91–100 of 178 posts
How come the UN is not stopping this stupidity? Their 9 dash nine rule is so stupid.
The only time the UN can act is with the support of all five permanent members, which also includes Russia. Guess how often that happens.
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...
Serious question: has change.org accomplished anything ever?
https://www.change.org/p/playmobil-please-make-disability-to...
The Lego petition doesn't seem to be doing as well. It's disappointing that Lego doesn't see the market.
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…
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21590930-chinas-new-ai...
I am surprised most of us only believe/get news from CNN & MSNBCish. Vietnam is the one who building in the South China Sea. Vietnam is building two islands: West London Reef and Sand Cay, at the year of 2010. Vietnam build islands, CNN FOX cricket, cricket. China build islands, it is against international law. - http://amti.csis.org/west-reef-tracker/ - http://www.newseveryday.com/articles/16087/20150508/vietnam-...…
The article clearly shows Vietnam is building islands too. It also shows them being pretty close to mainland Vietnam.
It all comes down to the international laws of the sea. Planting your flag on a 1m wide rock above the high tide line enables an exclusive zone with radius 12 NM for excluding all foreign vessels, a radius of 24 NM for enforcement of your laws, and one with radius 200 NM for exclusive economic activities, like oil drilling, undersea mining, and fishing. It's a resource grab. China wants the fish and the seafloor. Wha…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Cuban missile crisis in 1962?
Ironically, the NYT is banned by the great firewall here in China. On nomenclature, Indochina Sea would perhaps be a reasonable candidate for a more honest toponym, being as it is both suggestive of the general area and adequately distanced from any specific modern political entities.
honestly, how does indo come into picture?
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…
It's not only about money, you cannot discount nationalism. Cyprus is a different situation than Falklands or the Spratly Islands. You can't compare an island with 1 million inhabitants to basically uninhabited islands.
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…