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China attacks fishing boats in conquest of South China Sea

latimes.com

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Re: China attacks fishing boats in conquest of South China Sea

#41

Post by zksjejwbs »

hvdfhbj wrote: post #35
zksjejwbs wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your knowledge of history is so little that for you Washington is the guy who prints green notes. Jokes aside if the legitimate government are only the elected one lets wipe 2/3 of the world's government lol. Taiwan is a dispute territory because the kuomintang after they lost the civil war in China they moved to Taiwan and claimed the territory. Taiwan was not even a democracy after that but rather a military dictat…

There's only a few dozen remaining completely unelected "governments" in the world, and yes, we should definitely get rid of all of them. Certainly Taiwan never had a legitimate government either until recently but now they do, demonstrating that it can be done. I hope that the CCP can peacefully give up power too, but we should not take any military options off the table.

Taiwan cannot be considered a legitimate government either as the premise of their existence is illegal as they've claimed a territory that didn't belong to them and established a country (supported by whose thinks that communist should not exist - remember North/South Korea, North/South Vietnam)

The fact that someone elected the government doesn't change anything. People can be manipulated easily, look at who voted for Trump. The reality is that you've to see the history objectively.

CCP won the civil war in China (like Washington won the independence war) and is the legitimate government of China.

Luckily we don't vote for who is legitimate or not in HN, but in the UN. And there are resolutions of the UN that consider the CCP the legitimate government of China. The same can't be said for Taiwan for example.

I'm sorry but the down votes don't change the fact. Your view of what happened is pretty foggy and inaccurate, perhaps full of bias.

Re: China attacks fishing boats in conquest of South China Sea

#42

Post by hvdfhbj »

dirtyid wrote: post #19
nradov wrote: post #4

It turns out that many of China's territorial claims in the South China Sea are simply the result of errors in translations and cartography. They have no legitimate basis in law or history. http://cimsec.org/chinas-claim-spratly-islands-just-mistake/...

PRC SCS claims is based on Cairo Declaration in 1943, San Francisco Treaty in 1951, where illegal Japanese conquests including SCS features went to ROK which went to PRC after PRC replaced ROK in UN. These are legally inherited territorial claims recognized postwar but conveniently omitted in all the garbage propaganda reporting for current geopolitics. It in terms of legitimacy, no one in the region has stronger cla…

The PRC has no claim to any Chinese territory whatsoever because the PRC is not in any sense a legitimate government.

Re: China attacks fishing boats in conquest of South China Sea

#43

Post by ddeck »

ainiriand wrote: post #13
bArray wrote: post #3

The reason they continue to do this is because they know without doubt other Countries will not treat their fishing vessels in the same way. There is zero consequences for their actions and they have zero reason to change their policy. You might say "the consequence is that they look bad", but they don't, at least not to the people they care about - mainlanders. They own and/or control the news media in mainland Chin…

There are many examples of different countries shooting Chinese fishing boats. This is just the first example but you can find many more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3lkM4t8AaA

Certainly, but you'll find that in those cases, the Chinese boats were generally operating illegally in areas internationally recognized to belong to other countries.

For example the video you linked is of a Chinese boat operating ~350km off the coast of Argentina, which is nearly the opposite side of the world from China.

In contrast, the waters claimed by China in the South China Sea are just off the coast of Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, and not in close proximity to China [1]. The Permanent Court of Arbitration has also ruled that there is "no legal basis for China to claim historic rights" over the nine-dash line.[2]

They are however, very conveniently located over a large number of unexploited oil and gas deposits.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_disputes_in_the_So...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_China_Sea#2016_ruling

Re: China attacks fishing boats in conquest of South China Sea

#44

Post by hvdfhbj »

zksjejwbs wrote: post #41
hvdfhbj wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's only a few dozen remaining completely unelected "governments" in the world, and yes, we should definitely get rid of all of them. Certainly Taiwan never had a legitimate government either until recently but now they do, demonstrating that it can be done. I hope that the CCP can peacefully give up power too, but we should not take any military options off the table.

Taiwan cannot be considered a legitimate government either as the premise of their existence is illegal as they've claimed a territory that didn't belong to them and established a country (supported by whose thinks that communist should not exist - remember North/South Korea, North/South Vietnam) The fact that someone elected the government doesn't change anything. People can be manipulated easily, look at who voted…

Taiwan was originally not a country, but it became one when it held elections. Having been elected by the people of the island of Formosa, and with no other legitimate government laying claim to that territory, they became a legitimate government.

The fact that the CCP has a group of men with guns occupying China does not make them in any sense a government, it just makes them the world's largest and most murderous criminal gang. We should stop pretending that China has a government and start working on how to bring them to the Hague for trial.

Re: China attacks fishing boats in conquest of South China Sea

#45

Post by dirtyid »

yorwba wrote: post #30
dirtyid wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>will not treat their fishing vessels in the same way. Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, South/North Korea have all seized Chinese fishing vessels before. Some recently. These countries also regularly seize each other's illegal fishing boats, the entire region is an overlapping web maritime disputes. The difference is China is a juggernaut, larger in population and economy than all other claim…

> Chinese reclaiming at Chinese scale will crush everyone else. I wouldn't be so sure about that. The whole reason they have to resort to land reclamation to create artificial islands for their military bases is that they were late to the party and all the good spots on existing islands were already taken, mostly by Vietnamese bases: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Spratly_... Now holding those is…

Vietnam has the most features, but no ability to engineer them to match Chinese capabilities. The islands themselves are marginal, good for small landing strip and some basic installations, most need an inordinate amount of work and investment to become useful. Vietnam is simply incapable of producing a dredging company as large as Chinese CCCC, a byproduct of serving a country with 1.4B people. I think Mischief Reef alone reclaimed 1400 acres, about 10x than all Vietnamese dredging efforts. It's a massive undertaking but relative to goals. Vietnam's goal is just to claim stakes, which they can do with something as rudimentary as brick buildings, a dirt landing strip for supplies and DK1 rigs. Also see Philippines' Sierra Madre on Thomas Shoal, literally a beached ship to base a handful marines out of. China's goal is to push back USN, which requires a legit base, full runway for modern fighters, reinforced hangars and all associated support infrastructure. There's also work on geoengineering fresh water and agriculture to strengthen claims - turn feature into proper island for EEZ rights. If properly weaponized, it could make every USN asset in SCS vulnerable. During a shooting war, it would get wiped, but there's enough hardened infrastructure that US would expend substantial munitions. It's just another scale of construction and capabilities.

Re: China attacks fishing boats in conquest of South China Sea

#46

Post by mschuster91 »

dirtyid wrote: post #12
bArray wrote: post #3

The reason they continue to do this is because they know without doubt other Countries will not treat their fishing vessels in the same way. There is zero consequences for their actions and they have zero reason to change their policy. You might say "the consequence is that they look bad", but they don't, at least not to the people they care about - mainlanders. They own and/or control the news media in mainland Chin…

>will not treat their fishing vessels in the same way. Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, South/North Korea have all seized Chinese fishing vessels before. Some recently. These countries also regularly seize each other's illegal fishing boats, the entire region is an overlapping web maritime disputes. The difference is China is a juggernaut, larger in population and economy than all other claim…

> It will do so with ~2% of GDP in defense spending, basically what Trump wants NATO members to comit.

This "2%" figure is a top contender for "the biggest load of bullshit in politics" award, I (as a German, if it's relevant) hate it with a passion.

The reason is simple - all this target does is incentivize waste and disincentivize control and oversight. After all, if the only thing that's compared is how much money was spent... what's to keep states from blowing the money on bullshit and hoping that the US will save their butt once again?

What would be way better is to define goals on capability targets. Like... France being responsible for having one combat ready aircraft carrier, Germany 200 tanks, UK 7 nuclear submarines. That way governments would be incentivized to keep the vendors accountable to deliver safe and working products at reasonable cost, instead of basically letting them do whatever the f..k they want and milking the taxpayers for shit like marine helicopters that aren't certified for flight over sea (German NH90 scandal).

Re: China attacks fishing boats in conquest of South China Sea

#47

Post by tim333 »

platinumrad wrote: post #29
tim333 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's unrealistic about the above? Seems pretty accurate to me.

>The reason they continue to do this is because they know without doubt other Countries will not treat their fishing vessels in the same way. There is zero consequences for their actions and they have zero reason to change their policy. This paragraph completely decontextualizes what's going on and makes it sound like the Chinese state is just rolling around blowing up ships for fun. In reality, fishing in internatio…

>This is just orientalism

I've spent time in Vietnam and China, both of which are in the orient and as far as I can see this is a case of China being a bully and using aggression to grab territory off Vietnam and similar. I'd be more anti bully than anti orient.

Re: China attacks fishing boats in conquest of South China Sea

#48

Post by jruthers »

yorwba wrote: post #24
platinumrad wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sad that yellow peril alarmism with no basis in reality is what counts as "good analysis" when the orange website talks about China.

It's not the whole orange website, just two people who happen to agree in shared ignorance. You shouldn't take that to mean that everyone here thinks the same.

It's not "yellow peril" or "Orientalism" to criticise China or its foreign policy.

It is legitimate to criticise a nation state based on their behaviour, foreign policy, etc.

I criticise the US or "western" countries plenty, just not on the top of expansionism in the south China Sea.

My point above is that no power is doing anything of substance about China expanding and laying a tacit claim out to the nine dash line, and that in a generation, give or take, it will be taken for granted that the region is China's territory.

Granted, this is beyond the scope of the article, namely fishing in that region, but the article suggested (though did not state, and may well have not intended) that some of the aggressive Chinese boats were military.

Re: China attacks fishing boats in conquest of South China Sea

#49

Post by mschuster91 »

throwawaysea wrote: post #6

This article spans a few different concerns with China's increasing aggression in foreign policy as it concerns the South China Sea: First, the Chinese fishing fleets increasingly are venturing far away from their own shores, just as fleets from other nearby countries are also venturing further from their own shores. This is because shore fishing is drying up, due to unsustainable overfishing and ecological collapse.…

> First, the Chinese fishing fleets increasingly are venturing far away from their own shores

They're going as far as Africa, and taking everything they want: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-china-s-fishermen-ar...

Us Europeans have then to deal with people fleeing poverty. One might think it might be in Europe's own best interest to rein China in, but... following the 2008 financial crisis, China went in and bought off Greece and Italy.

Re: China attacks fishing boats in conquest of South China Sea

#50

Post by mytailorisrich »

bArray wrote: post #3

The reason they continue to do this is because they know without doubt other Countries will not treat their fishing vessels in the same way. There is zero consequences for their actions and they have zero reason to change their policy. You might say "the consequence is that they look bad", but they don't, at least not to the people they care about - mainlanders. They own and/or control the news media in mainland Chin…

It should be pointed out once again that the Chinese claims over the South China Sea are not the doing of the CCP. The issue predates them and the ROC (Taiwan) has virtually the same claims.

In fact the "9-dash line" so strongly defended by the Chinese (Mainland) Government dates from WWII and the ROC claims over Japanese-occupied territory.

There is no right and wrong here. For a long time the neighbouring countries, including China, did not pay much attention, then Europeans and Americans colonised the region, now everyone is fighting their corner to further their own interests. It so happens that China has regained strength and has adopted a "just do it" approach similar to the time-honoured one Western countries have historically taken. I.e. they've learned the game at their own expense.

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