Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What China Has Been Building in the South China Sea

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 178 posts

Re: What China Has Been Building in the South China Sea

#71

Post by sharetea »

timiblossom wrote: post #33

The building to convert reef to island is one of the first steps to claim the entire Southeast-Asia sea by China. It will then have the self-declared ownership right to block all sea/air traffics through this region and bully other neighboring countries. Besides having a huge oil/gas reserve and fishes, in term of economic impact, this sea is as important as or more than Panama Canal or Suez Canal. A country with the…

It really sounds like the fascist/autocratic states in Asia (Russia/China) with its economy failing, is slowly resorting to territorial aggression against neighboring countries in order to claim more resources. With Russia bumping against all of europe, and China bumping against Japan/Korea/Taiwan/Vietnam/Malaysia/Indonesia/Phillipines, this is boding ill for global stability.

Re: What China Has Been Building in the South China Sea

#72

Post by swuecho »

eevilspock wrote: post #63
woodchuck64 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Petition to change name of South China Sea to Southeast Asia Sea: https://www.change.org/p/change-the-name-south-china-sea-to-... 420,000+ signatures so far...

China has a billion people. A petition battle is not the way to go.

you are right. even 1 million is a very tiny number.

Re: What China Has Been Building in the South China Sea

#73

Post by zaczac »

adventured wrote: post #70
zaczac wrote: post #66

What U.S. had been done with Hawaii? Entire mexico gulf? starting Gulf War for owning red sea? And Pacific Ocean becomes U.S. domestic lake? who brought up the world tension?

The US doesn't lay claim to the Pacific Ocean, and it has a right to transit its navy in open waters. It does not make a habit of navigating its navy into other nation's waters without their permission. The US does not claim ownership over any part of the Gulf of Mexico that it doesn't blatantly have a right to, as this image makes very clear: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/91/Te... The southe…

What if China ran their war ships into Mexico gulf just like U.S did in Southern China Sea?We shall think it is quiet fair because in the "public" ocean?

Re: What China Has Been Building in the South China Sea

#74

Post by [deleted] »

dak1 wrote: post #42
mc32 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn't this tactic of fabricating islands to lay claim too transparent? How could any court agree to the claims, why, yes, you demonstrated prior control, you indeed had a permanent population there"? To anyone seeing this this is an obvious objective to nullify claims by ph, vn, my, jp, etc. Can international courts be persuaded by these obvious artificial methods of establishing jurisdiction?

It doesn't really matter how transparent it is, since, International Law has rather little ability to enforce its decisions. As much as we try to develop rules and norms to constrain and moderate behavior by countries in the international community, at the end of the day, "the strong [still] do as they can and the weak [still] suffer what they must". And yes, you're right that the actions and intentions are pretty tr…

[deleted]

Re: What China Has Been Building in the South China Sea

#75

Post by gaius »

honest_joe wrote: post #62
gaius wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South tries to absorb the North de facto creating an option for Korea to become a regional military super house Can you detail your reasoning? If the lessons of West/East Germany are anything to go by, reunification will be followed by an inward looking period in which the work of integration absorbs all resources. Also the Nork military while large, really wouldn't add anything to the capability of the South - it's…

The only thing that prevents reunification is the chaebols and politics. And East germany did not have a shitload of minerals they could use / sell. All true but South is already a regional military powerhouse with the troops from north and 40-60years of work they could really become as strong as the Empire of Japan was.

The only thing? I think the Norks might have something to say about that...

Ironically tho' if they did achieve their wildest dreams and conquer the South they would be more, not less, vulnerable, because they wouldn't have any Western ally to hold to ransom anymore.

Re: What China Has Been Building in the South China Sea

#76

Post by apaprocki »

rcavezza wrote: post #45
jacquesm wrote: post #4

What a pity they destroyed those reefs. Besides that, artificial land is nothing new, a good chunk of NL was made by manipulating the sea. Even so this is clearly a 'landgrab', but not much different other than the time in which it happens (the present, rather than a few hundred years ago). NL did it with the colonies and plenty of other countries did it too. A lot of that has reverted over the last 3 decades but the…

>>Besides that, artificial land is nothing new Also - hitting closer to home for me is that a good chunk of Boston is on top of man made land. The entire "Back Bay" area (which is what most people consider downtown Boston) was originally underwater.

A large portion of lower Manhattan is also landfill -- the same portion that recently flooded during Hurricane Sandy.

Re: What China Has Been Building in the South China Sea

#77

Post by curiousjorge »

The question is, is President Xi willing to risk military conflict to enforce whatever new lines he draws on the map? I don't think he is. As we saw the air zone China drew that overlapped Korea, Japan and Taiwan, it was promptly ignored by all countries and when the US stealth bombers were flying China was silent.

An actual combat that results in Chinese loss would be detrimental to the continuity of Xi's party and the Communist Party itself. The risk is far too great for the small gain it gets. Chinese leadership operates on a cost/benefit analysis, I don't think anything has changed.

So the only logical conclusion is that Xi, along with his anti-corruption campaign to take out his foes, is using brinkmanship to further his popularity and distract people from internal problems that could lead to massive unrest. Economic downturn would certainly be a threat and war drumming has been a common political tool used by many different countries at different points in history.

A military conflict that would be launched by China so far away from it's coastline makes no sense where US has dozens of nearby bases in different countries and logistic support on it's own and from host countries to sustain a prolonged naval warfare. If there was a war, China should pick it's coastlines where it has anti-access/area denial weapons (allegedly) and opposing force would not risk their assets. It would be a nightmare in terms of logistics for PLAN if they did launch some provocation so far away from the mainland. The island building is a clever way to provoke without risking it's military.

Re: What China Has Been Building in the South China Sea

#78

Post by dragonwriter »

orf wrote: post #26
jacquesm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Spratly islands are in the middle of one of the most important sea corridors. Ultimately, even nationalism is about money, after all which war ever in the history of man did not start as a dispute over resources or territory?

Ones involving love, religion or ideology? Blanket statements like that never hold water.

> Ones involving love, religion or ideology?

Outside of mythology, I can't think of any in the first category; most of those that are traditionally described in the second or third were about groups control of land of material resources, though the basis of the claim to that control (or at least the propaganda to get people to fight for it) may have been based on religion/ideology.

Re: What China Has Been Building in the South China Sea

#79

Post by adventured »

zaczac wrote: post #73
adventured wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US doesn't lay claim to the Pacific Ocean, and it has a right to transit its navy in open waters. It does not make a habit of navigating its navy into other nation's waters without their permission. The US does not claim ownership over any part of the Gulf of Mexico that it doesn't blatantly have a right to, as this image makes very clear: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/91/Te... The southe…

What if China ran their war ships into Mexico gulf just like U.S did in Southern China Sea?We shall think it is quiet fair because in the "public" ocean?

That's exactly what would happen: the US would not freak out about it.

Russia was just busy flying bombers 40 miles off the coast of California last week. Last time I checked, we haven't declared war on Russia for it. They regularly do the same thing with their navy in various ways, whether off the Atlantic or Pacific coast, or near Cuba / Florida waters.

Re: What China Has Been Building in the South China Sea

#80

Post by adventured »

aet wrote: post #29
oblio wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Dubai do it in contested international waters? ;)

We (USA) have a gigantic navy base replete with nuclear weapons 1000mi from China mainland. Where is the closest Chinese nuke base to the US?

China is free to try to negotiate the establishment of navy bases anywhere in the world they see fit. And so is the US. The US has vastly more allies globally than China does, and that's the difference. Few countries trust China enough to establish long-term military arrangements with them. Whereas the US has been part of NATO for decades, and has been openly protecting Europe for decades - and the Europeans welcome it.

You think Germany wants China to set up a large military base in their country? How about South Korea or Japan? Of course not.

Post reply on HN