SOUTH CHINA SEA: CHINA ESCALATES BRINKMANSHIP TO DANGEROUS LEVELS

[john nguyen]

This article is from an eminent Indian Strategic Thinker, Dr Kapila.
While not agreeing completely with the content of the article, El
Chino found it has some Truth.



SOUTH CHINA SEA: CHINA ESCALATES BRINKMANSHIP TO DANGEROUS LEVELS


Subhash Kapila, C3S Paper No:1016 dated August 10, 2012


“But what about an adversary that uses ‘salami-slicing’—the slow
accumulation of small actions, none of which is a casus belli, but
which could add over time to a major strategic change?

The goal of Beijing’s salami-slicing would be to gradually accumulate
through small but persistent attacks, evidence of China’s enduring
presence in the claimed territory, with the intention of having that
claim smudge out the economic rights granted by UNCLOS and perhaps
even the right of ships and aircraft to transit what are now
considered to be global commons. With ‘new facts on the ground’ slowly
but cumulatively established, China would hope to establish de-facto
and de-jure settlement of its claims.”——-Robert Haddick, Foreign
Policy Journal, August 03, 2012.

Introductory Observations

The South China Sea dispute between China and its South East Asian
neighbours which has been festering for decades assumed conflictual
contours since 2008-2009 after China declared it as a ‘core interest’
for China, and on which it would be ready to go to war to defend its
self-proclaimed sovereignty.

China’s such assertions should not surprise the international
community as it is very much in keeping with China’s past posturings
and its marked propensity to resort to conflict to resolve territorial
disputes rather than by conflict resolution initiatives.

Noticeably, China after 2009 has embarked on what can be best
described as on a dangerous course of military brinkmanship which not
only is destabilising for the Asia Pacific region but could ignite
China’s military confrontation and conflict with the United States
over China’s military adventurism in these contested waters.

South China Sea disputes stand well covered in media analyses and need
not be focussed in this Paper. Since China’s contentious military
unilateralism and aggressiveness carries the dangers of spilling into
a wider conflict what needs to be focussed on is as to why and how
China feels emboldened to indulge in military adventurism over
territorial disputes with its neighbors which could ordinarily be
resolved through multilateral regional and international forums.

This paper therefore intends to examine the following related issues:

China’s Escalated Brinkmanship on South China Sea Conflict: The
Intended Target is the United States.

China’s Timing of Escalated Brinkmanship Significant

United States Strategic Dilemma in Effectively Responding to Chinese
Brinkmanship on the South China Sea Conflict

China’s Contending Claimants Options on South China Sea Conflict:
ASEAN not an Option, the Effective Option is the United States

Global Responses to China’s Escalated Brinkmanship on South China Sea
Conflict

China’s Escalated Brinkmanship on South China Sea Conflict: The
Intended Target is the United States

China’s escalated brinkmanship on the South China Sea conflict can no
longer be limited to China’s burning desire to garner the control of
the vast hydrocarbon reserves that not only lie in the South China Sea
but also in the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea region. China’s
disruptive strategies in the South China Sea region has now
transcended onto a bigger strategic canvass, namely to checkmate the
United States and assume the dominant role in Asia.

China can ride rough-shod over all its rival claimants in the South
China Sea conflict with its military might any day but it will not do
so as it can achieve the end result on a low-cost option by a
graduated and incremental strategy which keeps the conflict boiling
but yet does not boil over. In such a strategy China pre-empts a swift
intervention by the United States and yet achieves its strategic
objectives outlined above.

The South China Sea aggressive claims are but only a precursor for
similar aggressiveness to follow in the East China Sea and the Yellow
Sea where it will be pitted against a more powerful rival in Japan.

However to graduate to the seas in the North, China must first attempt
to get the better of the United States in the South China Sea region,
both geopolitically and geostrategically

Geopolitically, China’s aims against the United States is to belittle
the United States image by its seemingly inaction against Chinese
military adventurism in the South China Sea region. Symbolism carries
weight and the image of a helpless United States to checkmate China
could be damaging for the United States.

Geostrategically, the Chinese aim is to portray to South East Asian
nations that the perceived lack of strong ripostes by the United
States against China arise from lack of political and strategic will
on part of the United States to confront China on contentious issues.
More starkly China wishes to the strategic credibility of the United
States as a reliable strategic partner of Asian nations in
countervailing China.

China’s three-pronged strategy outlined above is a manifestation of
what in an earlier Paper I had described as China’s strategy of
asymmetric attrition of wearing down US military embedment in Asia
Pacific leaving the field wide open for China to dominate the Asia
Pacific.

China’s Timing of Escalated Brinkmanship on South China Sea Conflict
Significant

China’s timing of escalated brinkmanship in the last few months is
significant, especially as it goes against the grain of any strategic
logic. China is always credited by the global strategic community as
having strategic patience, long range strategic vision and that China
is evolving into a responsible stakeholder in global affairs. But in
the present process of China’s escalated brinkmanship on the South
China Sea conflict these ingredients are visibly absent.

Then how does one make sense of its current military aggressiveness on
the South China Sea conflict? China’s timing for escalated
brinkmanship on South China Sea conflict can be attributed to the
following factors/developments:

China’s strategic consternation on United States strategic pivot to
Asia Pacific and rebalancing its military postures in Asia Pacific.
China hopes that by escalated brinkmanship on the South China Sea
conflict it could deflect/disrupt United States rebalancing its
military postures in Asia Pacific.

China is seeking to impede the strategic gravitation of South East
Asia nations to the United States camp and force them to arrive at
strategic compromises with China by a bilateral process in which
China’s political and military coercion can fully come into play.

China senses that with the United States fully engrossed with
Presidential Election year politics, the present time is opportune for
exploitation of its geopolitical and geostrategic objectives stated
earlier in this paper.

China has long been involved in sowing disunity amongst ASEAN nations
as part of pursuance of its overall strategy to wean away Asian
nations from US influence and which has a direct bearing on China’s
aggressive brinkmanship posturing on the South China Sea conflict with
ASEAN nations. ASEAN divisive disunity was starkly visible at last
month’s ASEAN Foreign Minister’s Meeting in Cambodia. Cambodia on
China’s prodding sabotaged ASEAN unity in a glaring fashion where
Cambodia indulged in a proxy war against its ASEAN member nations.

United States Strategic Dilemma in Effectively Responding to Chinese
Escalated Brinkmanship on the South China Sea Conflict

The United States is not a passive bystander to China’s escalated
brinkmanship over the South China Sea conflict. Even before it
enunciated the Obama Doctrine of strategic pivot to Asia Pacific, the
United States had already put into motion a southward realignment of
US Forces to Guam with the aim of swift responses to any outbreak of
conflict in the South China Sea region.

The United States has also been refining and redefining its military
doctrines specific to any military threats that China may pose in the
region, in particular the Air-Sea Doctrine which is aimed at
neutralising China’s Anti Access strategies .

However it seems that in terms of responding to China’s piecemeal
coercive military actions against its ASEAN neighbours claimants to
territories in the South China Sea, the United States is in a
strategic dilemma.

The United States dilemma is best reflected in the words of the author
quoted above, and he observes: “But policymakers in Washington will be
caught in a bind attempting to apply this (US ) military power against
an accomplished salami-slicer (China). If sliced thinly enough, no
action will be dramatic enough to justify starting a war.”

He further observes that “A salami slicer puts the burden of
disrupting actions on his adversary. That adversary will be in the
uncomfortable position drawing seemingly unjustifiable red lines and
engaging in indefensible brinkmanship. For China that would mean
simply ignoring America’s Pacific Fleet and carrying on with its
slicing under the reasonable assumption that it will be unthinkable
for the United States to threaten a major power over a trivial
incident in a distant sea.”

The United States however needs to recognise that historically that
such trivial military brinkmanship provocations have a tendency to
cumutavely add upto major flashpoints which could have been best pre-
empted and nipped in the bud at the nascent stage.

Further, the United States in order not to allow its political and
strategic image and stature in Asia Pacific be undermined by China’s
nibbling provocations in the South China Sea region, is honour-bound
to ensure that it provides the necessary security against China to its
existing Allies and those whose strategic partnerships it is seeking
like Vietnam.

China’s Contending Claimants Options on South China Sea Conflict:
ASEAN is Not the Option; the Effective Option is the United States

Confronting China for control of disputed islands/shoals that dot the
China Sea are South East Asian countries all of which are members of
ASEAN. The ASEAN grouping as an organisation had all along been trying
to involve China for a dialogue on the South China Sea conflict but
without success. China all along resisted that the dispute dialogue be
a subject of multilateral discussions.

Additionally, the ASEAN nations, most of them were till recently
adopting hedging strategies on China unsure that the United States
would have the resolve to confront China on the South China Sea
conflictual disputes. The picture seems to have changed after the
enunciation of the Obama Doctrine.

China’s response was to inflict a divisive blow on ASEAN by proxy use
of Cambodia to scuttle issue of a Communique after last month’s ASEAN
Foreign Minister’s meeting in Cambodia, which would have incorporated
critical references to China’s current postures on the South China Sea
dispute.

ASEAN is likely to emerge as more deeply divided as China’s
brinkmanship escalates on these territorial disputes. All that this
bodes is that ASEAN cannot as a grouping hope to be an effective
counterfoil against China on behalf of its members involved in
territorial disputes with China.

Even if ASEAN was united in its stand against China’s coercion, it
still does not have the military muscle to confront China. That is the
stark reality.

The other stark reality for ASEAN is that China is averse to any
multilateral dialogue with ASEAN grouping and this is best explained
by Haddick who rightly surmises that : “ The collapse of ASEAN’s
attempt to establish a code of conduct of conduct for settling
disputes in the seas(South China Sea) benefits China’s ‘salami-
slicing’ strategy. A multilateral code of conduct would have created a
legitimate demand for dispute resolution and would have placed all
claimant countries on an equal footing. Without such a code, China can
now use its power advantage to dominate bilateral disputes with its
small neighbours and do so without the political consequences of
acting outside an agreed set of rules”

ASEAN countries confronting China on the South China Sea territorial
disputes are left with no option but to strategically rely on the
United States for a security cover and countervailing force against
China. In doing so they would have to be ready to enter into security
relationships with the United States.

Global Responses to China’s Escalated Brinkmanship on South China Sea
Disputes.

The global responses are best illustrated from a reading of speeches
given at the Shangri La Dialogue June 2013 deliberations at Singapore.
The common thread running through these speeches was that the global
community and major powers were committed to the security of the
“global commons” and to the “freedom of the high seas” and that no
country had a right to declare them as national territories.

The United States, UK, and the new French Foreign Minister emphasised
that all of them stood committed to the security and stability of
South East Asia. The new French Government through its Foreign
Minister made clear that France and European nations had a stake in
South East Asia and the stability and security of the region was their
strategic concern. He further emphasised that France would support any
regional security grouping in the region.

China fearful of critical reference on its South China Sea posturing
virtually stayed away from the Singapore annual event and sufficed it
with a low level representation.

Undoubtedly, China stalks the South China Sea as a lone ranger bent on
establishing its hegemony over the South China Sea and to be followed
by similar provocative posturing later on the East China Sea and the
Yellow Sea.

Fearful of the above, China’s power rival in the region, Japan has
issued some initial cautionary warnings. While China seems to be
getting away with military bullying of its smaller ASEAN claimants in
the South China Sea, the same walk through may not be possible for
China when it confronts Japan on similar disputes up North.

Concluding Observations

China’s recent escalated brinkmanship on South China Sea disputes with
small ASEAN countries needs to be viewed as a strategic and military
gauntlet flung at the United States in the nature of a challenge to
provide effective United States countervailing power against China and
security guarantees to South East Asia countries locked in territorial
disputes with China on the South china Sea

United States responses to China’s provocations and brinkmanship are
being carefully being scrutinised in ASEAN capitals and Asia Pacific
capitals as eventually the success of the American strategic pivot to
Asia Pacific would overwhelmingly depend on United States resolve in
effectively checkmating China and before The China Threat cumulatively
becomes too hot for the United States to handle.

United States declared neutrality on South China Sea disputes is no
longer a viable option for the United States. The United States needs
to see through the diabolical ‘Salami-Slicing Strategy” being
practised by China in the South China Sea and effectively checkmate
China before China prompts a United States exit from Asia Pacific

[rst9]

Go join your wife and son's demonstration in Hanoi.

[Satish]

Post by rst9
Go join your wife and son's demonstration in Hanoi.

Please don't mind rst9, he can't help making a spectacle of himself
with these sort of "ripostes".

rst9 is a 74-year old retiree. But his maturity verily belies his age.
rst9 is under the impression that if he does not agree with someone,
then some choice insults and abuses are enough to convince the world
that they should join rst9 to disagree with the other person's view..

It must be rst9's senility that is speaking for him. He attempts to
reply to a post. But by the time he is ready to type in his reply, he
can no longer remember what/who he is replying to. That's when he
ripostes with his standard nonsensical paragraph of inanities and
profanities not just in the body of the post but, very often, even in
the title of the thread!!


rst9 is much like the old senile who is so far gone that by the time
he takes off his pants in the bedroom, he has forgotten why he took
them off. So he proceeds to pee and shit in his bed!!


74-year old rst9 will do himself a big favor if he enrolls himself in
some adult education school. Otherwise he'll continue to make a
spectacle of himself by revealing his appalling ignorance in
everything from history to English.


And if he can't get himself to do that, he should stop bilking USA and
go back to where his heart really resides, namely, the village of his
birth in China under CCP-dictatorship. That would be the honest thing
to do. Of course, it is another matter that his gf in Merced, CA will
refuse to follow rst9 to CCP-land where any deviation of his newsgroup
posts from the official CCP-line will right away lead him to re-
education through labor ( 勞動教養 ). And, then, rst9 might indeed end up
peeing and shitting at the very sight of a keyboard.

[rst0]

Satish is an old frustrated faggot wanking Indian liar troll, bashing
authority because he was abused by his mother's pimp as a child.

[Satish]

Post by rst0
Satish is an old frustrated faggot wanking Indian liar troll, bashing
authority because he was abused by his mother's pimp as a child.

rst0, you have lost your marbles. That is why you take recourse to
such asinine responses.



Ho Chi Minh always knew a fox from a hen. He was most perspicacious in
famously saying way back in 1945, “I’d rather smell French shit for
five more years than eat Chinese shit for the rest of my life”.

Tensions in the South China Sea rose after Malaysia, the Philippines
and Vietnam filed papers with the United Nations Commission on the
Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), in compliance with a May
2009 deadline to formalise their legal claims and prompting an angry
response from China. The militarisation of the sea continues. China
has established a significant submarine base in Yilun in Hainan, to
add to its naval bases in Guangdong province, and is now showing off
its nearly finished aircraft carrier. The US maintains an active
presence through its Seventh Fleet, Vietnam and Malaysia are buying
submarines, and the Philippines, the weakest power by far, is
receiving US support for its navy and coast guard.


The CCP dictatorship is playing a very divisive policy by single-
mindedly pursuing its colonial ambitions in the South China Sea. It is
verily a "splittist" trouble maker trying to split countries like
Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei of their economic
zones 200 miles into the South China Sea through bullying and naked
intimidation.

http://thediplomat.com/the-naval-diplomat/2012/08/02/a-bold-stand-in-the-south-china-sea/

A Bold Stand in the South China Sea
By James R Holmes

In the Q&A session following my lecture in Paris, a gentleman from the
Chinese Embassy asked whether the United States—by pushing for a
negotiated settlement to the maritime territorial disputes roiling the
South China Sea—is encouraging weak Southeast Asian countries to take
stances they might not otherwise take in the face of overwhelming
Chinese power. Implication: Washington has made itself a silent
partner of the Philippines, Vietnam, and other claimants. I allowed
that yes, American diplomacy might be emboldening them. That seemed to
please him.

But I hastened to add that it’s a good thing if Manila, Hanoi & Co.
feel confident enough to stand up for what is clearly theirs. That
didn’t please him at all.

I have come to believe we are testing a proposition in the South China
Sea—whether might makes right. The maritime territorial claims fall
into two classes. Scarborough Shoal, Mischief Reef, and the “oil
blocks” off Vietnam are utterly clear. Like all coastal states, the
Philippines and Vietnam exercise complete jurisdiction over natural
resources in the waters and seabed within 200 nautical miles of their
shores. These disputed geographic features fall under their
jurisdiction notwithstanding squishy, and lamentably commonplace,
press reports indicating that Manila and Hanoi “regard” (or
“consider,” or “claim”) them as part of their exclusive economic
zones. They regard them as such because they are.

It’s very easy. Get out a map. Take a compass, set the diameter to 200
nautical miles, place one end on the west coast of Luzon, and swing a
circle out into the South China Sea. You will notice that Scarborough
Shoal lies well within your circle. Repeat the procedure for western
Palawan, and you get the same result for Mischief Reef. The same goes
for the sectors of the Vietnamese EEZ where Beijing wants to auction
off oil exploration rights. In short, Beijing is deploying superior
power in an effort to repeal basic geometry and clearly written treaty
law. Learn to love Big Brother, Southeast Asia.

True, Vietnam recently passed a law reaffirming its claim to
sovereignty over the Spratlys and Paracels, which lie amid the South
China Sea and belong to the second, more ambiguous category. But even
if we interpret Hanoi’s actions in the worst possible light, it is
simply refusing to ratify the results of a 1974 naval battle in which
Chinese forces pummeled a South Vietnamese flotilla and grabbed the
Paracels. It rejects a status quo imposed by force.

If U.S. intervention fosters negotiations over the status of the
archipelagoes while heartening coastal states to defend the plain
language of the law of the sea, The Naval Diplomat says: so be it.


****************

China's broad territorial claims have no legal merit, and the U.S. is
the only power strong enough to push back.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443537404577578953575891264.html

Wall Street Journal
August 10, 2012


The Bully of the South China Sea

Last Friday, a U.S. State Department spokesman stated that Beijing's
recent decision to upgrade tiny Sansha City in the disputed Paracel
Islands to a "prefecture-level city" and establish a military garrison
there runs "counter to collaborative diplomatic efforts to resolve
differences and risk further escalating tensions in the region." That
muted protest was just the excuse Beijing wanted to play a round of
Down With American Imperialism. The Foreign Ministry called in a U.S.
Embassy official for a tongue-lashing Saturday. State-run media also
went to town, telling the U.S. to "shut up" and stop "instigating"
conflict in the region.

Why the irruption of ire? Partly it's because Beijing's various
factions need to look tough on sovereignty issues ahead of the
upcoming Party Congress. The Congress will pick the next generation of
Party leaders.

But another reason is that China's aggressive behavior in the South
China Sea has caused a backlash among its neighbors and hardened their
determination to resist Chinese bullying. Instead of admitting its
mistake, Beijing wants to treat the U.S. as the "black hand" that is
poisoning its relations with Southeast Asia. This may have a purely
propagandistic purpose, but the danger is that the Communist Party
will now fixate on America as its regional enemy.

***
In a 2000 white paper, Beijing claimed that the source of its
"indisputable sovereignty" over the Spratly Islands, the most
important features in the South China Sea, is imperial China's
historical record as "the first to discover and name the islands as
the Nansha Islands and the first to exercise sovereign jurisdiction
over them."

This basis is disputed. China may have some of the oldest surviving
maps of the area, but aboriginal, Malay, Indian and Arab traders
traversed these seas before Han Chinese began their explorations. And
the maps produced by China and other countries from ancient times
through the 20th century show the islands as uninhabited dangers to
navigation, not destinations under anyone's sovereignty.

Militarist Japan, ironically, is the true origin of China's claims. As
the great scholar of the Chinese diaspora Wang Gungwu noted recently,
World War II-era Japanese maps that showed the entire South China Sea
as a Japanese lake were the first serious claim to sovereignty over
the islands.

A second irony is that the People's Republic's current claims date to
a 1947 map issued by the nationalist government of Chiang Kai-Shek,
which drew a u-shaped line of 11 dashes around more than 90% of the
South China Sea. Mao's regime republished that map with a simplified
nine-dashed line after it routed the nationalists, claiming the sea as
China's "historic waters."

Beijing continues to use this map to justify its claims, although it
alternates between arguing that its claims rest on the U.N.'s Law of
the Sea treaty, which it signed and ratified in 1996, or otherwise on
territorial rights that predate the treaty. Whatever the case, Beijing
acts as if it owns all of the sea within the line, last year
condemning Vietnamese exploration of areas that fall both within the
"territorial" line and Vietnam's coastal exclusive economic zone, or
EEZ.

Resolving the ambiguity about how China makes its claims is more than
an academic question. For the U.S. it matters because about a third of
the world's trade passes through the South China Sea, and freedom of
navigation is a vital U.S. interest. China's neighbors also care,
since they are most immediately confronted by what they term Beijing's
"creeping assertiveness."

Even if all the disputed islands belong to China, the area of water
they control under maritime law would be relatively small. Only a
handful of the islands are capable of sustaining human habitation,
which is required to claim a 200-mile EEZ, and some of those would be
circumscribed where they overlapped with the EEZs generated by other
countries' coastline. Rocks and shoals only generate a 12-mile radius
of territorial waters at most.

This raises another demonstrably false claim made by Beijing—that
Southeast Asian nations accepted its rights to the islands until the
1970s, when potential oil and gas reserves were discovered. Not so:
The 1947 map was a matter of international dispute at the time.

It was only after the hydrocarbon discoveries that China began
bullying its way into the islands. In 1974, the People's Liberation
Army launched a surprise attack and ejected (South) Vietnamese forces
stationed on the Paracel Islands. In 1988, the PLA again surprised the
Vietnamese on Johnson Atoll in the Spratlys. Beijing seized Mischief
Reef from the Philippines in 1994 without a fight.

Now Beijing accuses its neighbors of stirring up tensions. But in June
it staged its biggest provocation since 1994: putting up for bid oil
exploration blocks that lie within Vietnam's EEZ and overlap with
blocks that Vietnam has already leased. This is especially threatening
to Vietnam because China is no longer dependent for such contracts on
multinational companies, which shy away from the risk of military
conflict around their rigs. The state-owned China National Off-shore
Oil Corporation is developing its own deep-sea exploration platforms,
a new way for Beijing to mark its claims.

Meanwhile, Beijing is also using its navy and militias to escalate the
tension. During the standoff with Manila over the Scarborough Shoal in
May, nearly 100 fishing boats were inside the atoll at one time,
according to the Philippine government. Last year, its vessels cut the
acoustic cables on two Vietnamese exploration ships—much as they tried
to do to the USNS Impeccable in 2009. And in June, China's Defense
Ministry announced it had started "combat ready" patrols in waters
claimed by Vietnam.

To Beijing's mind, being able to make outlandish territorial claims
and violate international law at will is the prerogative of a great
power. That was certainly the message Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi
delivered at the Asean Regional Forum in Hanoi in July 2010. He
described the South China Sea as a "core national interest," and he
followed that up by saying, "China is a big country and other
countries are small countries, and that is just a fact."

So it's no wonder that Southeast Asian nations that 40 years ago
looked to the U.S. to halt the spread of communism are now asking
Washington to help push back against Chinese encroachment. The wonder
is that Beijing seems surprised that it is again isolated in the
region and surrounded by U.S. allies. But as China's power grows, some
of China's neighbors realize that the window of opportunity for a
unified response that will change Beijing's behavior is closing.

***
The best chance of avoiding a nasty showdown is a strong U.S.
response. Washington has maintained its own ambiguity toward the South
China Sea, saying it takes no side in the dispute but has a national
interest in the peaceful resolution.

That's fine as far as the islands and the small areas of territorial
waters around them. But Beijing has shown that it has no interest in a
negotiated settlement and will use force to claim and dominate the
entire South China Sea if it can. Washington needs to call out the U-
shaped line as the travesty of international law that it is, and state
clearly that it will fight to keep the sea lanes open.

[rst0]

Satish's miserable life - Filthy evil Satish and pundit "hairy" kumar
are dark-skinned dirty lying Indian scum son-of-a-bitches. They are
Psychopaths, and should be locked up in an insane asylum.

[Satish]

The Chinese Sons of Heaven who lived in Chung Nan Hai behaved like
Hitler and Goebbels in the 1930s.
Austria belonged to the German Race so they annexed Austra .
Czecoslovakia contained a minority of ethnic Germans so Czechoslovakia
should belong to China for historical reason.  Then Poland was needed
as Lebensraum of the Germanic Race so Hitler partitioned Poland with
Uncle Stalin.
The Son Of Heaven in Chung Nan Hai decreed that the Scarborough islets
belonged to China because some Funcking Chinese gave them a Chinese
Name.   This ignored the fact that The Fillipinos had occupied these
in centuries.
Same with Vietnam whith whom China wanted to Steal not only the Hoang
Sa (Paracelses) and Truong Sa (Spratleys )  in spite of the fact that
Vetnamese had occuoied these Islands for thousands of years.
These archipelagos as well as 80% of the Vietnamese terrotorial waters
were claimed by Chinkos as their Lebensraum with historical proof
dating from the Han (200 BC).
ElChino wanted to say to the Chinkos that the whole territory of
China below the Yang Stse river belonged to Vietnam, the only heirs to
the Back Viet (100 Viet tribes).  King Ku Tien of the Viet was once
the ruler of all China.
The Ancestors of the Viet came from the Lake of Dong Dinh (Tong Tinh)
where the King of the Viet  Lac Long Quan married the daughter of the
Tong Tinh King.   Thus we have claim on the South of China at least
1000 years before the Hans.
China is weak in spite of satellites, space station, missiles, stealth
planes because it is a dictatorship hated by the Majority of Chinese
except the Chinese Neocons, the New Nazis of the World.  Every years
hundreds of thousands mass protests arized in China.
200 Millions of Chinese are internal refugees in their own country.
While the Chinese Race is very wise and industrious, China was ruled
with iron hands by the new Nazis in Chiung Nan Hai

Ho Chi Minh always knew a fox from a hen. He was most perspicacious in
famously saying way back in 1945, “I’d rather smell French shit for
five more years than eat Chinese shit for the rest of my life”.


Tensions in the South China Sea rose after Malaysia, the Philippines
and Vietnam filed papers with the United Nations Commission on the
Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), in compliance with a May
2009 deadline to formalise their legal claims and prompting an angry
response from China. The militarisation of the sea continues. China
has established a significant submarine base in Yilun in Hainan, to
add to its naval bases in Guangdong province, and is now showing off
its nearly finished aircraft carrier. The US maintains an active
presence through its Seventh Fleet, Vietnam and Malaysia are buying
submarines, and the Philippines, the weakest power by far, is
receiving US support for its navy and coast guard.


The CCP dictatorship is playing a very divisive policy by single-
mindedly pursuing its colonial ambitions in the South China Sea. It is
verily a "splittist" trouble maker trying to split countries like
Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei of their economic
zones 200 miles into the South China Sea through bullying and naked
intimidation.


****************


The CCP dictatorship is playing a very divisive policy by single-
mindedly pursuing its colonial ambitions in the South China Sea. It is
verily a "splittist" trouble maker trying to split countries like
Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei of their economic
zones 200 miles into the South China Sea through bullying and naked
intimidation.

http://thediplomat.com/the-naval-diplomat/2012/08/02/a-bold-stand-in-the-south-china-sea/

A Bold Stand in the South China Sea
By James R Holmes

In the Q&A session following my lecture in Paris, a gentleman from the
Chinese Embassy asked whether the United States—by pushing for a
negotiated settlement to the maritime territorial disputes roiling the
South China Sea—is encouraging weak Southeast Asian countries to take
stances they might not otherwise take in the face of overwhelming
Chinese power. Implication: Washington has made itself a silent
partner of the Philippines, Vietnam, and other claimants. I allowed
that yes, American diplomacy might be emboldening them. That seemed to
please him.

But I hastened to add that it’s a good thing if Manila, Hanoi & Co.
feel confident enough to stand up for what is clearly theirs. That
didn’t please him at all.

I have come to believe we are testing a proposition in the South China
Sea—whether might makes right. The maritime territorial claims fall
into two classes. Scarborough Shoal, Mischief Reef, and the “oil
blocks” off Vietnam are utterly clear. Like all coastal states, the
Philippines and Vietnam exercise complete jurisdiction over natural
resources in the waters and seabed within 200 nautical miles of their
shores. These disputed geographic features fall under their
jurisdiction notwithstanding squishy, and lamentably commonplace,
press reports indicating that Manila and Hanoi “regard” (or
“consider,” or “claim”) them as part of their exclusive economic
zones. They regard them as such because they are.

It’s very easy. Get out a map. Take a compass, set the diameter to 200
nautical miles, place one end on the west coast of Luzon, and swing a
circle out into the South China Sea. You will notice that Scarborough
Shoal lies well within your circle. Repeat the procedure for western
Palawan, and you get the same result for Mischief Reef. The same goes
for the sectors of the Vietnamese EEZ where Beijing wants to auction
off oil exploration rights. In short, Beijing is deploying superior
power in an effort to repeal basic geometry and clearly written treaty
law. Learn to love Big Brother, Southeast Asia.

True, Vietnam recently passed a law reaffirming its claim to
sovereignty over the Spratlys and Paracels, which lie amid the South
China Sea and belong to the second, more ambiguous category. But even
if we interpret Hanoi’s actions in the worst possible light, it is
simply refusing to ratify the results of a 1974 naval battle in which
Chinese forces pummeled a South Vietnamese flotilla and grabbed the
Paracels. It rejects a status quo imposed by force.

If U.S. intervention fosters negotiations over the status of the
archipelagoes while heartening coastal states to defend the plain
language of the law of the sea, The Naval Diplomat says: so be it.


****************

China's broad territorial claims have no legal merit, and the U.S. is
the only power strong enough to push back.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443537404577578953575891264.html

Wall Street Journal
August 10, 2012


The Bully of the South China Sea

Last Friday, a U.S. State Department spokesman stated that Beijing's
recent decision to upgrade tiny Sansha City in the disputed Paracel
Islands to a "prefecture-level city" and establish a military garrison
there runs "counter to collaborative diplomatic efforts to resolve
differences and risk further escalating tensions in the region." That
muted protest was just the excuse Beijing wanted to play a round of
Down With American Imperialism. The Foreign Ministry called in a U.S.
Embassy official for a tongue-lashing Saturday. State-run media also
went to town, telling the U.S. to "shut up" and stop "instigating"
conflict in the region.

Why the irruption of ire? Partly it's because Beijing's various
factions need to look tough on sovereignty issues ahead of the
upcoming Party Congress. The Congress will pick the next generation of
Party leaders.

But another reason is that China's aggressive behavior in the South
China Sea has caused a backlash among its neighbors and hardened their
determination to resist Chinese bullying. Instead of admitting its
mistake, Beijing wants to treat the U.S. as the "black hand" that is
poisoning its relations with Southeast Asia. This may have a purely
propagandistic purpose, but the danger is that the Communist Party
will now fixate on America as its regional enemy.

***
In a 2000 white paper, Beijing claimed that the source of its
"indisputable sovereignty" over the Spratly Islands, the most
important features in the South China Sea, is imperial China's
historical record as "the first to discover and name the islands as
the Nansha Islands and the first to exercise sovereign jurisdiction
over them."

This basis is disputed. China may have some of the oldest surviving
maps of the area, but aboriginal, Malay, Indian and Arab traders
traversed these seas before Han Chinese began their explorations. And
the maps produced by China and other countries from ancient times
through the 20th century show the islands as uninhabited dangers to
navigation, not destinations under anyone's sovereignty.

Militarist Japan, ironically, is the true origin of China's claims. As
the great scholar of the Chinese diaspora Wang Gungwu noted recently,
World War II-era Japanese maps that showed the entire South China Sea
as a Japanese lake were the first serious claim to sovereignty over
the islands.

A second irony is that the People's Republic's current claims date to
a 1947 map issued by the nationalist government of Chiang Kai-Shek,
which drew a u-shaped line of 11 dashes around more than 90% of the
South China Sea. Mao's regime republished that map with a simplified
nine-dashed line after it routed the nationalists, claiming the sea as
China's "historic waters."

Beijing continues to use this map to justify its claims, although it
alternates between arguing that its claims rest on the U.N.'s Law of
the Sea treaty, which it signed and ratified in 1996, or otherwise on
territorial rights that predate the treaty. Whatever the case, Beijing
acts as if it owns all of the sea within the line, last year
condemning Vietnamese exploration of areas that fall both within the
"territorial" line and Vietnam's coastal exclusive economic zone, or
EEZ.

Resolving the ambiguity about how China makes its claims is more than
an academic question. For the U.S. it matters because about a third of
the world's trade passes through the South China Sea, and freedom of
navigation is a vital U.S. interest. China's neighbors also care,
since they are most immediately confronted by what they term Beijing's
"creeping assertiveness."

Even if all the disputed islands belong to China, the area of water
they control under maritime law would be relatively small. Only a
handful of the islands are capable of sustaining human habitation,
which is required to claim a 200-mile EEZ, and some of those would be
circumscribed where they overlapped with the EEZs generated by other
countries' coastline. Rocks and shoals only generate a 12-mile radius
of territorial waters at most.

This raises another demonstrably false claim made by Beijing—that
Southeast Asian nations accepted its rights to the islands until the
1970s, when potential oil and gas reserves were discovered. Not so:
The 1947 map was a matter of international dispute at the time.

It was only after the hydrocarbon discoveries that China began
bullying its way into the islands. In 1974, the People's Liberation
Army launched a surprise attack and ejected (South) Vietnamese forces
stationed on the Paracel Islands. In 1988, the PLA again surprised the
Vietnamese on Johnson Atoll in the Spratlys. Beijing seized Mischief
Reef from the Philippines in 1994 without a fight.

Now Beijing accuses its neighbors of stirring up tensions. But in June
it staged its biggest provocation since 1994: putting up for bid oil
exploration blocks that lie within Vietnam's EEZ and overlap with
blocks that Vietnam has already leased. This is especially threatening
to Vietnam because China is no longer dependent for such contracts on
multinational companies, which shy away from the risk of military
conflict around their rigs. The state-owned China National Off-shore
Oil Corporation is developing its own deep-sea exploration platforms,
a new way for Beijing to mark its claims.

Meanwhile, Beijing is also using its navy and militias to escalate the
tension. During the standoff with Manila over the Scarborough Shoal in
May, nearly 100 fishing boats were inside the atoll at one time,
according to the Philippine government. Last year, its vessels cut the
acoustic cables on two Vietnamese exploration ships—much as they tried
to do to the USNS Impeccable in 2009. And in June, China's Defense
Ministry announced it had started "combat ready" patrols in waters
claimed by Vietnam.

To Beijing's mind, being able to make outlandish territorial claims
and violate international law at will is the prerogative of a great
power. That was certainly the message Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi
delivered at the Asean Regional Forum in Hanoi in July 2010. He
described the South China Sea as a "core national interest," and he
followed that up by saying, "China is a big country and other
countries are small countries, and that is just a fact."

So it's no wonder that Southeast Asian nations that 40 years ago
looked to the U.S. to halt the spread of communism are now asking
Washington to help push back against Chinese encroachment. The wonder
is that Beijing seems surprised that it is again isolated in the
region and surrounded by U.S. allies. But as China's power grows, some
of China's neighbors realize that the window of opportunity for a
unified response that will change Beijing's behavior is closing.

***
The best chance of avoiding a nasty showdown is a strong U.S.
response. Washington has maintained its own ambiguity toward the South
China Sea, saying it takes no side in the dispute but has a national
interest in the peaceful resolution.

That's fine as far as the islands and the small areas of territorial
waters around them. But Beijing has shown that it has no interest in a
negotiated settlement and will use force to claim and dominate the
entire South China Sea if it can. Washington needs to call out the U-
shaped line as the travesty of international law that it is, and state
clearly that it will fight to keep the sea lanes open.

*****************