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South China Sea Dispute


CrownSlayer’s Shadow

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To illustrate what's going on with comics:

What China's doing...

south_china_sea_by_jollyjack-d9ekt1t.jpg

The international response...

EsrsgTp.jpg

Or to sum it up, a country is acting like a spoiled brat, everyone's throwing hissy fits, and there's no adult with a belt to hand out much needed ass-whoopings.

In more serious detail, after having this dispute go on for a while, starting with China's "Nine Dash Line", the other Asian countries are pissed (rightfully so), because of China being greedy and declaring the entire SCS as its own thanks to its island building and using its much more powerful navy to bully the other countries into letting them have its way. Basically, China is filling small islands with more sand in the sea to build facilities, and claiming them as part of its territory. Given that their is an actual definition on what constitutes as an island (that is a "naturally" made island, the key word being "natural" - i.e. not artificial ones that China is making), China is cherry picking definitions in international law when it suits it. The US has criticized China on this, while China has warned the US that sailing near the islands would provoke war, but the US's response was basically to laugh at that and just sail a ship near it anyway, as if daring China to try something.

Now, given that China is bolstering is capabilities and not at the level to fully challenge the US, not to mention not wanting to be on to start a war (who does?), it seems obvious that China wouldn't do anything given how bad that would look with it already being generally unpopular in the region. But now that the US has challenged that, it puts both countries in a bad spot that neither can back down without losing face and credibility.

Yeah, I can't see this going well for China. But for those of you interested, what are your thoughts?

Edit - This video from Test Tube News provides greater detail of the overall thing, bar the recent US Freedon of Navigation Operations (FONOPs)

Edited by ChaosSupremeSonic
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First of all, those little comics strips are hilarious.

But it's no surprise really, since it's the same old story.  Big, powerful countries get greedy with land, smaller ones are bullied, other large countries also get greedy and want in on the pickings as well.  Other countries try to look like the better person, when they're probably hiding ulterior motives and etcetera, etcetera.  It's just average politics: the rich want to get richer and the most powerful want to become more powerful.

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I love Polandballs, so many great comics. That one was fantastic.

So, here's what's up, China wants dominance over the South China Sea (hereafter referred to as "SCS") for a few key reasons:

Firstly, it wants money from all dat trade - billions of dollars' worth of goods pass through the SCS annually, in addition to possible oil fields that may prove lucrative. With China facing economic hardships as it retools its economic system over the next few years, having the revenue generated by the SCS' trade routes would provide some level of protection against the worst effects of the forthcoming economic turmoil. 

Secondly, it's a well known fact that China hates Japan, because of World War 2 and Japanese military/economic adventurism in China during that time period, and because Japan still largely doesn't acknowledge the atrocities its soldiers committed back then.

While the SCS doesn't directly border on Japan, it's a fair bet that a lot of shipping important to Japan flows through the area. Now, Japan's economy faces the same coming issues as China's (an inability to provide pensions for a retired workforce larger than the working workforce etc), but as Japan doesn't have 1.2 billion or so people to feed (or a billion impoverished citizens just barely scraping by during the boom times), it will undoubtedly be able to fix its situation and move on much more easily than China, for whom these problems are going to be quite difficult to resolve.

So, China's leadership in Beijing could be thinking that, as well as cushioning the country from the worst effects of the coming rough times, controlling the South China Sea could have an additional bonus of letting China stick it to its old enemy, putting the Japanese in a tough place and hopefully (from China's perspective) either delaying or derailing entirely Japan's economic plans.

Thirdly, China really, really wants to officially annex Taiwan, an island nation situated at the north-eastern tip of the SCS, known today for its high tech industrial sector. Despite Chinese naval aspirations, however, it's in no position to go toe to toe with America's globe-spanning naval power, and it's not prepared to try taking Taiwan with a Taiwan-friendly America steaming to the rescue.

Over the next few decades, the Chinese navy will be expanded and totally modernized (in fact this process has been ongoing for some time), and by the closing decades of the century it will probably be able to match America's sea forces in open combat; but perhaps the Chinese naval establishment doesn't want to wait until 2070 to put the American navy on notice. Perhaps it wants an excuse to range farther and farther away from home waters now. This island building strategy provides an interesting excuse for the Chinese navy to extend the range of its operations, and perhaps it might allow the country the ability to claim places like Taiwan with more legitimacy.

America's having none of it though - nothing that interfere with its navy's global supremacy is going to go unchallenged, especially if the light of a friendly democracy or the well-being of other friendly states is threatened, and most most especially if there's a ton of money involved..

Edited by Patticus
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I think it's kinda overblown, really.

Asian governments are so sensitive about these damn islands, and at least in the cases of Japan and Korea it goes back to national pride related to WWII. Same is true for China and Japan. In fact where Japan is concerned, probably no one but the Japanese agree with Japan's claims on the islands, because of the amount of conquering fuckery Imperial Japan was involved in. So really this goes back to who originally owned the islands before the Japanese navy started conquering shit in the 1910s, and who is even willing to honor 100-year-old treaties between governments that in most cases don't exist today, and all this after several wars. In some cases these islands are just coves or uninhabitable rocks in the sea. China's taking it to a new level actually, by modifying these islands and saying that means they're theirs. It's clever, because it's more than just building an outpost and raising a flag, they are actually growing the islands which is fucking nuts. But probably it won't deter any claims countries have on them. Why the United States decided to grow this into an issue of contention with China is beyond me. Maybe it has to do with the militarization of the island chains, but I don't think we're building our involvement in this into anything except a bargaining chip. Later we can pull our harassment back in exchange for China's cooperation in some other thing. There really needs to be some kinda official island dispute summit between all the Asian Pacific countries though, because they all claim islands against each other and it's dumb. They all float military vessels past each other over these dots in the ocean. I'm no expert, but doesn't this also come down to resources? I know maritime borders are used to claim resources extending out into sea a certain distance from the land border, which comes into dispute. For example, possibilities of oil in the Falklands turn it into something more valuable than just a piece of land with a population of several thousand.

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It's not just islands and resources. It's also national sovereignty and security for the countries in the region, as this is essentially China infringing on other nations boundaries by literally pushing its own on theirs.

This would be like Russia pushing its territorial waters near California or to the UK and making potential military bases on the islands there - that's basically them trying to get closer to attack you if you do something they don't like or have something they want to take for themselves. It's a future threat in the making. China had basically did just that to Vietnam with an oil rig by securing it with fighter jets among other things, like ramming their ships into Vietnamese fishing vessels.

Edited by ChaosSupremeSonic
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