectionist; it’s self-defense against a very mercantilist trading partner.</div>
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<a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-07-16/made-in-china-olympic-uniforms-are-a-win-for-the-u-dot-s-dot" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgb(255, 102, 0); color: #007cd5; text-decoration: none;"><span class="related_item_label" style="border: 0px; color: black; font-weight: bolder; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;">BLOG: </span>'Made in China' Olympic Uniforms Are a Win for the U.S.</a></div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Is calling you a Democrat just as inflammatory? </strong><br />
The greatest compliment is I am accused of being a Dem leftie and a Republican righty. I am a pragmatist. I call it as I see it. This country needs more of that. I am a Democrat. I ran for Congress in 1996 as a Democrat. Both parties have failed us in the same way. We’re really careful in the movie to make this a nonpartisan issue. It’s an American problem, not a Democrat or Republican issue.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When was the last time you went to China?</strong><br />
I went back just before the release of the <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Coming China Wars</em> in 2006. Once I wrote that book … it’s dangerous for me to go back there. My co-author Greg Autry was followed, and they searched his room. Some think this movie is too strong, but it’s not. It’s a serious national security issue. I don’t go back to China. I understand the country at some level. And a lot of my colleagues are wined and dined, but it’s Beijing and Shanghai, and that’s it. You have to get out in the countryside to know what’s going on.</div>
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<a href="http://www.businessweek.com/videos/2012-08-20/can-u-dot-s-dot-exports-to-china-alter-political-rhetoric" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgb(255, 102, 0); color: #007cd5; text-decoration: none;"><span class="related_item_label" style="border: 0px; color: black; font-weight: bolder; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;">VIDEO: </span>Can U.S. Exports to China Alter Political Rhetoric?</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06601450641503959947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7383437858640407006.post-53937582882096848822014-10-26T11:57:00.001+07:002014-12-01T17:16:06.802+07:00Book Review: The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.3199996948242px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
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<span style="line-height: 19.3199996948242px;">Written by David Brown</span></div>
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FRI,24 OCTOBER 2014</div>
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By Bill Hayton. Yale University Press, Hard cover, 263 pp, US$29.13 on Amazon</div>
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In any short list of global headaches, China's quest for hegemony in the South China Sea ought to be up there with climate change, jihadis and the Ebola virus. It's seemingly intractable, yet solving it has become the critical test of whether the international order can accomodate a 'rising China.'</div>
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Notwithstanding the cautious instincts of a president who knows it is far easier to get into a foreign fight than to win one, the threat that Beijing's tactics pose to vital American interests is drawing Washington ineluctably into a showdown with China. Until a few years ago, it was possible to see the South China Sea problem as a squabble among littoral countries over fish and seabed resources, exacerbated by a stiff dose of bloody-mindedness on China's part. Now it is evident that China has no interest in negotiating territorial claims with its neighbors and only a selectively self-serving interest in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).</div>
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Washington has had to put dreams of global partnership with Asia's emergent superpower on the shelf while it ponders China's prospective control of vital sea lanes. The South China Sea is, in Bill Hayton's words, "the first place where Chinese ambition has come face-to-face with American strategic resolve."</div>
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It's a confrontation that we need to understand, and Hayton, a BBC correspondent who's done time in Myanmar and Vietnam, has provided the backstory. His thoroughly researched and gracefully written The South China Sea, subtitled the Struggle for Power in Asia, was published in the UK in late September and will be published in the US on October 28 by Yale Press. It is being offered on Amazon for US$28.</div>
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Hayton's 320 page book will inevitably be compared with another recent volume on the same subject, Robert Kaplan's Asia's Cauldron: the South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific. They are very different books. Kaplan tosses off glib generalizations about national character, national interests and Asian leaders' purported obsession with order. It's all about balance-of-power, Kaplan says, a contest played out "in this new and somewhat sterile landscape of the 21st century." His Southeast Asia is a place where China is destined to sweep its erstwhile tributaries back into their proper orbits and where, if Washington is realistic in its analysis, it ought to graciously yield precedence to Beijing.</div>
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Hayton, on the other hand, explains. His opening chapters lead his readers almost effortlessly through the five thousand years that the South China Sea was a global commons dominated by proto-Malay voyagers. Then trading empires rise and fall: Funan, Champa, Majahapit and Malacca. Circa 1400, for the first and only time before the present era, China briefly becomes a sea power, sending great fleets to India and east Africa before again turning its attention inward. Europeans in search of spices, porcelain and silks arrive in the 1500's. Spain establishes dominion over the Philippine archipelago; three centuries later, France in Indochina and England in the Malay states have carved out their own colonies and are forcing even China to kowtow to gunboat diplomacy.</div>
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The Europeans, intent on demarcating boundaries and establishing exclusive rights to territory, unwittingly lay the foundations of fervent, self-conscious nationalism in what become, by the middle of the 20th century, their ex-colonies and ex-concessions. Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and China -- both its Taiwan and Beijing governments -- all now claim great and overlapping swaths of an expanse of water that in times past connected rather than divided their inhabitants. All have scrambled to plant their flags on the reefs, rocks and islets (collectively 'features') that dot the vast sea.</div>
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The rich tapestry Hayton weaves is fascinating in itself, but of signal importance is a thread he carefully pulls from it: China's history-based claim to the sea area south of Hong Kong and Hainan Island is mostly rubbish. The Chinese evidence simply does not stand up against the annals of Vietnam's Nguyen lords, who by 1750 or so were despatching annual expeditions to both the Spratly and Paracel Island groups. The Vietnamese went mainly to salvage shipwrecks, to be sure, but they left behind markers and kept careful records.</div>
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Ironically, the Vietnamese have ceased to harp on their own historic claim. They appeal instead to the rules governing the division of seas that are codified in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, UNCLOS, which came into force in 1994. So do the Philippines and the Malaysians. International law is the refuge of smaller and weaker states. For strong states intent on undoing past humiliations, international law is often an inconvenient nuisance. The regime in Beijing may know its legal case is weak; it may rationalize that China would have dominated its nearby seas had it not been oppressed by the West and Japan. For China's man in the street, the message is simple. Teachers and populist media have convinced him that Beijing's sovereignty over the southern seas and islands is 'immutable' and 'incontestable.'</div>
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Analysts -- Hayton and this writer among their number -- are hard put to explain why Beijing would so arrogantly squander the respect that until recently it worked so hard to gain. Hayton toys with the notion that naval commands, oil companies and provincial authorities have pursued aggressively independent foreign policies, dragging along top-level leaders who don't want to seem weak. That argument hasn't stood up in the Xi Jinping era; in recent years Chinese tactics have been impressively coordinated.</div>
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Other analysts blame the rising superpower's raging thirst for oil and gas. There's no doubt that China's future growth depends on ample supplies of both. There's considerable doubt, however, that the South China Sea is the "second Persian Gulf" often mentioned in Chinese media. Further, flush with foreign exchange, China has had no problem sourcing oil and gas outside the region, nor is it in anyone's interest to interfere with that trade.</div>
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Western observers who haven't done their homework have tended to see Chinese claims and ambitions as no less valid than all the others'. Kaplan goes further, treating international law as essentially irrelevant in the South China Sea disputes. And yet, the grandiosity of China's territorial claims and the tactics it has employed in their pursuit are highly significant to the US and other states with a large stake in the maintenance of a peaceful, law-based, free-trading world order. They suggest that a "rising China" will play by the rules only when that suits its interests. That means, Hayton concludes, that this 1.35 million square mile expanse -- the world's largest 'enclosed sea' -- "has become the place where incompatible Chinese and American identities are doomed to clash."</div>
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With each passing year, the stakes grow higher. An unstable dynamic ineluctably is drawing in the US and its principal Asian ally, Japan, in support of Vietnam and the Philippines. China shows no sign of backing down. There is no happy ending in sight.</div>
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Postscript: Bill Hayton, ironically, is not welcome in Vietnam. He was the BBC's resident correspondent in Hanoi in 2007-2008. Evidently his reporting at that time annoyed the authorities. When Hayton applied for a visa to participate in a November 2012 conference on East Sea issues sponsored by the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam, he was refused. Some months later, Hayton applied again, specifically asking to interview Vietnamese officials for his forthcoming book. Again he was refused. The result is that Hayton's sections on Vietnam and the East Sea are relatively 'thin' -- they lack the compelling detail that conversations with Vietnamese experts might have supplied. It's a pity -- and another story with (so far) no happy ending!</div>
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David Brown is a retired American diplomat who writes on Southeast Asian topics with particular regard to contemporary Vietnam. He may be reached at nworbd@<a href="http://gmail.com/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">gmail.com.</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06601450641503959947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7383437858640407006.post-36928733542270366142014-09-28T07:23:00.002+07:002014-09-28T07:26:58.330+07:00Blocking China’s salami-slicing tactics on the South China Sea require region-wide cooperation<div class="article-summary" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-top: 20px;">
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<u> YaleGlobal</u>: Vietnamese Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh and US Secretary of State John Kerry will meet in Washington early October. The two nations, at war more than 40 years ago, now find common interest in protecting open sea lanes in the South China Sea. China asserts sweeping claims, going as far as to construct new islets and impose limitations on the use of other nations’ exclusive economic zones. China signed the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the United States has not. “Kerry and Minh should work out a middle course that protects US policy autonomy while maintaining balance in the region,” writes former US diplomat David Brown. Diplomacy and increased US engagement could include training regional coast guards with the aim of minimizing risky maneuvers that could trigger greater conflict, lifting a ban on weapons sales to Vietnam, encouraging joint explorations for oil and gas and encouraging multilateral fisheries management. In the meantime, Brown urges Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines to waste no time in sorting out their own competing claims.</div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px;">Blocking China’s salami-slicing tactics on the South China Sea require region-wide cooperation</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.600000381469727px;">David Brown / </span><span class="source-org vcard" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.600000381469727px;">YaleGlobal</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.600000381469727px;">,</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.600000381469727px;"> </span><span class="updated" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15.600000381469727px;">25 September 2014</span></div>
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<tr style="padding: 0.25em;"><td style="color: #1e1e1e; font-family: Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; padding: 0.25em;"><span style="color: #09192d;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Battle over waters: US Secretary of State John Kerry and Vietnam's Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh will meet in early October to discuss the South China Sea (top); earlier in the summer China's coast-guard ships rammed a Vietnamese vessel near a Chinese oil drilling rig</span></span></td></tr>
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FRESNO: When Vietnamese Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh and US Secretary of State John Kerry meet in early October, China's aggressive behavior in the waters of Southeast Asia will top their agenda. In the months leading up to the meeting, Washington’s foreign policy elite have been debating whether it is in America’s interest to get involved in the dispute. The strategic implications of letting China have its sway are too serious for the US to adopt a binary policy of going in all guns blazing or looking the other way. Kerry and Minh should work out a middle course that protects US policy autonomy while maintaining balance in the region.</div>
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China is a rising power and its cooperation is essential in efforts to contain terrorism, slow climate change, curb nuclear proliferation and so on. But the US cannot ignore China's drive to establish hegemony over the seas that touch its shores. Cautiously in the East China Sea, where Japan, allied with the United States, is a formidable opponent, and confidently in the South China Sea, China has mounted a determined challenge to the international order expressed in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, UNCLOS, and the notion that territorial disputes should be settled, not by force, but by negotiation or arbitration.</div>
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Six years ago China presented a crude map to illustrate its claim to "indisputable sovereignty" over the area bounded by a nine-dash line enclosing 3.5 million square kilometers.</div>
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With each year that's passed since then, China's upped the ante. Deploying hundreds of deep-sea fishing boats and many dozens of coast guard vessels, Beijing has challenged its neighbors' sovereignty over exclusive economic zones drawn according to UNCLOS rules. It has driven Vietnamese fishermen out of traditional fishing grounds, wrested the aquatic resources of Scarborough Shoal from Manila's control, harassed oil and gas exploration off Vietnam's central coast, and planted markers on James Shoal, 50 miles off the Malaysian coast and 2200 miles south of China's Hainan Island. This year China again proved its mastery of the tactical initiative, deploying a deep-sea oil drilling rig and an armada of escort vessels into waters near Vietnam's central coast while sending a flotilla of seagoing pumps, dredges and cement mixers further south with the mission of converting a handful of reefs into artificial islets.</div>
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<span style="color: #09192d;"><span style="font-size: 21px;"><strong><span style="font-family: Georgia;">T</span></strong></span><span style="font-size: 19px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;">he US cannot ignore China's drive to establish hegemony over the seas that touch its shores.</span></span></span></div>
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Beijing has been impervious to persuasion and angered by tough talk from US diplomats – from Hillary Clinton and Kerry on down. Xi Jinping's government may know that the records it relies on to support an "historic claim" to the South China Sea are legally <a href="http://www.nationmultimedia.com/opinion/South-China-Sea-Still-no-evidence-of-historical-Ch-30243934.html" style="color: #1e5f99; text-decoration: none;">untenable</a>, but Chinese public opinion finds them persuasive. China's man in the street is furious that countries on the periphery of "China's South Sea" are "stealing China's resources" when they fish on the high seas or drill for offshore oil and gas.</div>
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China, it seems, has no intention of submitting its sweeping territorial claims to rulings by international tribunals. It evidences little more interest in negotiating a Code of Conduct with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. At most, Chinese spokesmen have hinted at a disposition to be generous when and only when Vietnam or the Philippines acknowledge the superior merit of China's claims.</div>
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It has thus become impossible to regard the South China Sea as an inconsequential sideshow to a hoped-for entente between the United States and the emergent Chinese superpower. The conflict is not inconsequential – the sea lanes carry nearly half the world's commerce. Added now is profound worry that Beijing's steadily more aggressive tactics there and its dismissal, whenever inconvenient, of the rules of the international order reveal China’s true nature with which the international community must contend in other places in times to come. China's actions and attitudes have made confrontation in the South China Sea a central concern of US diplomacy and strategic planning.</div>
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<span style="color: #09192d;"><span style="font-size: 21px;"><strong><span style="font-family: Georgia;">C</span></strong></span><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-size: 19px;">hina shows no intention of submitting sweeping claims to rulings by international tribunals.</span></span></span></div>
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In the South China Sea, as elsewhere in the world, US engagement is essential if China's ambitions are to be effectively countered. Tough talk alone will not stiffen the ASEAN backbone nor impress Beijing.</div>
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From a tactical perspective, the US has behaved as if there were no viable options in the large space between denunciation of Chinese provocations and deploying the 7th Fleet. China on the other hand has consistently exploited opportunities in the middle space. It has relied on paramilitary assets, coast guard ships and auxiliary "fishing boats," to further its sovereign ambitions while the Peoples Liberation Army Navy, PLAN, waits discreetly just over the horizon.</div>
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Mimicking Chinese tactics, the US and Asian friends and allies could step up cooperation among their coast guards, prominently including a robust schedule of multilateral training exercises at sea. Military assistance that enhances Southeast Asian states' abilities to keep watch over their maritime frontiers will reduce China's capability to spring unpleasant surprises. Skillfully managed, such activities would, Carlyle Thayer has argued, "put the onus on China to decide the risk of confronting mixed formations of vessels and aircraft."</div>
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Washington ought also to forge a much closer relationship with Vietnam, the only Southeast Asian country with both the military deterrent capacity and, assured of American backing, the will to stand up to China. China's drill-rig deployment in May stunned Hanoi's Communist leaders and may have tipped the Politburo balance against continued strenuous efforts to appease Beijing.</div>
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<span style="color: #09192d;"><span style="font-size: 21px;"><strong><span style="font-family: Georgia;">A</span></strong></span><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-size: 19px;"> higher profile of American engagement vis-à-vis China in the South China Sea ought to reinforce diplomacy.</span></span></span></div>
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Hanoi and Washington have been courting since summer of 2012 and that intensified this summer. Largely for reasons of face – Vietnam doesn't like being lumped in with North Korea, Iran, Syria and China – it wants the US to drop its ban on lethal weapons sales. Washington, meanwhile, has conditioned such sales on "movement" on human-rights issues – an issue also likely to figure in Kerry-Minh talk.</div>
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Forging a strategic entente is not easy for either Hanoi or Washington. Each must give a bit on political rights. Yet, with the wolf at Hanoi's door, pragmatic adjustments may lay the foundation of an effective counter to Beijing's drive for hegemony over the South China Sea and domination of adjacent nations.</div>
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The US has already intervened effectively in support of the Philippines. Steps to upgrade and reinforce Philippine maritime surveillance and self-defense capabilities have had a tonic effect, allaying concerns that Manila may engage in risky, desperate behavior.</div>
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A higher profile of American engagement vis-à-vis China in the South China Sea ought to reinforce diplomacy. In that respect, the US could press Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines to sort out their claims among themselves. It could foster initiatives to draw Chinese authorities into discussions of multilateral management of rapidly depleting ocean fisheries and Chinese firms into joint exploration of the seabed for oil and gas.</div>
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There's no way for the United States to engage more actively in the South China Sea issues without angering China. That would probably have short-term negative consequences for US-China cooperation in other arenas, though Beijing is unlikely to refrain from cooperation that is in its own interest in order to punish Washington. The longer-term consequences of limiting China's overweening ambition will be salutary – Beijing will understand that it cannot rewrite the rules of international relations at will. </div>
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David Brown is a retired American diplomat who writes on contemporary Vietnam. He may be reached at <a href="mailto:nworbd@gmail.com" style="color: #1e5f99; text-decoration: none;">nworbd@gmail.com</a>.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06601450641503959947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7383437858640407006.post-83000670181569123722014-09-10T11:32:00.001+07:002014-09-12T12:49:59.055+07:00EAST SEA (*) DISPUTE GETTING OUT OF REGIONAL CAPACITY DISPUTE SETTLEMENT<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; position: relative; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><i>(*) Please, note that the term of "East Sea" is used in stead of "South China Sea" by the author of this article. Thank you. </i> </span></h3>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">This map describes the litoral states' territorial and marine claims basing on the Convention of Law of the Sea </span></td></tr>
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<b style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-large;">China on its sway in the East Sea </b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Recent news show Chinese forces hurriedly turning reefs and rocks in middle of the East Sea into floating islands and military bases sitting across international marine lines in and out from the Malacca Strait. China has so far proved successful with its acrobatic trick of "turning from nothing into something". With those newly built basis Chinese forces can shorten distances of only about 830 and 890 km to HCM City and Manila respectively, merely 490 km to Western Malaysia and not too far to reach Malacca Strait.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Satellite photographs show Chinese workers, vehicles and equipment all together pushing up reclaimed </span></span></span><span style="font-size: large;">lands</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"> and concrete structures at the Johson Reef and others once belonged to Vietnam but invaded by Chinese in 1988.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large; text-align: justify;">Chinese medias openly advertise that Johnson Reef used to be a small submerge rock but of an extremely important position has now </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large; text-align: justify;">being </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large; text-align: justify;">built into a strategic base. Reports reveal the PLA's South China Sea Fleet amphibious ships disguised as civilian vessels took 25 days to transport tanks 072 onto the Johnson Reef. The Qingdao Newspaper said that the artificial island base was blue-printed by the Planning Institute of Chinese Naval Design. China Press also pretend that once J-11 fighter jets are arranged here, the entire East Sea is within its combat. </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM_CtRC6gO8gPkPzwBz-UgUG2VNUYDL4gSyNarDhlzIRUbVTfZE_AgTNi_uQ_pGmCSR2ZMGgVosB2lMUs8MsVSdPuMMeuAKTIAmEdjWX1rCiYjw_WdzlIGhQyXfs-LDcLhDlp7GsgwMDw/s1600/Chau_Vien.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM_CtRC6gO8gPkPzwBz-UgUG2VNUYDL4gSyNarDhlzIRUbVTfZE_AgTNi_uQ_pGmCSR2ZMGgVosB2lMUs8MsVSdPuMMeuAKTIAmEdjWX1rCiYjw_WdzlIGhQyXfs-LDcLhDlp7GsgwMDw/s1600/Chau_Vien.jpg" height="394" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small; text-align: justify;">Chau Vien rock image taken on July 19, 2014 by the </span><span style="font-size: x-small; text-align: justify;">China </span><span style="font-size: x-small; text-align: justify;">Observations </span><span style="font-size: x-small; text-align: justify;">network</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; text-align: justify;"> </span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">According to the </span><span style="font-size: large;">Taiwan </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">News Agency, 6 Sept., former Deputy Defense Minister Lin Chung Bin called the 6 "islandized" reefs in Spratlys "a dangerous move" by turning them into trump carts and significantly enhancing ability to control the entire East Sea chess-board. He said that the type of fighters in Chinese military personnel present as J-11 or J-16 are of combat radius of about 1500 km. Once they are placed at this newly built base will help the combat scope of China's military covering the entire Southeast Asia. On the other hand, China can fully installed radar and eavesdropping equipment in these locations that Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines are within the radar sights of China. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBjANlo2dNtZNT3gIzSQTr1y0Kp2a9iHoVypiX6PRhHM6XA8CrfCTPFXizvpmeqoF4d_h_MAgScOUKDycnlWyTPjWH2T8wwrldHVMKXWFGUB-OqscYuDWceMxLURNdeOpA1KLO4nkxDkk/s1600/dao_gac_ma_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBjANlo2dNtZNT3gIzSQTr1y0Kp2a9iHoVypiX6PRhHM6XA8CrfCTPFXizvpmeqoF4d_h_MAgScOUKDycnlWyTPjWH2T8wwrldHVMKXWFGUB-OqscYuDWceMxLURNdeOpA1KLO4nkxDkk/s1600/dao_gac_ma_1.jpg" height="438" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">a sky view image taken recently of the Johnson Reef (Source: Internet)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The </span></span></span><span style="font-size: large;">Singapore </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Morning Paper said that on completion of the reclamation works, Chinese Army will build it like the Woody Island base with long-range search radar, signal stations and eavesdropping radar and radio. By then, all the countries around the East Sea extending to the Straits of Malacca and Singapore are all put within their eavesdropping range radio signals and warfare. At that time the entire South China Sea will turn into a "lake of China". </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The newspaper also said that with the Johnson Reef tuned into an artificial islands, the Chinese Navy will push its frontline bases in the East Sea southwards by 850 km, and if the American fleets from northern Indian Ocean entering the Straits of Malacca they will be falling within the monitoring of long-range reconnaissance aircraft and radio stations of the PLA. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The paper also commented that Johnson Reef of 5 km long, 0.4 km wide </span></span><span style="font-size: large;">is relatively large</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"> enough for the Chinese to built up a 2 km long runway for heavy combat aircraft like Su-30, J-11, J-10. This will put entire Straits of Malacca in their combat radius, and Vietnam will lose its depth combat in this region. At the same time, </span><span style="font-size: large;">northeast side of this </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">island is good enough for building </span><span style="font-size: large;">military harbors and </span><span style="font-size: large;">docks capable to </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">accommodate large frigates</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Besides, think a bit to see that with the Chinese military presence there, the </span><span style="font-size: large;">Itu Aba</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"> island now illegally </span><span style="font-size: large;"> occupied by Taiwan </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"> only 72 km away can be easily attacked and taken over by the Chinese when they need. That will certainly enhance considerably Beijing's military </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">posture in the region. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><b>I</b></span><b>n stead of playing </b><b style="font-family: inherit;">the role of a super power China chooses to play as a bullying big boy</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">According to the Former Deputy Minister of National Defense of Taiwan Lin Chung Bin, during a recent meeting of the Political Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping has launched a new concept: Protect high points in maritime strategic necessity, China's interests overseas become reasonable extension . In line with this </span><span style="font-size: large;">strategy of </span><span style="font-size: large;">10 "high point"</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">in the East Sea, China (main land) </span>has been <span style="font-family: inherit;">turning the 6 reefs in the Spratlys into floating islands. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The Taiwan </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">News Agency on 2 Sept. cited the editorials of the People's Daily newspaper calling the ninth meeting of the Politburo on 29 August the "learning phase of collective thematic focused on the military". During this session, Xi Jinping said that cultural and operational information is synthesized primarily military movements in the future, the Chinese military should focus on building real strength battle, just like new enlisted maximum external conditions. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The People's Daily newspaper also said that the national interest of China is constantly challenged by the United States, and even both Japan and the Philippines are invasive and therefore increasing the urgency of military reform. Xi considered it an important development and emphasized military </span></span><span style="font-size: large;">creativity </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">as well as to deal with the menace in the future. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Also in this session, Xi Jinping introduced the new concept of "four changes" aimed at setting 4 ideological direction of the war of information and setting ideas, views, synthetic strategies security countries. Xi also emphasized the concept of "real war" in the military establishment on the basis of ideology, "the entire army as one chess --board, the entire nation as one chess-board." </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Not arguing the validity of the new concept of leader Xi Jinping one can feel the aggressiveness right in the above-mentioned terms that send out unhealthy signals to China's neighboring states and the world as well. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">In another noticeable event, while recently visiting Australia on 7 Sept. Foreign Minister Wang Yi offered a new proposal called "4 respects" urging the world to perform four respects: (1) respect history; (2) respect international law; (3) respect direct bilateral negotiations between the parties involved; and (4) respect efforts to maintain peace and stability in the East Sea of China and ASEAN. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Wang Yi's "4 respects" sound so hypocritical that nobody could believe him. Comparing this "</span><span style="font-size: large;">4 respects"</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"> with reality one could see that it is very China who has been violating them systematically for many years now. If China truly wants the "4 respects" then there would be no problem with the East Sea. And there are contradictions right in the statements of Mr. Wang Yi and his leader </span><span style="font-size: large;">Xi Jinping's </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">doctrine of "strategic high points" and "</span><span style="font-size: large;">overseas</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"> interest </span><span style="font-size: large;">extension</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">". </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"> Once again, these make people see the Chinese as real masters of the behavior of "speaking one way and doing another way". </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Let's </span><span style="font-size: large;">recall that after the Vietnam War, the United States, for subjective and objective reasons, had withdrawn its forces almost entirely out of Southeast Asia and partially from Western Pacific region. However, in stead of replacing the vaccum by peaceful means, China deliberately used force by using "American threat" to prevent regional countries, particularly Vietnam, to improve relations with the United States. This way of behaviour is so ridiculous, but quite effective for China's conspiracy to monopolize the East Sea. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Without fearing any individual regional country as well as collective ASEAN, except the United States, Beijing has been using the disguised </span><span style="font-size: large;">notion</span><span style="font-size: large;"> of "bilateral negotiations" and "joint development" between related regional countries in order to rule out the American role in settling the East Sea dispute . At the same time China has actively played the policy of "divide and rule" to weaken ASEAN . Most </span><span style="font-size: large;">ASEAN member countries, including the Philippines and Vietnam as two main elements also felt into this tricky trap. Vietnam in particular finds itself difficult to maintain balance between its territorial interests and political </span><span style="font-size: large;">ideology, thus being </span><span style="font-size: large;">repeatedly used</span><span style="font-size: large;"> as a card by China. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><b>How to cope with the aftermath? </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large; text-align: justify;">Perhaps ASEAN and the world, including the United States have </span><span style="font-size: large; text-align: justify;">until now</span><span style="font-size: large; text-align: justify;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large; text-align: justify;">realized the real intention of China using the strategic location of the Johnson Reef. But it turns out rather late now to deal with. The hesitant attitude of a divided collective ASEAN in recent years, and most recently they agreed not to discuss the American proposal to "freeze" the East Sea status just because of an unreasonable reason that ASEAN has already had DOC and are discussing </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large; text-align: justify;">COC </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large; text-align: justify;">with the China(!). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Remember over the past decade, ASEAN and the world have been passively running after to deal with tricky measures set up by Beijing itself but has never put out any collective action that can help preventing the situation getting worse and worse. Only one instrument reached between ASEAN and China is the DOC more than ten years ago. But this includes merely cliché absolutely without any deterrent effect whereas serving as a good excuse for China to buy time for its territory encroaching. Series of Chinese aggressive acts, sometimes with the Philippines, sometimes with Vietnam, are mainly for the purpose of maritime encroachment, not for fishing or natural resources purposes as they pretend. After invasion and occupation of the entire Paracel in 1974, China invaded 6 rocks at the Paracel in 1988, then some positions near the eastern Philippines, including Mischief which Beijing called "Chung Sa". The most</span> blatant<span style="font-family: inherit;"> action took place in</span> 2011 when Beijing <span style="font-family: inherit;">unilaterally proclaimed the so-called "Sansha City" and sice then sending tens of thousands of ships across the East Sea as a kind of civilian war of aggression. This act of war happens constantly even deep inside waters of Vietnam, the Philippines and other litoral states while China unilaterally ban boats from other countries. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large; text-align: justify;">The Haiyang 981 oil rigs event </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large; text-align: justify;">in May </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large; text-align: justify;">showed China's extravaganza, despite laws and international public opinion. But looking closely at the whole intrigue of China, one may see it only the old tactic "talk East, do West" of the ancient Chinese. </span><br />
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<b style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-large;">International roles are needed for settlement of the East Sea disputes</b><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">ASEAN has so far proved far from a matching rival of China and not an appropriate mechanism to deal with the East Sea dispute in a fair, equitable with China. If anything, it needs more participation from outside of the region, particularly the role of international institutions including international courts and UN. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">However, it is regrettable that so far the world has proved powerless against China as the second super power allowing itself to violate many international laws, including the Law of the Sea, the rules of marine ecological environment, the right to livelihood of fishermen, the use of force, etc... </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As for the East Sea dispute, China has come up from having no position in the East Sea to having a "city" and military bases across the East Sea. This outcome seems surprising and difficult to deal with not only for Vietnam, the Philippines and ASEAN but also for the world when the Chinese fox has already put not only its feet but also its whole body into the the blanket of East Sea. Whether someone has enough power and capacity to force or request Beijing to back off or maintain the status quo in the East Sea? Probably not. Perhaps hopes may come from some factors outside the region. Beside the United States with its "axis </span></span>rotation<span style="font-family: inherit;">", other medium power states having direct interests in the East Sea like Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, ect ... will come up to cooperate with ASEAN in </span>specific practical measures<span style="font-family: inherit;"> to protect freedom of navigation in the East Sea . This is the most modest goals may be. </span></span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFqvfHlNPg2UtVKx4x9ftfmK87RApGocI4EcTXDbYkLHbfbJ0buYVxNt12i_4J-7ksm-xW0zD-F_lr0wYVa3ko1PlJSZ6Olw4Y7C4PkUJXiySire-m6pIofkYKU40LhP0h4rV1tu20mnI/s1600/HC.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFqvfHlNPg2UtVKx4x9ftfmK87RApGocI4EcTXDbYkLHbfbJ0buYVxNt12i_4J-7ksm-xW0zD-F_lr0wYVa3ko1PlJSZ6Olw4Y7C4PkUJXiySire-m6pIofkYKU40LhP0h4rV1tu20mnI/s1600/HC.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The "cow tongue" dotted lines printed on pages of China's new Passport (Source: Internet)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Perhaps, when a super power refusing to play by the rules, collective pressure of the international community can take more effect. Let's hope the world waking up to deal with the sleeping lion that has now wakened up and posing serious thread in monopolising the entire East Sea. Would the world accept one day people or boats and aircraft when came in and out of this sea will have to wait for Chinese visa? Ofcourse not!</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06601450641503959947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7383437858640407006.post-28546527472451005762014-09-03T10:37:00.000+07:002014-09-03T10:37:10.873+07:00Hanoi playing risky game between US, China<div class="row-fluid article-title" style="background-color: #f6f6f6; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 10px; width: 790px;">
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">By Zhou Fangyin Source:Global Times Published: 2014-9-2 19:38:01</span></h3>
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In mid-August, Martin Dempsey became the first US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to visit Vietnam since 1971. This four-day visit by the US top military officer bore symbolic significance for the growing defense and security cooperation between Hanoi and Washington.<br /><br />Many analysts deem this visit as a major step forward for both countries to reinforce their military ties.<br /><br />After Dempsey's visit, another diplomatic move by Vietnam captured headlines. Le Hong Anh, a special envoy of the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee, and also a politburo member, paid a visit to Beijing on Friday, an ice-breaking one since the oil rig crisis in May.<br /><br />It is interesting to compare the two trips. Dempsey's visit has sent a signal that Vietnam and the US are looking forward to closer cooperation on security, including the possibility of Washington easing its sanctions on arms exports to Vietnam. This might boost Hanoi's confidence in tackling Beijing.<br /><br />But Le's visit has sent a different signal that Hanoi still wants to value a stable and positively interactive relationship with Beijing, despite the fact that both sides have been at daggers drawn in the past few months.<br /><br />The two signals may contradict each other. A stronger Vietnam-US military relationship will raise Beijing's suspicion about Hanoi's honesty in mending its ways.<br /><br />Meanwhile, the special envoy's visit to China will also make Washington realize that Hanoi will not pick sides and seek an alliance with the US, even if Washington tries to draw Hanoi over to its side by offering military assistance.<br /><br />This kind of "middle way" has disappointed both China and the US to some extent. It seems that Vietnam is trying to employ this self-contradictory approach to align its own national interests.<br /><br />On the one hand, Hanoi needs Washington's backup, but cannot be truly dependent on Washington.<br /><br />The mayhem in Iraq, Afghanistan and <a href="http://backup.globaltimes.cn/SPECIALCOVERAGE/Ukrainecrisis.aspx" style="color: black; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Ukraine</a> and Washington's feeble countermeasures have shown the high risks that any country has to take if it places all its bets on the US in the face of crisis.<br /><br />Washington is taking a much prudent attitude toward its security promises to other nations.<br /><br />Considering the simmering South China Sea disputes, there are very few benefits Washington can earn from giving Vietnam security promises. On the contrary, it has to bear great risks and costs if it has to fulfill them.<br /><br />What's more, a historical grudge still haunts Vietnam and the US, and it won't be easy to turn over a new leaf.<br /><br />As a result, even if the military and national security cooperation between Vietnam and the US can improve, the momentum will still be checked.<br /><br />On the other hand, Vietnam knows that it cannot challenge China in the South China Sea at the cost of leading the bilateral relationship into a deadlock.<br /><br />Hanoi can choose its friends but not its neighbors. Small and medium-sized nations won't engage in full-scale confrontations with their neighboring major powers, unless they have no alternative.<br /><br />Hanoi resorting to provocations when dealing with China is an unwise strategy. Vietnam should employ more flexible approaches when its relationship with China turns sour, because elasticity is badly needed for both sides to achieve compromise at certain times.<br /><br />The ideal scenario for Hanoi is that it can have wider access to Washington's support in terms of politics, national security and diplomacy amid escalating tensions with China. And meanwhile, it can be more capable of taking advantage of this support, though much limited, to make a fuss in the South China Sea.<br /><br />This ideal scenario can only be acquired on the condition that Hanoi is able to maintain the stability and balance of a triangular relationship with Washington and Beijing.<br /><br />However, it is not just Vietnam that makes the call. Vietnam is taking risks by gaining advantage from both the US and China. China, has been exercising restraint. But the situation may go out of control if Vietnam keeps being provocative.<br /><br />Having things both ways between China and the US is a dangerous game for Vietnam. Hanoi should stop swaying and hold a fixed position on the South China Sea issue. Hanoi needs greater strategic wisdom, rather than just some contingent, opportunist moves.<br /><br /><em>The author is a professor at the Guangdong Research Institute for International Strategies. </em><em style="color: black; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"><a href="mailto:opinion@globaltimes.com.cn" style="color: black; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">opinion@globaltimes.com.cn</a></em></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06601450641503959947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7383437858640407006.post-43158688906206942972014-09-02T10:59:00.003+07:002014-09-02T10:59:55.918+07:00China expands runway, harbour at Woody Island<div class="info" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15px; padding-left: 15px;">
<h1 style="color: #333333; font-size: 3rem; line-height: 36px; margin: 0px 0px 18px;">
<b style="color: #444444; font-size: 1.3rem; line-height: 20px;">James Hardy, London</b><span style="color: #444444; font-size: 1.3rem; line-height: 20px;"> </span><span style="color: #444444; font-size: 1.3rem; line-height: 20px;">- IHS Jane's Defence Weekly</span></h1>
<div class="date" style="color: #d27c26; font-size: 1.3rem; margin-bottom: 12px;">
29 August 2014</div>
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Airbus Defence and Space imagery shows land reclamation, harbour modifications and other ongoing construction at Yongxing Dao, also known as Woody Island: part of the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea. (CNES 2014, Distribution Airbus DS/Spot Image/IHS)</div>
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China continues to expand Woody Island, the largest of the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea.</div>
<div style="font-size: 1.4rem; line-height: 1.4;">
Satellite imagery shows that since October 2013 China has undertaken substantial land reclamation, harbour redevelopment and other infrastructure construction on the island, which is known as Yongxing Dao by China and Phu Lam Island by Vietnam.</div>
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China has occupied Woody Island since 1956 and, since then, has established a military garrison, coastal defensive positions, the runway, four large aircraft hangars, communications facilities, and a municipal headquarters. Vietnam claims the Paracels, as does Taiwan.</div>
<div style="font-size: 1.4rem; line-height: 1.4;">
Previous satellite imagery analysis by <i>IHS Jane's</i> shows that between 2005 and 2011 authorities constructed a new harbour on the west side of the island; since October 2013 a breakwater immediately south of that harbour has been removed and more dredging work has been carried out.</div>
<div style="font-size: 1.4rem; line-height: 1.4;">
The land reclamation is occurring at two areas in particular: at either end of the island's 2,400 m-long runway, and to fill in the gap between Woody Island and the causeway to Shi Dao (Rocky Island): a small outcrop that is believed to house a secure communications facility.</div>
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The dredgers are depositing sand onto an area on the southwest end of the runway; spoil is also being deposited on the runway's northeast end. If all of this new land is used for the runway, then the strip will increase from 2,400 m to 2,700-2,800 m. This increases the safety envelope for PLA Air Force bombers like the H-6 and strategic transport aircraft such as the Ilyushin Il-76.</div>
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IHS Maritime has used AISLive data to identify one of the dredgers being used as <i>Xin Hai Tun</i> , a cutter suction dredger built by Guangzhou Wenchong Shipyard and operated by SDC Orient Dredging and Engineering. Other dredgers operating in the area appear to be barges fitted with clamshell dredgers. Alongside are a number of container ships, including one called <i>Xing He Yuan 1</i> , which is owned by Taizhou Xinghe Shipping Co Ltd. The company's website highlights its expertise in dyke and pier construction.</div>
<h3 style="font-size: 1.3rem; margin: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
ANALYSIS</h3>
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Along with the Spratly Islands, the Paracels are at the heart of the continuing South China Sea (SCS) dispute. Whereas the Spratlys' location in the southern part of the SCS has previously limited Chinese activities there, the Paracels' proximity to Hainan island has meant Beijing has been able to expand its jurisdiction and administration of them. Woody Island has been a particular focus and, in July 2012, was designated the capital of Sansha Prefecture, which is part of Hainan province.</div>
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The moves to extend the runway and rebuild the harbour on the west side of the island will enhance Woody Island's utility as a military base from which to project power in the SCS. The Paracels' strategic location close to the centre of the SCS also means China can use them as a base for constabulary operations, whether that is enforcing fishing regulations unilaterally imposed by Beijing or to potentially interdict shipping traversing the region, where Beijing move to do this as part of a wider sea control strategy.</div>
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In the short to medium term, it is unlikely that China would move to do so, as the sea lanes in this part of the SCS serve its ports - such as Hong Kong and Shanghai - and as such freedom of passage is in China's interest.</div>
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<b>Related articles:</b></div>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.janes.com/article/40100/escalation-of-sino-vietnamese-south-china-sea-dispute-poses-longer-term-challenges-to-stability-of-vietnam-s-government" style="color: #3390ff; text-decoration: none;">Escalation of Sino-Vietnamese South China Sea dispute poses longer term challenges to stability of Vietnam's government</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.janes.com/article/40335/more-details-emerge-on-china-s-reclamation-activities-in-spratlys" style="color: #3390ff; text-decoration: none;">More details emerge on China's reclamation activities in Spratlys</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.janes.com/article/39716/china-goes-all-out-with-major-island-building-project-in-spratlys" style="color: #3390ff; text-decoration: none;">China goes all out with major island building project in Spratlys</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.janes.com/article/37973/china-building-artificial-island-in-south-china-sea" style="color: #3390ff; text-decoration: none;">China building artificial island in South China Sea</a></li>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06601450641503959947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7383437858640407006.post-79399505665148005572014-08-31T06:46:00.000+07:002014-12-01T17:28:44.036+07:00Beijing continues pressing Hanoi <h2 style="color: #005689; font-family: Georgia, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; line-height: 25.2000007629395px; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px 0px 20px; text-align: justify; width: 640px;">
<i><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">Most recently soon after Vietnam Communist Party Politburo's Special Envoy Le Hong Anh's visit to Beijing the Global Times on its issue dated August 27, 2014 published an article containing hostile arrogant attitudes towards Vietnam. More than any words this article once more </span><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">shows </span></i><i><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">clearly </span></i><i><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">Chinese leaders's double-faced scheme in dealing with its Southern "brother of ideology". </span><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">Hereunder is the article. </span></i></h2>
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<span id="p_title"><z><z>Hanoi</z>'<z>s</z> <z>deeds</z> <z>matter</z> <z>more</z> <z>than</z> <z>words</z></z></span><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span></h2>
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line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">Vietnamese</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">Foreign</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">Ministry</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">spokesman</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">Le</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">Hai</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">Binh</z><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">said</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">on</z><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">Monday</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">that</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">Vietnam</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">regrets</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">the</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">damage</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">to</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">foreign-invested</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">companies</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">and</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">the</z><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">deaths</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">and</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">injuries</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">of</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">Chinese</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">workers</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">in</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">the</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">riots</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">during</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">May</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">and</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">that</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">it</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">has</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">made</z><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">compensation</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">to</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">affected</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">companies</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">and</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">intends</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">to</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">provide</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;"> </span><z style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">more</z><span style="color: #353434; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">.</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<z><z>However</z>, <z>Vietnam</z> <z>is</z> <z>not</z> <z>a</z> <z>country</z> <z>that</z> <z>always</z> <z>walks</z> <z>the</z> <z>talk</z>, <z>so</z> <z>we</z> <z>have</z> <z>to</z> <z>wait</z> <z>to</z> <z>see</z> <z>its</z><z>deeds</z>.</z></div>
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<div style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 0px 0px 20px; width: 640px;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<z><z>Vietnam</z> <z>is</z> <z>a</z> <z>highly</z> <z>diversified</z> <z>country</z> <z>among</z> <z>China</z>'<z>s</z> <z>neighbors</z>. <z>And</z> <z>now</z> <z>it</z> <z>is</z> <z>difficult</z> <z>to </z><z>say</z> <z>which</z> <z>nation</z> <z>displays</z> <z>more</z> <z>interest</z> <z>in</z> <z>developing</z> <z>the</z> <z>bilateral</z> <z>ties</z>. <z>With</z> <z>a</z> <z>brewing</z><z>territorial</z> <z>dispute</z>, <z>the</z> <z>two</z> <z>neighbors</z> <z>have</z> <z>suffered</z> <z>several</z> <z>battles</z> <z>since</z> <z>China</z> <z>adopted</z> <z>the </z><z>policy</z> <z>of</z> <z>reform</z> <z>and</z> <z>opening</z> <z>up</z> <z>in</z> 1978. <z>Similar</z> <z>political</z> <z>systems</z> <z>facilitate</z> <z>the</z> <z>two</z> <z>sides</z> <z>to </z><z>communicate</z> <z>with</z> <z>each</z> <z>other</z> <z>but</z> <z>play</z> <z>a</z> <z>quite</z> <z>limited</z> <z>role</z> <z>in</z> <z>eliminating</z> <z>the</z> <z>differences</z>.</z></div>
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<z><z>Both</z> <z>China</z> <z>and</z> <z>Vietnam</z> <z>have</z> <z>advantages</z> <z>in</z> <z>this</z> <z>simmering</z> <z>row</z>. <z>Beijing</z> <z>has</z> <z>a</z> <z>strategic </z><z>edge</z> <z>and</z> <z>a</z> <z>powerful</z> <z>resolve</z>, <z>while</z> <z>Hanoi</z> <z>has</z> <z>a</z> <z>geographical</z> <z>advantage</z> <z>as</z> <z>it</z> <z>is</z> <z>located </z></z></div>
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<z><z>nearer</z> <z>to</z> <z>the</z> <z>South</z> <z>China</z> <z>Sea</z>.</z></div>
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<z><z>Furthermore</z>, <z>China</z>'<z>s</z> <z>policy</z> <z>must</z> <z>remain</z> <z>consistent</z> <z>with</z> <z>its</z> <z>global</z> <z>strategic</z> <z>interests</z>.</z></div>
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<z><z>Plus</z>, <z>the</z> <z>US</z>'"<z>pivot</z> <z>to</z> <z>Asia</z>" <z>strategy</z> <z>provides</z> <z>Vietnam</z> <z>with</z> <z>an</z> <z>opportunity</z> <z>to</z> <z>involve</z> <z>the</z><z>greatest</z> <z>power</z> <z>in</z> <z>the</z> <z>contention</z>. <z>Although</z> <z>Washington</z> <z>and</z> <z>Hanoi</z> <z>are</z> <z>not</z> <z>military</z> <z>allies</z>,<z>they</z> <z>can</z> <z>still</z> <z>support</z> <z>each</z> <z>other</z> <z>to</z> <z>gain</z> <z>benefit</z>.</z></div>
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<z><z>Meanwhile</z>, <z>Japan</z> <z>and</z> <z>the</z> <z>Philippines</z> <z>have</z> <z>also</z> <z>been</z> <z>stirring</z> <z>up</z> <z>provocations</z> <z>in</z> <z>the</z> <z>South</z><z>China</z> <z>Sea</z>. <z>All</z> <z>these</z> <z>elements</z> <z>have</z> <z>endowed</z> <z>Hanoi</z> <z>with</z> <z>capital</z> <z>to</z> <z>contend</z> <z>with</z> <z>China</z>.</z></div>
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<z><z>It</z> <z>should</z> <z>be</z> <z>noted</z> <z>that</z> <z>this</z> <z>is</z> <z>a</z> <z>normal</z> <z>state</z> <z>of</z> <z>the</z> <z>South</z> <z>China</z> <z>Sea</z> <z>but</z> <z>Beijing</z> <z>will</z> <z>be</z> <z>the</z><z>deciding</z> <z>force</z> <z>once</z> <z>the</z> <z>Sino-Vietnamese</z> <z>contradiction</z> <z>flares</z> <z>up</z>. <z>China</z> <z>is</z> <z>capable</z> <z>of </z></z></div>
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<z><z>temporarily</z> <z>laying</z> <z>aside</z> <z>other</z> <z>strategic</z> <z>endeavors</z> <z>to</z> <z>concentrate</z> <z>on</z> <z>dealing</z> <z>with</z> <z>any </z></z></div>
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<z><z>provocateur</z> <z>in</z> <z>its</z> <z>periphery</z>. <z>This</z> <z>circumstance</z>, <z>once</z> <z>happening</z>, <z>will</z> <z>incur</z> <z>more</z> <z>losses</z> <z>to </z><z>Hanoi</z> <z>than</z> <z>to</z> <z>Beijing</z>.</z></div>
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<z><z>Vietnam</z> <z>lacks</z> <z>the</z> <z>impetus</z> <z>to</z> <z>improve</z> <z>relations</z> <z>with</z> <z>China</z>. <z>This</z> <z>also</z> <z>explains</z> <z>why</z> <z>Hanoi</z> <z>is</z><z>rather</z> <z>to</z> <z>play</z> <z>Taichi</z> <z>with</z> <z>China</z>. <z>As</z> <z>socialist</z> <z>nations</z>, <z>both</z> <z>of</z> <z>them</z> <z>have</z> <z>borne</z> <z>political </z><z>pressure</z> <z>from</z> <z>the</z> <z>West</z>.</z></div>
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<div style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 0px 0px 20px; width: 640px;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<z><z>Whether</z> <z>the</z> <z>incumbent</z> <z>Vietnamese</z> <z>government</z> <z>expects</z> <z>to</z> <z>mend</z> <z>fences</z> <z>with</z> <z>China</z> <z>is</z> <z>up </z><z>to</z> <z>its</z> <z>domestic</z> <z>political</z> <z>stability</z>.</z></div>
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<div style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 0px 0px 20px; width: 640px;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<z><z>A</z> <z>fundamental</z> <z>solution</z> <z>to</z> <z>the</z> <z>intractable</z> <z>issue</z> <z>between</z> <z>China</z> <z>and</z> <z>Vietnam</z> <z>calls</z> <z>for</z> <z>a</z><z>favorable</z> <z>regional</z> <z>environment</z>. <z>Beijing</z> <z>can</z>'<z>t</z> <z>afford</z> <z>to</z> <z>allow</z> <z>the</z> <z>bilateral</z> <z>conundrum</z> <z>to </z><z>drag</z> <z>on</z>.</z></div>
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<div style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 0px 0px 20px; width: 640px;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<z><z>We</z> <z>must</z> <z>learn</z> <z>to</z> <z>care</z> <z>for</z> <z>the</z> <z>interests</z> <z>in</z> <z>different</z> <z>directions</z> <z>and</z> <z>adopt</z> <z>a</z> <z>positive</z> <z>and </z></z></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<z><z>staunch</z> <z>attitude</z> <z>toward</z> <z>this</z> <z>issue</z>. <z>We</z> <z>should</z> <z>let</z> <z>Vietnam</z> <z>realize</z> <z>that</z> <z>siding</z> <z>with </z></z></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<z><z>Washington</z> <z>to</z> <z>contain</z> <z>Beijing</z> <z>will</z> <z>cost</z> <z>it</z> <z>more</z> <z>than</z> <z>taking</z> <z>a</z> <z>China-friendly</z> <z>policy</z> <z>as</z> <z>a </z><z>national</z> <z>strategy</z>.</z></div>
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(Editor:Liang Jun、Huang Jin)</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06601450641503959947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7383437858640407006.post-71052923553554013892014-08-28T11:33:00.002+07:002014-12-01T17:17:34.626+07:00Is China’s Charm Offensive Dead?<h2 style="border: 0px; color: #444444; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'Lucida Sans', Geneva, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #606060; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17.68000030517578px;">Publication: China Brief Volume: 14 Issue: 15</span></h2>
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July 31, 2014 10:17 AM Age: 28 days</div>
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By: <a href="http://www.jamestown.org/articles-by-author/?no_cache=1&tx_cablanttnewsstaffrelation_pi1%5Bauthor%5D=410" style="border: 0px; color: #7b273a; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Bonnie S. Glaser</a>, <a href="http://www.jamestown.org/articles-by-author/?no_cache=1&tx_cablanttnewsstaffrelation_pi1%5Bauthor%5D=834" style="border: 0px; color: #7b273a; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Deep Pal</a></div>
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<i>A series of seemingly unprovoked actions in the South and East China Sea has been described as an abandonment of the “second charm offensive” launched last year by Chinese President Xi Jinping. However, China has continued to pursue economic and diplomatic cooperation with its Southeast Asian neighbors even as it contests territory with them at sea. Rather than choosing between two different approaches to “periphery diplomacy,” Xi is attempting to unite them in a single, “proactive” strategy that advances Chinese interests.</i></div>
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Less than a year after Chinese President Xi Jinping put forward a diplomatic strategy focused on building good relationships with China’s neighbors, China appears to have soured relations with almost every country in East and Southeast Asia. From early May to mid-July, Vietnam and China were locked in confrontation over China’s deployment of drilling platform HYSY 981 in disputed waters. The Philippines, still pursuing an international arbitration in which China refuses to participate, filed a diplomatic protest accusing China of land reclamation activities on Johnson South Reef, one of five outcrops in the Spratly Islands where the Chinese are allegedly transforming reefs into islands (<i>The Philippine Star, </i>June 13). After two near misses in the airspace over the East China Sea between Japanese and Chinese aircraft in May and June, Japan warned of the danger of a serious accident, prompting China to accuse the Japanese aircraft of carrying out “threatening moves.” Indonesia and Malaysia, usually reluctant to offend Beijing, have also felt the need to respond to Chinese actions, the former naming China as a potential target of military exercises and the latter joining the United States in criticizing Beijing in a joint statement by President Obama and Prime Minister Najib (<i>The Jakarta Post</i>, April 1; <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/04/27/joint-statement-president-obama-and-prime-minister-najib-malaysia-0" style="border: 0px; color: #7b273a; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">The White House</a>, “Joint Statement by President Obama and Prime Minister Najib of Malaysia,” April 27).</div>
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The situation is a far cry from the same time last year. Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang spent the better part of their first year at the helm travelling around China’s immediate neighborhood, including Southeast Asia, where they promised increased trade, signed business agreements, promoted schemes to enhance ASEAN connectivity, proposed the formation of an Asian infrastructure development bank and reassured the region that China’s rise would bring prosperity to its neighbors. At the time, many observers described their sojourns as China’s “second charm offensive” (for example, see Phuong Nguyen, <a href="http://csis.org/publication/chinas-charm-offensive-signals-new-strategic-era-southeast-asia" style="border: 0px; color: #7b273a; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">CSIS</a>, October 17, 2013). The first charm offensive followed a decade beginning in the late 1980s marked by Chinese seizure of disputed land features in the South China Sea and passage of a Territorial Sea Law. It was launched in 1997 when Beijing declared during the Asian financial crisis that it would not devalue the RMB and was reinforced a few years later when China proposed a China-ASEAN free trade agreement, and lasted approximately 10 years.</div>
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Another sign suggesting a second wave of China’s charm offensive was the convening of a much publicized two-day foreign policy work conference last October, with Xi Jinping presiding. It was the first such conference since 2006, and the first ever focused on China’s foreign policy toward its periphery. Xi put forward the diplomatic concept of “amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness.” To emphasize his vision of shared prosperity for the region, Xi also introduced the notion of a “viewpoint of values and interests” (<i>yiliguan</i>), which claims that China will not forget justice and morals in the pursuit of its interests (see also <i><a href="http://www.jamestown.org/programs/chinabrief/single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=41594&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=688&no_cache=1" style="border: 0px; color: #7b273a; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">China Brief</a></i>, November 2, 2013). Nations in the region and the United States heaved sighs of relief as they concluded prematurely that Beijing recognized it had overreached and was correcting its policy missteps.</div>
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Rather than laying low, however, China has taken a series of assertive actions in the past year that have led to increasing mistrust even from countries previously on good terms with Beijing, seemingly undermining its own charm offensive and driving its neighbors into closer security cooperation with the United States. Is Xi Jinping’s “periphery diplomacy initiative” dead within a year of its unveiling?</div>
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<b>End of Periphery Diplomacy?</b></div>
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At the conference last fall, in the presence of the entire Standing Committee of the Politburo, various organs of the Central Committee, State Counselors, members of the Central Leading Small Group with responsibility for foreign affairs and Chinese ambassadors to important countries, Xi exhorted his countrymen to “advance diplomacy with neighboring countries, strive to win a sound surrounding environment for China’s development and enable neighboring countries to benefit more from China’s development for the purpose of common development” (<a href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2013-10/25/c_117878897.htm" style="border: 0px; color: #7b273a; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Xinhua</a>, October 25, 2013). At the same time, however, he emphasized a key strategic goal of Chinese diplomacy: China, Xi said, “needs to protect and make the best use of the strategic opportunity period [extending to 2020] to safeguard China’s national sovereignty, security and development interests.”</div>
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While outsiders may consider promoting a sound surrounding environment and defending territorial claims to be contradictory goals, in the minds of the Chinese leadership, they are not. Beijing does not believe that its present actions amount to abandoning the “second charm offensive.” It is still committed to sharing the fruits of its economic success with its neighbors; promises made in the run up to the periphery diplomacy initiative continue to be in force. The “Maritime Silk Road,” an ambitious plan to build ports and boost maritime connectivity with Southeast Asian and Indian Ocean littoral countries that Xi advanced while addressing the Indonesian parliament is being funded and actively promoted (<i>Washington Post</i>, October 9, 2013). Preparations are underway to launch the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank with capital of $50 billion, paid for by its members.</div>
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Beijing’s proactive economic diplomacy is part of a larger strategy aimed at binding its neighbors in a web of incentives that increase their reliance on China and raise the cost to them of adopting a confrontational policy towards Beijing on territorial disputes. At the same time, China continues to engage in a steady progression of small steps, none of which by itself is a <i>casus belli</i>, to gradually change the status quo in its favor. In the near term, China’s leaders anticipate some resistance. Over time, however, they calculate that their growing leverage will be sufficient to persuade their weaker and vulnerable neighbors to accede to Chinese territorial demands.</div>
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<b>Continuities and Discontinuities</b></div>
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China’s uncompromising stance on issues of territorial integrity and sovereignty is hardly new. Hu Jintao’s political report delivered to the 17th Party Congress in 2007 noted that “We are determined to safeguard China’s sovereignty, security and territorial integrity and help maintain world peace.” Five years later, the political report to the 18th Party Congress, which had Xi Jinping’s stamp of approval, used somewhat tougher language, saying “We are firm in our resolve to uphold China’s sovereignty, security and development interests and will never yield to any outside pressure.”</div>
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In between the two Party Congresses, Beijing authoritatively defined Chinese core interests as including sovereignty and territorial integrity. In his closing remarks at the July 2009 U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo, listed and ranked China’s core interests as upholding our basic systems, our national security; sovereignty and territorial integrity; and economic and social sustained development (<a href="http://www.state.gov/secretary/20092013clinton/rm/2009a/july/126599.htm" style="border: 0px; color: #7b273a; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">U.S. Department of State</a>, “Closing Remarks for U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue,” July 28, 2009). A similar list was included in a White Paper on Peaceful Development issued by China’s State Council in 2011 (<a href="http://english.gov.cn/official/2011-09/06/content_1941354.htm" style="border: 0px; color: #7b273a; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Chinese Government’s Official Web Portal</a>, “Full Text: China’s Peaceful Development,” September, 2011).</div>
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After taking power, Xi Jinping forcefully articulated China’s resolve to defend Chinese sovereignty and territory. As early as July 2013, Xi Jinping told the 25-member Politburo that “No country should presume that we will trade our core interests or that we will allow harm to be done to our sovereignty, security or development interests,” even as he reaffirmed China’s offer, first put forward by Deng Xiaoping, to shelve disputes and carry out joint development (<i><a href="http://www.bjreview.com.cn/print/txt/2013-08/26/content_562998.htm" style="border: 0px; color: #7b273a; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Beijing Review</a></i>, August 29, 2013). At the October 2013 periphery diplomacy conference, Xi twice referred to the need to safeguard the country’s sovereignty as part of its diplomacy in areas along its borders (Xinhua, October 25, 2013).</div>
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Although China’s renewed assertiveness on territorial matters began under Hu Jintao, Xi has advanced Chinese policy to include not only <i>reactive, but also</i> <i>proactive</i> assertiveness. In June 2012, Beijing took advantage of Manila’s initial mistake of dispatching a warship to arrest Chinese fishermen at Scarborough Shoal to seize control of the reef and its surrounding waters. China viewed this episode as a great victory, with lessons on applying a combination of diplomatic pressure, economic coercion and paramilitary intimidation during periods of confrontation. When the Japanese government purchased three of the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands from a private Japanese owner in September 2012, Beijing began conducting regular patrols in the islands’ 12-nautical mile territorial waters in a bid to challenge Tokyo’s administrative control over them.</div>
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Yet, when China announced the establishment of a new air defense identification zone in the East China Sea in November 2013 that overlapped with similar zones set up decades earlier by Japan, South Korean and Taiwan, there was no immediate provocation. Similarly, in the recent stand-off with Vietnam, there was no proximate instigation that led to the deployment of the oil rig. On the contrary, Chinese companies financed the operations themselves, ostensibly under orders from Beijing (see also <i><a href="http://www.jamestown.org/programs/chinabrief/single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=42519&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=758&no_cache=1" style="border: 0px; color: #7b273a; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">China Brief</a>, </i>June 19). The rig operated in a block owned by China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC). Another state-owned firm, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), financed the project through its subsidiary China Oilfield Services Limited (COSL), which owns the rig. </div>
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Whereas China’s approach to handling territorial disputes with its neighbors under prior leaders was characterized by alternating periods of coercion and charm offensive, Xi is clearly comfortable pursuing both simultaneously. He is convinced that China can preserve good relations with its neighbors at the same time that it attempts to change the status quo in China’s favor in the East and South China Seas.</div>
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Prior Chinese leaders consciously avoided excessive strains with too many neighbors at the same time and sought to keep relations with the United States on a positive, stable footing. Xi Jinping is evidently willing to tolerate a relatively high level of tensions with numerous countries over territorial issues. This includes ties with the United States, which have become increasingly contentious as the Obama administration has sharply condemned Beijing’s use of coercion and intimidation against nations on its periphery (<a href="http://www.state.gov/p/eap/rls/rm/2014/02/221293.htm" style="border: 0px; color: #7b273a; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">U.S. Department of State</a>, “Maritime Disputes in East Asia,” February 5).</div>
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<b>Promoting Proactive Diplomacy</b></div>
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Beijing has quietly discarded Deng Xiaoping’s guideline to “observe calmly, secure our position, hide our capacities and bide our time, be good at maintaining a low profile and never claim leadership.” Chinese sources reveal that Deng’s directive—known in shorthand as the <i>taoguang yanghui</i> strategy—is no longer referenced in internal meetings and party documents. While no new guideline has yet appeared in its place, potential successor formulations all advance a more proactive diplomacy.</div>
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At the periphery diplomacy conference last October, Xi advocated that China be “more<i> proactive </i>in promoting periphery diplomacy.” He used the phrase <i>fenfa youwei</i>, which is often translated as enthusiastic, but suggests a more assertive approach. In the same speech Xi also used at least two other terms in the same speech—<i>gengjia jiji</i>, meaning “more active” and <i>gengjia zhudong</i> meaning “take greater initiative,” on both occasions referring to China’s relations with its neighbors. Since the periphery diplomacy conference, various Chinese phrases have been used by senior officials to promote a more “proactive” foreign policy. Asked to describe the most salient characteristic of Chinese policy toward other countries in 2013 at the National People’s Congress press conference, Foreign Minister Wang Yi used the term “proactive” (<i>zhudong jinqu</i>). In his remarks about Chinese foreign policy going forward, he also used several other terms that connote a more active foreign policy (<i>jiji jinqu</i>, <i>jiji zuowei</i> and <i>jiji waijiao</i>). While none of these terms has been officially sanctioned as a new guideline for Chinese foreign policy, they may be trial balloons for potential replacements. The common thread among them is a rejection of the cautious, reactive approach of the past in favor or a more proactive stance. On maritime territorial disputes, this means <i>taking </i>and <i>making </i>opportunities to change the status quo in China’s favor.</div>
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<b>Explaining the Shift</b></div>
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China’s new strategy can be attributed to a number of factors, most importantly, its comfort in playing a decades-long game in the South China Sea. Despite a slowing economy, China is certain that its regional clout is only going to increase, albeit at a slower pace than before. In a speech to the World Peace Forum in June, Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi stated:</div>
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By being the largest trading partner, the largest export market and a major source of investment for many Asian countries, China has accounted for 50 percent of Asia’s total economic growth. China’s continuous growth will present even more development opportunities to Asia (<a href="http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/t1167610.shtml" style="border: 0px; color: #7b273a; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China</a> [FMPRC], “Join Hands in Working for Peace and Security in Asia and the World,” June 21).</div>
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Beijing is therefore banking on the fact that over time, none of China’s neighbors will be willing to challenge an economically strong China, as the economic cost will be simply too high. This expectation was suggested by Wu Shicun of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies expounded after the Shangri La Dialogue in Singapore—“[China’s neighbors] worry that when China becomes strong one day, and is able to define the nine-dash line as it wishes, they are powerless to do anything about it” (<i>Straits Times</i>, June 2).</div>
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China is also betting that the Obama administration, with its hands full with more pressing international issues, will not intervene militarily to help countries in East Asia defend rocks and reefs and their associated maritime claims. By sowing doubts about U.S. reliability in the minds of China’s neighbors, Beijing seeks to send a message that compromise with China is inevitable.</div>
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The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is likely a factor guiding certain elements of Xi’s approach to the region. Though the exact nature of the relationship between China’s new leadership and the military is sketchy at best from the outside, Xi’s gestures to the military are evident. Frequent visits to military commands, calls to the PLA to be prepared to “fight and win wars” and increased budgets for the forces signal Xi’s need and even desire to maintain support from the military. Insiders confirm that Xi has been under pressure from the PLA (as well as other groups) to be uncompromising on territorial issues. One knowledgeable source revealed privately that Hu Jintao resisted pressure from the PLA to announce the East China Sea ADIZ in his final year in power. Xi opted to approve it after only one year at the helm.</div>
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China may also be reacting to the U.S. “rebalance to Asia.” Despite repeated assurances by the U.S. to the contrary, China still believes that the rebalance is a ploy to contain and encircle it. It views the strategy as the source of tensions between China and its neighbors. The involvement of external powers in the region is seen as unhelpful and destabilizing. Xi has expressed this view multiple times—most recently in May at the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Shanghai, where he promoted building an Asia security structure in which Asian problems are solved by Asians themselves (<a href="http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/t1159951.shtml" style="border: 0px; color: #7b273a; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">FMPRC</a>, “New Asian Security Concept For New Progress in Security Cooperation,” May 21). In the same speech, he warned against the strengthening of military alliances with third countries, a bald criticism of the U.S. rebalance to Asia strategy.</div>
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It is also possible that China’s more assertive strategy in the region is an attempt to shore up party legitimacy at home at a time of growing domestic stress. A related argument suggests that Xi needs to be tough on foreign policy in order to push through controversial economic reforms at home. If either of these explanations of Chinese behavior is valid, then Xi’s hawkish foreign policy stance will likely continue for some time and may be relatively impervious to external influences, including a backlash from China’s neighbors.</div>
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<b>Will China’s Strategy Succeed?</b></div>
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China has not abandoned its charm offensive toward its neighbors, but securing good relations with the region is not China’s only goal. Xi Jinping is seeking to simultaneously assert Chinese territorial claims. To pull this off successfully, however, Beijing will have to persuade the region that confronting China is too costly and there is more to gain by accommodation. So far, the record is mixed. Despite persistent pressure from China, Japan has refused to budge from its stance that no dispute exists over the islands that Beijing lays claim to in the East China Sea. Vietnam and the Philippines are directly challenging China over territorial matters, though both nations hope to resolve their disputes without undermining overall amicable relations with Beijing. So far, countries in the region remain hesitant to band together to put greater pressure on China. At present, Beijing appears confident that it has time on its side.</div>
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<span style="color: #606060; font-family: Lucida Grande, Lucida Sans Unicode, Lucida Sans, Geneva, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">Source: <a href="http://www.jamestown.org/programs/chinabrief/single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=42691&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=25&cHash=8f5fba2b25b3151a15702d6fa76171fd#.U_6xiZPWmeJ">http://www.jamestown.org/programs/chinabrief/single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=42691&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=25&cHash=8f5fba2b25b3151a15702d6fa76171fd#.U_6xiZPWmeJ</a></span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06601450641503959947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7383437858640407006.post-50191250141712516922014-08-25T20:19:00.002+07:002014-08-25T20:29:01.612+07:00China’s 50,000 Secret Weapons in the South China Sea<h1 class="page-title title" id="page-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: chunkfiveroman, Georgia, serif; font-size: 40px; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: 0.8px; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 0px;">
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The rise of "fishing pole" diplomacy?</div>
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<time datetime="2014-07-30T02:00:00-04:00" pubdate="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">July 30, 2014 </time></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;">While countless gallons of digital ink have been spilled about China’s growing military might and “salami slicing” tactics that are changing the status-quo in the South China Sea, we rarely get to go behind the scenes, to understand up close the tactics and strategies Beijing is employing. However,</span><span style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;"> </span><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/28/us-southchinasea-china-fishing-insight-idUSKBN0FW0QP20140728" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f45be; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em; outline: 0px;">thanks to a recent report in </a><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/28/us-southchinasea-china-fishing-insight-idUSKBN0FW0QP20140728" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f45be; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em; outline: 0px;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Reuters</em></a><span style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;">, we now know a little more about China’s stepped up efforts to alter conditions in the water. It may just end up that Beijing’s greatest weapon may not be its military—it might just be its fishing boats.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;">The report details at length China’s multi-pronged strategy to assert its maritime claims through fishing in various areas of the South China Sea that are in dispute—asserting claims not by “</span><a href="http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/small-stick-diplomacy-the-south-china-sea-6831" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f45be; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em; outline: 0px;">small-stick diplomacy</a><span style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;">” but now what we might call “fishing pole diplomacy.” Nothing says “sovereignty” more than doing the normal things a nation does in its own territory, like simple fishing. China’s strategy is in part genius, but also setting the stage for possibly violent confrontations with its South China Sea neighbors in the near term. This is of course on top of issuing maps that draw nine or ten-dash lines around the area and claiming it outright, putting oil rigs off rival claimants coastlines, as well as creating a world-class military with strong anti-access/area-denial capabilities (A2/AD) to deter a much more powerful adversary to stay out of the region in the event of a crisis.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;">According to the piece: </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;">On China's southern Hainan Island, a fishing boat captain shows a Reuters reporter around his aging vessel. He has one high-tech piece of kit, however: a satellite navigation system that gives him a direct link to the Chinese coastguard should he run into bad weather or a Philippine or Vietnamese patrol ship when he's fishing in the disputed South China Sea.</em></div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;">By the end of last year, China's homegrown Beidou satellite system had been installed on more than 50,000 Chinese fishing boats, according to official media. On Hainan, China's gateway to the South China Sea, boat captains have paid no more than 10 percent of the cost. The government has paid the rest.</em></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;">This is quite significant as Chinese fisherman can not only fish disputed waters with clear government support, but if they get in trouble have essentially a direct hotline to Beijing for help and are paying very little of the cost for such technology. In fact, according to a companion piece in</span><em style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;">Quartz</em><span style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;">,</span><span style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;"> </span><a href="http://qz.com/241201/china-is-using-its-immense-commercial-fishing-fleet-as-a-surrogate-navy/" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f45be; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em; outline: 0px;">China has 695,555 fishing vessels</a><span style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;">, and while clearly not all would be able to venture out into disputed waters it stands to reason more vessels could be sailing into such territory in the near future.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;">The article goes on to note:</span></div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;">It's a sign of China's growing financial support for its fishermen as they head deeper into Southeast Asian waters in search of new fishing grounds as stocks thin out closer to home.</em></div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;">Hainan authorities encourage fishermen to sail to disputed areas, the captain and several other fishermen told Reuters during interviews in the sleepy port of Tanmen. Government fuel subsidies make the trips possible, they added.</em></div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;">That has put Chinese fishing boats - from privately owned craft to commercial trawlers belonging to publicly listed companies - on the frontlines of one of Asia's flashpoints.</em></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;">The mention of declining fishing stocks is also of interest. While issues of nationalism, sea lines of communication carrying trillions of dollars worth of goods, as well as oil and natural gas are commonly mentioned in creating tensions, many times valuable fishing stocks are simply forgotten but are clearly driving Chinese as well as other nations territorial claims. Indeed, the piece makes mention of a study by China’s State Oceanic Administration that explained fishing stocks around the Chinese coast were in decline.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;">None of this should be any shock to those who have been keeping up with the latest developments in</span><span style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;"> </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Asias-Cauldron-South-Stable-Pacific-ebook/dp/B00G8ELTCK" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f45be; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em; outline: 0px;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Asia’s Cauldron</em></a><span style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;">. For the last several years, China has been using various non-naval and non-military assets to push its claims in disputed regions. What make the above report of interest is the level of outright support China is giving its fishing industry to press its claims on behalf of the government, and how far they could press such claims:</span></div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;">Several fishermen from separate boats said the Hainan authorities encouraged fishing as far away as the Spratlys, roughly 1,100 km (670 miles) to the south.</em></div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;">The boat captain said he would head there as soon as his vessel underwent routine repairs.</em></div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;">"I've been there many times," said the captain, who like the other fishermen declined to be identified because he was worried about repercussions for discussing sensitive maritime issues with a foreign journalist.</em></div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;">Another fisherman, relaxing in a hammock on a boat loaded with giant clamshells from the Spratlys, said captains received fuel subsidies for each journey. For a 500 horsepower engine, a captain could get 2,000-3,000</em><span style="font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;"> </span><a href="http://www.reuters.com/subjects/yuan?lc=int_mb_1001" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f45be; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em; outline: 0px;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">yuan</em></a><em style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;"> ($320-$480) a day, he said.</em></div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.65em;">"The government tells us where to go and they pay fuel subsidies based on the engine size," said the fisherman.</em></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06601450641503959947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7383437858640407006.post-34064538087000058672014-08-17T10:17:00.000+07:002014-08-17T11:45:34.458+07:00China’s "Gorbachev" Is Tearing the Communist Party Apart<h1 class="page-title title" id="page-title" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: chunkfiveroman, Georgia, serif; font-size: 40px; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: 0.8px; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 0px;">
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Xi, like Gorbachev, is a figure wanting to accomplish great deeds in reforming an ailing system. And like the last Soviet leader, Xi has started something he cannot control.</div>
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<span class="submitted-info" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="field-author" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="field-item" property="schema:author" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: 'trebuchet MS', helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;"><a href="http://nationalinterest.org/profile/gordon-g-chang" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-weight: 700; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Gordon G. Chang</a></span></span></span></div>
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<time datetime="2014-08-14T02:00:00-04:00" pubdate="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">August 14, 2014</time></div>
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“In my struggle against corruption, I don’t care about life or death, or ruining my reputation,” <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/08/08/338630914/chinas-president-says-his-anti-corruption-drive-is-deadlocked" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f45be; outline: 0px;">said Xi Jinping</a> at a <a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1567026/xis-shockingly-harsh-politburo-speech-signals-tensions-over-anti-graft" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f45be; outline: 0px;">closed-door session of the Communist Party’s Politburo</a> on June 26. China’s ambitious leader also referred to two armies in the country, one of “corruption” and the other of “anticorruption.” These forces, according to him, “are at a stalemate.”</div>
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The quotations, reported by a Central Committee member, look accurate and are consistent with reports that Xi gave a <a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1567026/xis-shockingly-harsh-politburo-speech-signals-tensions-over-anti-graft" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f45be; outline: 0px;">“shockingly harsh”</a> speech on his so-called corruption campaign then. The <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">South China Morning Post</em>, the Hong Kong newspaper, noted that a source familiar with Xi’s speech confirmed the report. Evidently, there is severe infighting in senior Beijing circles.</div>
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Until recently, the overwhelming opinion was that Xi had quickly consolidated his political position after becoming Party general secretary in November 2012. For instance, last year, the<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">New York Times</em> and the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Wall Street Journal</em>, on the eve of the “shirtsleeves” summit between Xi and President Obama in early June, reported that White House officials had determined that he had asserted control over the Party apparatus and military much faster than anticipated.</div>
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Since then, the wide prosecution of both high- and low-level officials—“tigers” and “flies” in Communist lingo—has been viewed as proof that Mr. Xi dominates the political system. “So far at least, there’s little sign of resistance,” <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/elites-tremble-as-xi-cleans-house-1407222978" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f45be; outline: 0px;">wrote the </a><a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/elites-tremble-as-xi-cleans-house-1407222978" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f45be; outline: 0px;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Wall Street Journal</em></a><a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/elites-tremble-as-xi-cleans-house-1407222978" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f45be; outline: 0px;">’s Andrew Browne</a> early this month.</div>
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Browne’s timing was especially unfortunate. Just as his article was posted, reports of Xi’s Politburo speech began circulating in China. Despite the melodramatic tone—Xi’s words evoke Zhu Rongji’s <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/09/a-former-premier-of-china-speaks/244957/" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f45be; outline: 0px;">famous comment in 1998</a> about leaving a casket for him as he had no fear of dying in his fight to win “the public’s trust in our government”—the current leader’s words indicate substantial resistance and dissension at the top.</div>
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There is so much resistance and dissension that this time is, as Renmin University’s Zhang Ming notes, a make-or-break moment for Comrade Jinping. For one thing, it is a sensitive time of leadership transition, when authoritarian systems are generally at their most vulnerable, and China is at a particularly fragile point. The transfer of power from Fourth Generation supremo Hu Jintao to the Fifth Generation Xi is the first in the history of the People’s Republic not engineered by strongman Deng Xiaoping. Deng, after disposing of transitional figure Hua Guofeng, chose himself, and then he selected both Jiang Zemin to succeed him and Hu to follow Jiang. Deng was in no position, however, to make a selection for the top spot in the post-Hu team.</div>
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China experts, even those not friendly to the regime, have pronounced that this transition is governed by the Party’s internal rules and procedures and has thus proceeded in a “smooth” fashion. Yet there were, despite the expert opinions, bound to be severe problems. In a one-party state, even one as bureaucratized as China, regulations change with the whims of leaders, and in this Hu-Xi transition, there have been a number of surprises.</div>
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There has been, for instance, the unexpected reduction in the size of the Politburo Standing Committee, the apex of political power in China, from nine members to seven. This is proof by itself that Chinese transitions are exercises in raw power and not law-based selections. Moreover, the two-week disappearance of Xi in September 2012— attributable,<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/11/01/the-secret-story-behind-xi-jinpings-disappearance-finally-revealed/" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f45be; outline: 0px;"> according to a report in the </a><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/11/01/the-secret-story-behind-xi-jinpings-disappearance-finally-revealed/" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f45be; outline: 0px;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Washington Post</em></a>, to injuries he sustained when a colleague hit him in the back with a chair during a meeting—is an indication of severe disagreements. And there was the series of <a href="http://pjmedia.com/blog/assassination-rumors-in-china/" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f45be; outline: 0px;">coup rumors</a> before the transfer of power, of gunfire in the center of Beijing, among other reports. “If China runs into trouble, it will come from inside the Communist Party,” Deng once said.</div>
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Perhaps the most important reason why this is a do-or-die moment for Xi is his outsized ambitions. Every leader of the People’s Republic has been weaker than his predecessor—except for the current one. Mr. Xi obviously has nurtured hopes and dreams Mao-like in their scope and grandeur, and that has led him, more than his three immediate predecessors, to eliminate political opponents. Under the guise of a campaign against corruption, he has promoted what <a href="http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/end-consensus-politics-china#axzz39Wc8MMAN" style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2f45be; outline: 0px;">John Minnich of Stratfor has called</a>, “the broadest and deepest effort to purge, reorganize and rectify the Communist Party leadership since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and the rise of Deng Xiaoping two years later.”</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06601450641503959947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7383437858640407006.post-88845919510733346962014-08-12T20:42:00.002+07:002014-08-12T20:42:57.668+07:00China expands its reach in the South China Sea. What's the end goal? (+ video)<div class="header_group" id="story-headers" style="font-family: 'Open Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.399999618530273px;">
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<span style="color: #77797a; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.6;">Beijing wants to assert its preeminence in Asia. But not so strongly as to push its neighbors into the arms of the United States. </span></h1>
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<span class="eza-authors outer_block" id="authors" style="border-right-color: rgb(136, 136, 136); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; display: inline-block; font-family: 'Open Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 4px; padding-right: 4px;"><span class="author" style="color: black; font-weight: bold;">By</span> <span class="csm_staff" style="display: inline-block; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 4px; padding-right: 4px;"><a data-staff-node-id="498035" href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2014/0810/China-expands-its-reach-in-the-South-China-Sea.-What-s-the-end-goal-video#" style="color: #888888; text-decoration: none;"><span class="author" itemprop="author" style="color: black; font-weight: bold;">Peter Ford</span>, Staff Writer<span class="down_arrow" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: url(http://www.csmonitor.com/extension/csm_base/design/csm_design/images/arrow_down_yellow_9x9.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-size: initial; display: inline-block; height: 9px; margin: 3px 2px 0px 5px; width: 9px;" title="author bio"></span></a></span></span> <time class="eza-publish_date outer_block all_caps" datetime="2014-08-10T08:00:00-04:00" id="date-published" itemprop="datePublished" style="display: inline-block; font-size: 10px; font-weight: 400; height: 14px; letter-spacing: 0.04em; margin-bottom: 4px; padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 4px; text-transform: uppercase;" title="Published: August 10, 2014 8:00 am EDT
Last updated: August 10, 2014 1:58 pm EDT">AUGUST 10, 2014</time><time class="eza-updated" datetime="2014-08-10T13:58:26-04:00" id="date-updated" itemprop="dateModified" style="font-size: 10px; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: 0.04em;"></time></h3>
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<span class="eza-dateline all_caps" id="dateline" style="text-transform: uppercase;">BEIJING — </span>It is typhoon season in the <a class="inform_link" href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/South+China+Sea" rel="nofollow" style="color: #008996; text-decoration: none;" target="_self" title="Title: South China Sea">South China Sea</a>. But more dangerous than the physical winds tearing down homes and trees is a brewing political storm that threatens the peace in one of the world’s most strategic flash points.</div>
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Over the past several months <a class="inform_link" href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/China" rel="nofollow" style="color: #008996; text-decoration: none;" target="_self" title="Title: China">China</a> has set itself on a collision course with its Southeast Asian neighbors, taking a series of forceful steps to assert territorial claims over potentially valuable rocks, reefs, and waters that other nations claim, too.</div>
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Some of them, such as <a class="inform_link" href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Vietnam" rel="nofollow" style="color: #008996; text-decoration: none;" target="_self" title="Title: Vietnam">Vietnam</a> and the Philippines, are alarmed enough to have voiced their anger publicly. Others, such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei, have been more cautious. </div>
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Recommended: <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2011/0218/How-much-do-you-know-about-China-Take-our-quiz" style="color: #008996; text-decoration: none;">How much do you know about China? Take our quiz.</a></div>
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Their collective disquiet has drawn in the <a class="inform_link" href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/United+States" rel="nofollow" style="color: #008996; text-decoration: none;" target="_self" title="Title: United States">United States</a>. Senior US diplomats and defense officials have bluntly accused China of fomenting instability in the region and intimidating its neighbors.</div>
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China’s oft-repeated pledge of “peaceful development” and its offer of “amity, sincerity, mutual benefit, and inclusiveness” to <a class="inform_link" href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Southeast+Asia" rel="nofollow" style="color: #008996; text-decoration: none;" target="_self" title="Title: Southeast Asia">Southeast Asia</a> are looking threadbare. Adding to the uncertainty is the lack of clarity surrounding<a class="inform_link" href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Beijing" rel="nofollow" style="color: #008996; text-decoration: none;" target="_self" title="Title: Beijing">Beijing</a>’s goals.</div>
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They may not be clear even to Beijing, where more dovish and more hawkish factions appear to be debating the wisdom of China’s recent moves. If Beijing’s abrasive attitude pushes its neighbors to seek help from Washington, some analysts here are warning, it will mean only trouble for China.</div>
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Instead of ending up as the naturally dominant power surrounded by economically dependent smaller neighbors, China would find itself strategically isolated in the region and facing off directly with the US.</div>
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“There are some inside the system who are wondering ... whether or not this is all going to backfire,” Christopher Johnson, a China analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, told those at a recent conference on China’s intentions.</div>
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At the same time, he added, there is “a possibility that they [the Chinese government] are not scoring ‘own goals,’ that they know exactly what they are doing with this strategy because they think it will be effective” in intimidating China’s neighbors into submission to Beijing’s regional domination.</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.02em; line-height: 2;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="eztoc18830846_5" name="eztoc18830846_5" style="color: #008996;"></a></span></span><h2 style="font-family: 'Open Sans', 'Arial Bold', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.44em; letter-spacing: -0.02em; line-height: 1.25; margin: 0px;">
'Salami slicing'</h2>
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There is less ambiguity about what China has actually done in the South China Sea this year.</div>
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On Jan. 1, it imposed rules demanding that anyone fishing in waters it claims, which make up nearly 90 percent of the South China Sea, should get prior permission from the Chinese authorities.</div>
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In March a Chinese Coast Guard vessel prevented the Philippine Army from resupplying its soldiers based on a rusting ship grounded on the Second Thomas Reef in the Spratly Islands, which Beijing and Manila both claim.</div>
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Over the past few months, a Chinese dredging vessel has been creating an artificial island on the previously submerged Johnson South Reef, which the Philippines also claims. The company doing the work has published computer mock-up images of an airstrip it says is planned.</div>
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In May the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation moved an oil drilling rig into disputed waters near the Paracel Islands, which Vietnam claims. A Chinese barge accompanying the rig rammed and sank a Vietnamese fishing boat during clashes.</div>
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All these moves appeared to violate an agreement that China signed with the <a class="inform_link" href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Association+of+Southeast+Asian+Nations" rel="nofollow" style="color: #008996; text-decoration: none;" target="_self" title="Title: Association of Southeast Asian Nations">Association of Southeast Asian Nations</a> (ASEAN) 12 years ago in which both sides pledged to “exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities that would complicate or escalate disputes and affect peace and stability.”</div>
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“China has been very opportunistic, pushing and pushing to see what they can get ... and taking as much as they can,” says David Arase, who teaches international politics at the Johns Hopkins University campus in Nanjing, China.</div>
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By taking small steps to avoid provoking Washington to act in support of its regional allies, China is trying to “dishearten” rival claimants and “resign them to the fact that they have to give up their rights,” Professor Arase says.</div>
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“They are continuing with their salami slicing, reef by reef, step by step,” said Tran Truong Thuy, an analyst at Vietnam’s Institute for East Sea Studies, at a recent CSIS conference. “In reality they want to change ... the South China Sea into a Chinese lake.”</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.02em; line-height: 2;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="eztoc18830846_6" name="eztoc18830846_6" style="color: #008996;"></a></span></span><h2 style="font-family: 'Open Sans', 'Arial Bold', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.44em; letter-spacing: -0.02em; line-height: 1.25; margin: 0px;">
Are China's claims legitimate?</h2>
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China insists its actions are legitimate since, in an oft-repeated official phrase, Beijing enjoys “indisputable sovereignty” over all the islands in the South China Sea and “their adjacent waters” on historical grounds, no matter how far they are from the mainland or how close to other countries’ coastlines.</div>
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That is debatable, say international law experts. Chinese maps show what it calls a “nine-dashed line” around the edge of the South China Sea, shaped in the form of a lolling cow’s tongue, cutting through several neighboring countries’ 200-mile exclusive economic zones and their continental shelves. But Beijing has never clearly explained just what this line signifies.</div>
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“Even in China there are different ideas” on the subject, says Xue Li, head of the international strategy department at the China Academy of Social Sciences. Members of the military insist the line marks China’s national boundary; others suggest it encloses China’s historical waters; some scholars say it merely demarcates the land features over which China claims sovereignty.</div>
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The <a class="inform_link" href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Philippines" rel="nofollow" style="color: #008996; text-decoration: none;" target="_self" title="Title: Philippines">Philippines</a> is challenging the legality of the “nine-dashed line” in a case it has brought before a tribunal of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. China has refused to participate in the case, and few foreign legal experts say Beijing could win it.</div>
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China might, however, try to defend the line anyway by altering facts on the ground. Nationalist sentiment is strong in China: President Xi Jinping has shown himself readier to take risks than his predecessor, and territorial assertion could prove an attractive way to illustrate the “national rejuvenation” he has promised as China takes its rightful place in the world.</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.02em; line-height: 2;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="eztoc18830846_7" name="eztoc18830846_7" style="color: #008996;"></a></span></span><h2 style="font-family: 'Open Sans', 'Arial Bold', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.44em; letter-spacing: -0.02em; line-height: 1.25; margin: 0px;">
Xi ‘does not want to look like a chicken’</h2>
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“Domestic opinion is very important to Xi Jinping,” says Zhu Feng, the head of the recently created Collaborative Innovation Center for South China Sea Studies at Nanjing University, a think tank to coordinate South China Sea studies. “He does not want to look like a chicken.”</div>
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At the same time, suggests Mr. Johnson of CSIS, Mr. Xi may believe he can get away with current policy because “ultimately, ASEAN countries will stand aside because of their interest and dependence on China’s economic prospects.”</div>
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But the costs of appearing to neighbors like an arrogant bully are not negligible. The recent row with Vietnam over the oil rig “completely turned around relations with Vietnam,” says Carl Thayer, an expert on Southeast Asia at the University of New South Wales in Australia. </div>
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The Vietnamese prime minister threatened to follow the Philippines to an international court and “the idea of getting out of China’s orbit has gone viral in Vietnamese public opinion.”</div>
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China withdrew the rig a month ahead of schedule, perhaps to cool the crisis, but not before it had drawn heavy international criticism and further stoked regional fears.</div>
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A survey published in July by the Pew Research Center found that a majority of people in eight of 10 countries neighboring China are worried that the Asian giant’s territorial ambitions could lead to military conflict.</div>
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Chinese analysts insist that Beijing’s traditional aim of maintaining a peaceful international environment to favor its economic development has not changed fundamentally, nor has its declared policy of shelving territorial disputes and jointly developing energy and other resources.</div>
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The challenge, says Lou Chunhao, an analyst at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, affiliated with China’s Ministry of State Security, is “how to achieve a balance ... between protecting Chinese rights and sovereignty in the South China Sea and maintaining a benign environment.”</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.02em; line-height: 2;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="eztoc18830846_8" name="eztoc18830846_8" style="color: #008996;"></a></span></span><h2 style="font-family: 'Open Sans', 'Arial Bold', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1.44em; letter-spacing: -0.02em; line-height: 1.25; margin: 0px;">
China’s rivals see safety in numbers</h2>
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China’s ASEAN rivals in territorial disputes are not reassured by Beijing’s insistence that they resolve their differences one-on-one; they see safety in numbers. Nor have any of them yet voiced any enthusiasm for Xi’s call for a new Chinacentric security system in the region to replace the US-dominated arrangements that have held for the past 70 years.</div>
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“In the final analysis, it is for the people of <a class="inform_link" href="http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Asia" rel="nofollow" style="color: #008996; text-decoration: none;" target="_self" title="Title: Asia">Asia</a> to run the affairs of Asia, solve the problems of Asia, and uphold the security of Asia,” Xi told an international conference in Shanghai, China, last May.</div>
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China’s top long-term goals in the ocean it claims, says Rory Medcalf, head of the international security program at the Lowy Institute, a think tank in Sydney, Australia, is “to ensure that nothing happens in the South China Sea without Chinese blessing” and “maximum freedom of maneuver for its Navy ... to be the dominant military player in those waters.”</div>
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An increasingly vocal band of government policy advisers in Beijing are suggesting that those goals would be easier to achieve if China’s neighbors trusted it more; they are urging a reset in China’s neighborhood diplomacy.</div>
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“China’s Navy could already beat all the ASEAN navies. The question is whether it would be worth it,” Mr. Xue argues. “We would pick up a sesame seed and throw away a watermelon,” he says, referring to the manifold economic benefits that closer ties with Southeast Asia would bring.</div>
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“The South China Sea could be a real battlefield, and that would be very harmful to China’s future,” adds Professor Zhu. “We need to find a way to settle [the disputes] piece by piece.”</div>
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Given China’s geographic position and its economic and political strength, “it is quite normal that China should be the dominant power in the South China Sea,” Xue says. “And just because of that, maybe we need to make compromises with our neighbors.”</div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.3199999928474426px; line-height: 32px;">http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2014/0810/China-expands-its-reach-in-the-South-China-Sea.-What-s-the-end-goal-video</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06601450641503959947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7383437858640407006.post-73621937418224605042014-08-08T17:03:00.000+07:002014-08-08T17:03:02.541+07:00Weekly News 4/8-10/8<h2 class="contentheading" style="background-color: white; color: #0794e3; font-family: Arial; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
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<span class="createdate" style="background: url(http://southchinaseastudies.org/en/templates/eastsea2/images/vline.gif) 100% 50% no-repeat; margin-right: 5px; padding-right: 6px;">SOURCE: EAST SEA STUDIES Monday, 04 August 2014 02:13 </span><span class="createby">vuquangtiep</span></div>
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<em>-(Vietnamnet 8/8) </em><a href="http://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/government/109233/vietnam-decries-china-s-illegal-activities-on-paracel-islands.html" style="color: #333399; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Vietnam decries China’s illegal activities on Paracel islands</a>: Vietnam has repeatedly asserted its undisputable sovereignty over the two archipelagoes- Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa (Spratly). <em>–(VOV 8/8) </em><a href="http://english.vov.vn/Politics/ASEAN-to-deliberate-maritime-security-and-safety-in-East-Sea/279816.vov" style="color: #333399; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">ASEAN to deliberate maritime security and safety in East Sea</a></div>
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<em>-(Reuters 8/8) </em><a href="http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/08/07/usa-southchinasea-asean-idINKBN0G72N620140807" style="color: #333399; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">U.S. to press South China Sea freeze despite China rejection</a>: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, at a meeting with Southeast Asian nations this weekend, will press for a voluntary freeze on actions aggravating territorial disputes in the South China Sea, in spite of Beijing's rejection of the idea. <em>–(Vietnamplus 7/8) </em><a href="http://en.vietnamplus.vn/Home/ASEAN-senior-officials-agree-on-AMM47-agenda/20148/53763.vnplus" style="color: #333399; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">ASEAN senior officials agree on AMM-47 agenda</a></div>
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<em style="line-height: 1.5;">-(Kyodo News 7/8) </em><a href="http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2014/08/305878.html" style="color: #333399; line-height: 1.5; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">ASEAN to call for action to reduce tension in the South China Sea</a><span style="line-height: 1.5;">: Foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations will call for "determined actions" to reduce the mounting tensions in the South China Sea, saying recent incidents have strained relations among countries, increased levels of mistrust, and heightened the dangers of unintended conflict in the region, ASEAN diplomats said here Thursday.</span></div>
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<em style="line-height: 1.5;">-(The Wall Street Journal 6/8) </em><a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/indian-warship-visiting-vietnam-on-goodwill-trip-1407333414" style="color: #333399; line-height: 1.5; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Indian Warship Visiting Vietnam on 'Goodwill Trip’</a><span style="line-height: 1.5;">: An Indian warship is to take part in exercises with the Vietnamese navy this week in the tense waters of the South China Sea, where maritime disputes between China and its neighbors have intensified.</span></div>
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<em style="line-height: 1.5;">-(PhilStar 6/8) </em><a href="http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2014/08/06/1354546/japan-china-be-more-aggressive-south-china-sea" style="color: #333399; line-height: 1.5; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Japan: China to be more aggressive in South China Sea</a><span style="line-height: 1.5;">: China is likely to further expand intensify its presence in disputed areas of the East China and South China seas as well as the Pacific Ocean, Japan believes.</span></div>
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<em style="line-height: 1.5;">-(Vietnamplus 6/8) </em><a href="http://en.vietnamplus.vn/Home/Foreign-scholars-raise-eyebrow-over-Chinas-East-Sea-ambition/20148/53666.vnplus" style="color: #333399; line-height: 1.5; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Scholars raise eyebrow over China’s South China Sea ambition</a><span style="line-height: 1.5;">: Officials and scholars spoke out against China’s ambition to occupy the entire South China Sea via its groundless “nine-dash line” claim at a workshop in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on August 5.</span></div>
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<em style="line-height: 1.5;">-(VOA News 5/8) </em><a href="http://www.voanews.com/content/asean-ministers-to-discuss-south-china-sea-other-issues/1972210.html" style="color: #333399; line-height: 1.5; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">ASEAN ministers to discuss South China Sea, other issues</a><span style="line-height: 1.5;">: Foreign ministers of Southeast Asian countries, as well as those from the U.S., China and other nations, are gathering in Myanmar’s capital Naypyidaw this week for two key meetings, including the 27-member regional security forum. </span><em style="line-height: 1.5;">-(Reuters 5/8) </em><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/04/us-usa-southchinasea-asean-idUSKBN0G421J20140804" style="color: #333399; line-height: 1.5; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">U.S. to press South China Sea freeze despite China rejection</a></div>
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<em>-(Reuters 5/8) </em><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/05/us-philippines-china-idUSKBN0G50FR20140805" style="color: #333399; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Philippines sentences 12 Chinese fishermen to jail</a>: A Philippine court on Tuesday found 12 Chinese fishermen guilty of illegal fishing in Philippine waters, sending them to jail for six to 12 years, the first convictions since tension between the neighbors flared over rival claims in the South China Sea.</div>
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<em>-(Malay Mail Online 5/8) </em><a href="http://m.themalaymailonline.com/world/article/japan-warns-china-over-dangerous-acts-in-south-china-sea" style="color: #333399; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Japan warns China over ‘dangerous acts’ in South China Sea</a>: Japan warned today that China’s “dangerous acts” over territorial claims in the East China Sea could lead to “unintended consequences” in the region, as fears grow of a potential military clash.</div>
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<em>-(Global Post 5/8) </em><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/kyodo-news-international/140805/taiwans-ma-urges-peaceful-resolution-east-south-china-" style="color: #333399; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Taiwan's Ma urges peaceful resolution to East, South China sea disputes</a>: Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou urged all parties concerned Tuesday to peacefully resolve territorial disputes in the East and South China seas in marking the second anniversary of the East China Sea Peace Initiative he proposed two years ago.</div>
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<em style="line-height: 1.5;">-(National Interest 5/8) </em><a href="http://nationalinterest.org/feature/china%E2%80%99s-epic-fail-the-south-china-sea-11019" style="color: #333399; line-height: 1.5; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">China’s Epic Fail in the South China Sea</a><span style="line-height: 1.5;">: Whatever Beijing hoped to achieve with the deployment of HS-981—oil, territorial advantage or long-term strategic gain—didn’t work out.</span></div>
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<em>-(Reuters 4/8) </em><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/04/us-china-southchinasea-idUSKBN0G40UI20140804" style="color: #333399; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">China says can build what it wants on South China Sea isles</a>: China can build whatever it wants on its islands in the South China Sea, a senior Chinese official said on Monday, rejecting proposals ahead of a key regional meeting to freeze any activity that may raise tensions in disputed waters there.</div>
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<em>-(Channel NewsAsia 4/8) </em><a href="http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/philippines-says-china/1295956.html" style="color: #333399; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Philippines says China sea action plan gaining support</a>: The Philippines said Monday (August 4) it has won support from Vietnam, Indonesia and Brunei for a plan to ease tensions in the South China Sea which it intends to present at a regional meeting this week.</div>
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<em style="line-height: 1.5;">-(Foreign Policy 4/8) </em><a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/08/04/it_s_not_about_the_oil_it_s_about_the_tiny_rocks_china_south_china_sea_japan_vietnam" style="color: #333399; line-height: 1.5; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">It's Not About the Oil -- It's About the Tiny Rocks</a><span style="line-height: 1.5;">: What everyone gets wrong about Beijing's bullying in the South China Sea.</span></div>
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<em style="line-height: 1.5;">-(Tuoitre 2/8) </em><a href="http://tuoitrenews.vn/society/21402/vietnam-fisheries-surveillance-force-vessels-to-be-equipped-with-weapons-new-decree" style="color: #333399; line-height: 1.5; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Vietnam Fisheries Surveillance Force vessels to be equipped with weapons</a><span style="line-height: 1.5;">: All ships under the management of the Vietnam Fisheries Surveillance Force will be equipped with weapons starting September 15, according to a newly-issued government decree. </span><em style="line-height: 1.5;">–(Vietnamplus 2/8) </em><a href="http://en.vietnamplus.vn/Home/Quang-Nam-fishermen-equipped-with-communication-devices/20148/53527.vnplus" style="color: #333399; line-height: 1.5; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Quang Nam fishermen equipped with communication devices</a></div>
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<em style="line-height: 1.5;">-(Global Research 2/8) </em><a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/threatening-china-influential-washington-think-tank-pushes-us-war-drive-in-the-south-china-sea/5394609" style="color: #333399; line-height: 1.5; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Influential Washington Think Tank Pushes US War Drive in the South China Sea</a><span style="line-height: 1.5;">: In the new report, the CSIS is laying out an even more aggressive agenda for Washington, with two basic thrusts: establishing the legal pretext for rejecting Beijing’s claim to the South China Sea, and escalating the US military presence in the region.</span></div>
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<em>-(Manila Bulletin 2/8) </em><a href="http://www.mb.com.ph/ph-to-tackle-3-point-action-plan-on-sea-dispute/" style="color: #333399; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">PH to tackle 3-point action plan on sea dispute</a>: The Philippines will formally discuss with fellow Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member-states its proposal that it hopes will address the escalating tensions in the South China Sea during meetings of the regional block this month in Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar. <em>-(People’s Daily 2/8) </em><a href="http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/n/2014/0802/c98649-8764366-2.html" style="color: #333399; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">China Should Uphold International Law to Win Support from Regional States</a></div>
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<em>-(The Wall Street Journal 1/8) </em><a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/china-expands-offshore-oil-fleet-for-contested-waters-1406941177" style="color: #333399; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">China Expands Offshore Oil Fleet for Contested Waters</a>: China is accelerating the expansion of its offshore oil fleet—and adding coast guard vessels to protect it—as it ventures farther into the sea for energy resources, threatening more altercations with neighbors.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06601450641503959947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7383437858640407006.post-18723396903423225542014-07-21T19:59:00.000+07:002014-07-21T19:59:20.693+07:00Who is China to act like a leader?<br />
<a href="http://www.bangkokpost.com/business/news/421577/who-is-china-to-act-like-a-leader">http://www.bangkokpost.com/business/news/421577/who-is-china-to-act-like-a-leader</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06601450641503959947noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7383437858640407006.post-27559435147457127482014-07-15T05:30:00.000+07:002014-07-15T05:30:48.430+07:00China reveals rare videos of its South China Sea territorial battle<div class="title" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
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<span class="byline" style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma; font-size: 14px; margin: 5px 0px; padding: 0px;">By <a href="http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/archives/authors/michaeladelcallar" rel="author" style="color: #224488; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">MICHAELA DEL CALLAR </a></span><span class="timestamp" style="display: inline-block; font-family: Arial, Tahoma; font-size: 14px; margin: 5px 0px; padding: 0px 8px;">July 11, 2014 4:06pm</span></h1>
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<fb:like action="recommend" class=" fb_iframe_widget" fb-iframe-plugin-query="action=recommend&app_id=255951164473730&href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gmanetwork.com%2Fnews%2Fstory%2F369788%2Fnews%2Fspecialreports%2Fchina-reveals-rare-videos-of-its-south-china-sea-territorial-battle&layout=button_count&locale=en_US&sdk=joey&send=false&show_faces=true&width=100" fb-xfbml-state="rendered" font="" href="http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/369788/news/specialreports/china-reveals-rare-videos-of-its-south-china-sea-territorial-battle" layout="button_count" send="false" show_faces="true" style="display: inline-block; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;" width="100"><span style="display: inline-block; height: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: justify; vertical-align: bottom; width: 124px;"><iframe allowtransparency="true" class="" frameborder="0" height="1000px" name="f230f2381c" scrolling="no" src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?action=recommend&app_id=255951164473730&channel=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.ak.facebook.com%2Fconnect%2Fxd_arbiter%2FbLBBWlYJp_w.js%3Fversion%3D41%23cb%3Df2333bcdb4%26domain%3Dwww.gmanetwork.com%26origin%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.gmanetwork.com%252Ff1a3e8328c%26relation%3Dparent.parent&href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gmanetwork.com%2Fnews%2Fstory%2F369788%2Fnews%2Fspecialreports%2Fchina-reveals-rare-videos-of-its-south-china-sea-territorial-battle&layout=button_count&locale=en_US&sdk=joey&send=false&show_faces=true&width=100" style="border-style: none; height: 20px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; vertical-align: text-bottom; visibility: visible; width: 124px;" title="fb:like Facebook Social Plugin" width="100px"></iframe><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;">"We're here! The Huangyan Island! The national flag is raised!" a Chinese journalist exclaims after triumphantly hoisting China's red flag atop a coral stone jutting out of the high seas northwest of the Philippines.</span></span></fb:like></div>
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<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Just off Malaysia, Chinese maritime personnel execute a snappy salute in a Chinese flag-raising ceremony on a ship deck to signify Beijing's control over the disputed James Shoal, about 80 kilometers from the nearest Malaysian coast. In a more dangerous development, a Chinese surveillance ship rams a smaller Vietnamese vessel in contested waters.</span></div>
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The gripping video scenes, including footage never before seen by many people, are culled from an eight-part TV documentary entitled “Journey on the South China Sea” that was aired in China by state-run network CCTV 4 from December 24 to 31 last year. With Chinese narration and English subtitles, the documentary has also been posted on <a class="external" href="http://news.cntv.cn/special/nhjx/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #6666ff; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">CCTV's website</a> for worldwide viewing.</div>
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In a communist Asian nation steeped in secrecy, the three-hour plus documentary provides a rare peek into how China works in the shadows to consolidate its territorial claims in strategic waters, spy on rival claimants, and gradually build an armed presence to thwart opponents who challenge its ancient claims and current expansion.</div>
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The whole story is told from the eyes of CCTV journalists, who separately accompanied Chinese surveillance personnel, maritime patrols, law enforcers, fishermen and marine experts in journeys across the troubled waters.</div>
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<strong style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">‘A chilling message’</strong></div>
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Carl Thayer, a prominent expert on the South China Sea disputes, said the video was intended for multiple audiences. The fact that it is in Chinese, with English subtitles, indicates its primary audience was domestic, but that it was also meant to serve as a warning to rival governments, he said.</div>
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"The video is a form of reassurance that the Chinese government is at the forefront in defending China's territorial claims in the South China Sea," Thayer told GMA News Online. </div>
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The video, he added, is also "a chilling message to claimant states that China will use physical force such as ramming to enforce its 'sovereign rights.'"</div>
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"Since this video, evidence is emerging that the Chinese Coast Guard has introduced ship-to-ship ramming into its tactical repertoire," Thayer said.</div>
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Accompanied by soft piano music, the long documentary features panoramic scenes of the turquoise waters which it says harbors hydrocarbon resources and lush marine life, and faraway islands and islets with white powdery-sand beaches. The documentary was obviously designed to foster nationalism among Chinese viewers and drive home the urgency of defending the vast off-shore territory that lies beyond China's southernmost Hainan Island.</div>
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It's instilled with patriotism and emotions.</div>
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A Chinese soldier clad in camouflage uniform on a remote reef says he has been guarding that patch of contested territory in the middle of nowhere for 16 years. His extraordinary assignment was coming to an end, he says, and he breaks into tears.</div>
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"After this mission is finished, I might not have another chance to come to Nansha," the forlorn soldier says, using the Chinese name for what is internationally known as the Spratly Islands.</div>
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The string of mostly barren island, islets, reefs and atolls are disputed by China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Brunei. They're believed to be rich in oil and gas deposits and lie near major international sea lanes.</div>
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"I work hard to the very last second I guess. I came here when I was 18, an entire youth. After we leave this place, only this 16 years will be worth remembering," he says, explaining that his sacrifices were a way of showing love for country.</div>
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"Money is useless here. Relationships are simple. Your motive for coming here is simple too. It was just to give back."</div>
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<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Chinese President Xi Jinping, in a footage dated April 13, 2013, is shown welcoming a boatload of tired-looking fishermen in Hainan's Tanmen coastal community after a long fishing expedition. "Congratulations on your safe return!" Xi says, smiling.</span></div>
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"I wish you a harvest every time you fish in the sea," he says, and later posed with the sunburned men for a souvenir picture. Then as if on cue, the Chinese leader and the fishermen applauded exactly at the same time before the camera to cap the upbeat scene.</div>
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Criticized by the United States and its western and Asian allies for territorial aggression, China used the documentary to air its side to the world.</div>
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"Since the Western Han Dynasty, basically, the areas of the South China Sea has been a part of China's territory," a Chinese map specialist tells CCTV.</div>
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Ancient Chinese maps are flashed on the screen, with a narrator saying that the South China Sea has always been part of all the territorial demarcations "with no exception."</div>
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"Based on a large number of historical documents as well as lots of serious and rigorous textual researches, South China Sea islands belong to China. Undeniably, it is a fundamental historical fact," a Chinese analyst says.</div>
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In a bid to project that it has political and administrative control over the disputed territories, the Chinese documentary highlights the emergence of Sansha City, which was established in 2012 with its main base in the Paracel Islands, or Xisha in Chinese. Although controlled by China, the cluster of island, islets and reefs are contested by Vietnam and Taiwan.</div>
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<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Xisha's largest territory, Yongxing Island (Woody Island), is depicted as the most developed piece of real estate in the contested region, resembling a small city.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It has a supermarket, a bank, a post office, a desalination facility for drinking water, low-slung buildings, and a main thoroughfare called the Beijing Road. There are mobile phones, Internet connection, cable TV with 52 channels, and a radio station called "Voice of the South China Sea" that continuously airs weather bulletins to fishermen. An aerial shot shows Yongxing's long airstrip.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">On Xisha's Yagong Island, about 70 Chinese fishermen receive 500 yuan in monthly subsidy.</span></div>
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People's Liberation Army forces are shown brandishing rifles and conducting combat drills in Yongxing but overall security of the disputed region has been delegated to a police force called the Qionghai Public Security Frontier Detachment. The Qionghai detachment oversees 110 "alarm service platforms" to monitor and respond to distressed fishermen anywhere in the region.</div>
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With the developments in Sansha, more young Chinese professionals and graduates are arriving to live and work in the city despite the great distance. Chinese tourists have also begun to visit, according to CCTV.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Battle for South China Sea control</strong></div>
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The documentary tackles China's efforts to strengthen its grip across the vast sea where it says Beijing has lost 42 islands to rival claimant countries. A system of patrols and surveillance has been put in place across the South China Sea and forward-deployed bases have been established to defend Chinese sovereignty.</div>
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In a show of firepower, CCTV shows Chinese maritime surveillance personnel on the deck of a ship, pointing their assault rifles toward an imaginary target in a combat drill. There is no massive show of military force though, reflecting China's strategy of frontlining civilian paramilitary forces instead of its monstrous People Liberation Army, to avoid giving the US military and its allied forces justification to intervene militarily in the region.</div>
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While projecting its firepower capability, China dispels fears, often voiced by Washington, that its increasing presence would eventually threaten freedom of navigation in the region. It says its huge economy thrives in the open waterways where 60 percent of China's foreign traded goods and 80 percent of its imported oil pass through.</div>
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Instead of a threat, China is portrayed as the "guardian angel" of the disputed waters, where it has staged rescue missions even of foreign sailors. From 2007 to 2012, Chinese patrols have reportedly saved 18,000 people.</div>
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But the documentary sends a clear message that China would not hesitate to act when its interests are threatened.</div>
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In a footage of a 2007 clash in the Paracels, a Chinese maritime law enforcement ship was ordered to ram a smaller Vietnamese vessel accused of trying to sabotage a Beijing oil survey.</div>
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"We are relentless towards the vessels of any other party engaged in the acts of deliberate sabotage. As long as the commander gives an order, be it hitting, ramming or crashing, we will perform our duty resolutely," says Capt. Yong Zhong of the Haijian 84, which was involved in that face-off with Vietnam.</div>
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The documentary also cited a 1974 clash with Vietnam that killed 18 Chinese sailors.</div>
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Just off Malaysia, Chinese maritime personnel were shown in a video holding a flag-raising ceremony on April 23, 2013 to symbolically assert China's ownership and control over James Shoal. Malaysian officials have been angered by China's actions and have since deployed navy ships to guard James Shoal from what they call Chinese intrusions into the contested area very close to their coastline.</div>
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In the Scarborough Shoal (Panatag Shoal), which China calls Huangyan Island, the CCTV crew filmed how they hoisted China's flag atop a coral outcrop in November 2012. "We had a sign here," says a Chinese law enforcement officer. "The Philippines blew it up. They put a sign and we blew it up." A past standoff in the shoal was also depicted, showing a Chinese law enforcement ship protecting Chinese fishermen from a "foreign" frigate.</div>
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<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">China also revealed a "top secret" operation it staged in August 1994 to erect structures in the Mischief Reef. Contrary to Chinese assurances at the time that they were just building fishermen's shelters, China admitted in the documentary that the structures were meant to serve as a depot for supplies and is now a military outpost equipped with satellite dishes and functions as a Chinese military forward base in the Spratlys.</span></div>
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<strong style="line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Three objectives</strong></div>
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China's patrols in the disputed areas have three objectives: Show the flag for deterrence, carry out surveillance on other claimant countries, and assert China's territorial control, according to Chen Huabei, deputy director general of the South China Sea sub-bureau of state oceanic administration.</div>
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"Only through our law enforcement making its appearance by patroling in the waters we ascertain jurisdiction can we best declare our sovereignty over the waters," Chen said.</div>
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Chinese patrol ships are shown spying on military outposts of Vietnam and the Philippines in the Spratlys last year.</div>
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Off a Vietnamese-occupied island in the Spratlys, a Chinese surveillance personnel took note of enhancements and new constructions made by Vietnam. They also watched Filipino soldiers in Flat Shoal, called Patag by the Philippines.</div>
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"This man is fetching water," a Chinese officer says, pointing to a Filipino soldier on a surveillance monitor. "The man just arrived by a small boat," adds a second officer.</div>
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"Take a look at the national flag. It's the flag of the Philippines," the first officer butts in. "What a mess of a house," his companion quips, looking at the dilapidated shacks of Filipino troops.</div>
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At the Second Thomas Shoal, called Ayungin by the Philippines and Re'nai by China, a Chinese officer noticed what looked like a new piece of wall on the side of the long-grounded Philippine Navy ship <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">BRP Sierra Madre </em>which hosts a small number of Filipino marines.</div>
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"This was built after the ship ran aground," a Chinese officer says. "It's like their living quarters," adds another surveillance officer.</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The logic of it all: Oil, gas, resources, territory and China's security</strong></div>
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The documentary describes the disputed waters as China's largest body of water crucial to its security and a key frontier for fuel and food.</div>
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It discloses that China has embarked on major oil and gas explorations but did not say where. Instead, it showed two developed offshore oil fields equipped with state-of-the-art equipment.</div>
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China estimates that some 23 to 30 billion barrels of oil and large volumes of natural gas lie beneath the South China Sea. Tens of thousands of tons of precious metals and minerals have been discovered, including manganese, nickel, copper and cobalt. Additionally, large amounts of what it calls "combustible ice" have been found and can be developed by China as an alternative energy source.</div>
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At least 1,500 species of fish and marine life are found in the contested waters, including giant manta ray, giant turtles, parrot fish, and flying fish. The waters teem with an estimated 2.81 million tons of fish, including 500,000 tons in the Spratlys.</div>
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China began its first scientific studies on potential oil and gas reserves in the Spratlys in 1984, covering 38 reefs, in a study called the Nansha Integrated Scientific Investigation. After it became apparent that the vast waters may be harboring huge oil and gas deposits, rival countries began grabbing Chinese territories, sparking conflicts, according to the documentary.</div>
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With all that gold, China has and will use its might to assert control over the contested region, analysts say.</div>
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"I think China's actions show that it is committed to utilizing the resources of the South China Sea, irrespective of the legal disputes," Singapore-based analyst Parag Khanna, professor at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School, told GMA News Online. </div>
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Six months after the Chinese documentary was made public, the response from the international community "has been a resounding silence," reflecting many countries' reluctance to take on China, analyst Thayer said. But the whole region, not only China's current territorial foes, must take heed of the red flags in the video, Thayer warned.</div>
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"Privately, the video must be viewed as disturbing not only to the main claimant states, Vietnam and the Philippines, but to other maritime states in Southeast Asia," he said. <strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">—KG/RSJ, GMA News</strong></div>
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