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 right to block or own it will harm the rest of the world. Currently, the allies have been formed with a group of countries Japan, Philippine, Viet Nam, America and others trying to stop China but they have not found any solution nor success yet.
Can I call horseshit on HN again? The Strait of Malacca (which is close by) would be on par with the Panama Canal or Suez. The South China Sea is not a transit point for goods in the same manner, and is not as important.
When you look at China's claims in comparison with everyone else's claims, (especially Vietnam's), it does not look that outlandish, and everyone in the region effectively wants to be able to say "these are our waters you're passing through." The actors in this region are not as innocent as you would think they are.
You have to trace back to Japanese actions before WWII and look at the geopolitical insecurity of these countries in order to understand these motivations, and then recognize that China does what it does because it does not think that the powers-that-be will be able or willing to defend its economic interests in the future. The only reason why China seems scary is because it would appear as if it can actually build up and defend its claims, unlike everyone else, but even then, it doesn't have a blue water navy like the United States. They can't instigate an area denial attack on these claims without strangling their own economy either, so it's kind of a tempest in a teapot.
This. Thank you for being a voice of reason. Historical context is so important here, especially the lessons China learned the hard way. Like just what the U.S., U.K., France, and other countries can do to you if you show weakness.
If China block ships from the area it wont be too hard to block their ships from Panama and Suez canals and deny access to Americas
Watch their economy crumble if they are prevented from selling this cheap knacks to the rest of the world.
It be a stupid move and the Chinese are far from stupid unlike the the Russians who are doing their best to tick every checkbox on a rogue criminal state chalkboard
My word the southern reaches of the Chinese claim are extremely grabby! Is this just similar to haggling in a bazaar for an item listed at $30, which you personally value at $20 so you open with a lowballed offer of $10?
You're implying ASEAN members all act in unison -- they do not. They fight amongst each-other almost as much as they do with China.
And while they fight amongst each-other, China voices support for one while undermining that support in another fashion. Pitting them against each-other is common.
You're being generous. China is annexing territory that belongs to Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. The same thing that Russia is doing in Ukraine. It's an act of war, the issue is that the world is very afraid of China (both militarily and economically).
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.
Why is it moral for the U.S. and U.K. to build bases on random little islands in Asia, but not China and other Asian countries?
Edit: Clarification, since so many of the smaller uninhabited islands have been claimed by the UK, US, and other Western nations, how is it wrong to build some uninhabited islands of your own?
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 there are still quite a few remnants such as Cyprus (claimed by the Turks and the Greeks), the Falkland islands (UK vs Argentina) and a whole bunch of smaller ones.
The world map will always be in flux due to territorial disputes like these, in the end it is all about money.
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?
That whole story kind of strikes me as propaganda with deliberately provided intel and probably even satellite images.
There is increasing necessity to condition Americans for what is seen as a coming confrontation with China. People need to start being worried and have concerns. I'm not placing any kind of judgement on whether that is good or bad, but it is happening and our government deems it necessary to "educate" the public and we all very well know that the NYT, along with many other mainstream news sources, are little more than government propaganda channels.
I wouldn't say it's about money. From the bottom it looks like it's all about money, because there is a huge money layer that blocks the view; but from the top, it becomes rather clear that it's not really about money at all when you have all the money you ever need. It's about power, control, and legacy; all far more elusive goals than simply money.
Not everything is an American conspiracy of some kind. These issue need to be addressed before a smaller country and China start to take shots at each other (I mean this literally and figuratively). Similar issues are happening in Ukraine with Russia annexing Crimeria.
What if China wants a piece of the Philippines or Vietnam? It needs to be addressed on an international stage before the civilians on both sides begin suffering.
The problems in that area are nothing new, the local medias of each involved country have been talking about it for years, before the US began to take sides.
It is if you ignore artificial land construction which had no effect on territorial boundaries. Which, after all, is irrelevant to the conversation at hand.
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 big part of this is also "creating facts on the ground" that align as closely as possible with the PRC's "9-dash line"[1], especially prior to a decision being made in the Philippines v. China case before the Permanent Court of Arbitration. Those facts also provide much better power projection capabilities to the PLAN (the PRC's Navy).
Development of the islands actually accelerated dramatically when the case was filed, and I suspect the PRC wanted to get the largest and most obvious work done before that case concludes, since, although the PRC doesn't recognize the court's jurisdiction, past cases where other countries have acted with similar disregard suggest the optics surrounding it still matters.[2]
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 transparent, with just some uncertainty surrounding the extent (ie, what reasoning will the PRC ultimately use to justify its claims, as it's also been quite ambiguous about them).
I wonder to what extend the real issue is Taiwan. After all China has a (often strongly expressed) territorial claim to Taiwan (and vice versa, but that is not as well-known). If China were to cede alleged land-rights w.r.t. to these islands, it might set a precedent that Taiwan might try to exploit. Maybe China wants to avoid this situation.
I think they're both related to upholding territorial claims, which the PRC says is a "core interest" (ie, something they're willing to go to war over), but I don't think it's viewed as a direct domino effect.
The more direct link is potentially to the CCP's claim to legitimacy as the government of China. If they can't defend China's "historic" claims to territory then they could lose legitimacy in the eyes of an increasingly nationalistic public.
I agree, but it would be much easier to sell giving up on the Spratly Islands to the Chinese population than accepting Taiwan as a sovereign state. Indeed I would not be too surprised if China did the former. The ability to do so gives China a lot of leverage in negotiations with regional or international competitors, just like the US uses the unresolved Taiwan situation as a lever in negotiations with China.
While not expanded/ing, the Savages Islands are an European example of disputed Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) between Spain and Portugal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savage_Islands
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.
Indochina was the name for the eastern projection of the upper mainland Southeast Asian peninsula region under French domination - hence, "French Indochina". The name probably derives from the fact that the historic and modern cultures of the region are a mix of Chinese and Indian: a little known fact is that there were all-out Hindu kingdoms as close to modern China as central Vietnam, northern Burma, southern Laos and Cambodia. Indian influence is also heavily felt in Burma, Thailand, and upper Laos, for instance in writing systems (abugidas), language, mythology, law, religion and royal/court rituals.
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.
What they're going to end up doing is forging a multilateral treaty between Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Phillippines, and possibly Taiwan, with Australia and the USA giving a nod and a wink from the back of the room.
I think that there won't be a shooting war. It will be about 95% economic warfare.
Artificially-constructed islands don't count for expanding EEZ per UNCLOS. What China appears to be doing is attempting a mixture of trying to dilute the facts so as to increase ambiguity and developing "facts on the ground" (cf. the Israeli settlement patterns in Palestinian territory) so that any grand compromise hews more to their favor.
I think the last thing China wants is a multilateral treaty: the more people that are involved in a treaty, the less powerful China's negotiating time is. China has made repeated angry noises against proposals to treat the issue as a single regional issue rather than a collection of bilateral disputes. The disputes are also a large factor into why all the other south-east Asian countries (including especially Vietnam!) are trying to cozy up to the US and get the protection of the US Navy.
Some of them are natural islands that have been artificially expanded to support a military presence.
The 12 NM territorial limit for a natural island certainly allows the power owning it to build barracks, airfields, and artillery batteries within that limit. And that prevents other countries from claiming or disputing the island.
I agree, it goes against the best interest of any of these countries to risk a military clash with China over it building infrastructure on some unoccupied patches of sand in the middle of the sea.
The shipping routes are in international straights. China would not disrupt them because Chinese ships would be at risk in other waterways they can not project power to.
Readit News
Here is the map that China wants to claim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_disputes_in_the_So...
When you look at China's claims in comparison with everyone else's claims, (especially Vietnam's), it does not look that outlandish, and everyone in the region effectively wants to be able to say "these are our waters you're passing through." The actors in this region are not as innocent as you would think they are.
http://pages.stolaf.edu/asiaforecast2014/portfolio/sino-viet...
You have to trace back to Japanese actions before WWII and look at the geopolitical insecurity of these countries in order to understand these motivations, and then recognize that China does what it does because it does not think that the powers-that-be will be able or willing to defend its economic interests in the future. The only reason why China seems scary is because it would appear as if it can actually build up and defend its claims, unlike everyone else, but even then, it doesn't have a blue water navy like the United States. They can't instigate an area denial attack on these claims without strangling their own economy either, so it's kind of a tempest in a teapot.
The navy has zero defenses that can stop a 1970s ballistic antiship missle.
Watch their economy crumble if they are prevented from selling this cheap knacks to the rest of the world.
It be a stupid move and the Chinese are far from stupid unlike the the Russians who are doing their best to tick every checkbox on a rogue criminal state chalkboard
And while they fight amongst each-other, China voices support for one while undermining that support in another fashion. Pitting them against each-other is common.
It already has the self-declared ownership right. The point is, it will have the infrastructure to carry it out.
Deleted Comment
Edit: Clarification, since so many of the smaller uninhabited islands have been claimed by the UK, US, and other Western nations, how is it wrong to build some uninhabited islands of your own?
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 there are still quite a few remnants such as Cyprus (claimed by the Turks and the Greeks), the Falkland islands (UK vs Argentina) and a whole bunch of smaller ones.
The world map will always be in flux due to territorial disputes like these, in the end it is all about money.
You can't compare an island with 1 million inhabitants to basically uninhabited islands.
There is increasing necessity to condition Americans for what is seen as a coming confrontation with China. People need to start being worried and have concerns. I'm not placing any kind of judgement on whether that is good or bad, but it is happening and our government deems it necessary to "educate" the public and we all very well know that the NYT, along with many other mainstream news sources, are little more than government propaganda channels.
I wouldn't say it's about money. From the bottom it looks like it's all about money, because there is a huge money layer that blocks the view; but from the top, it becomes rather clear that it's not really about money at all when you have all the money you ever need. It's about power, control, and legacy; all far more elusive goals than simply money.
What if China wants a piece of the Philippines or Vietnam? It needs to be addressed on an international stage before the civilians on both sides begin suffering.
It is if you ignore artificial land construction which had no effect on territorial boundaries. Which, after all, is irrelevant to the conversation at hand.
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.
Development of the islands actually accelerated dramatically when the case was filed, and I suspect the PRC wanted to get the largest and most obvious work done before that case concludes, since, although the PRC doesn't recognize the court's jurisdiction, past cases where other countries have acted with similar disregard suggest the optics surrounding it still matters.[2]
[1] See: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-13748349 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-dotted_line
[2] For example: http://systemchangenotclimatechange.org/article/caving-inter...
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?
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 transparent, with just some uncertainty surrounding the extent (ie, what reasoning will the PRC ultimately use to justify its claims, as it's also been quite ambiguous about them).
The more direct link is potentially to the CCP's claim to legitimacy as the government of China. If they can't defend China's "historic" claims to territory then they could lose legitimacy in the eyes of an increasingly nationalistic public.
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.
Deleted Comment
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.
What they're going to end up doing is forging a multilateral treaty between Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Phillippines, and possibly Taiwan, with Australia and the USA giving a nod and a wink from the back of the room.
I think that there won't be a shooting war. It will be about 95% economic warfare.
I think the last thing China wants is a multilateral treaty: the more people that are involved in a treaty, the less powerful China's negotiating time is. China has made repeated angry noises against proposals to treat the issue as a single regional issue rather than a collection of bilateral disputes. The disputes are also a large factor into why all the other south-east Asian countries (including especially Vietnam!) are trying to cozy up to the US and get the protection of the US Navy.
The 12 NM territorial limit for a natural island certainly allows the power owning it to build barracks, airfields, and artillery batteries within that limit. And that prevents other countries from claiming or disputing the island.