[1] https://www.todayonline.com/world/asia/indonesia-sinks-41-il... [2] https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/1672020/indonesia-sinks-51...
This is just the first example but you can find many more:
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
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00rMVee0R4c
And there are examples from other countries too.
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.
Realistically, no entity, government or otherwise is taking any concrete steps to say no to China in the south China Sea.
Doing "drive bys" is hardly actual action, like say dismantling a Chinese base made in international waters. THAT would be concrete action, and I bet they would get all upset but ultimately do nothing (unless it's too Australia, in which case they'll find some other product to ban).
If nobody is going to stand up to them, it's all over already. In a generation, people will just say "oh isn't that all China's territory?"
> people will just say "oh isn't that all China's territory?"
You're already doing that. I feel like I'm witnessing a bizzare form of doublethink seeing people refer to a body of water as the "South China Sea" and then becoming outraged that China would lay claim to said body of water named after them.
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 international waters has always been messy.
>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 China. To produce an anti-CCP news piece in China is suicide for these companies.
This is just orientalism. Unlike us normal westerners, they don't care about what other people think! How scary!
>External "free" media have their own interests and biases, meaning they may or may not publish articles depending on whether they coincide with their goals. If a bad China news piece makes the current President they support look bad, do you really think it makes headline news?
This is delusional, as I discuss here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25121329
>Doing "drive bys" is hardly actual action, like say dismantling a Chinese base made in international waters. THAT would be concrete action, and I bet they would get all upset but ultimately do nothing (unless it's too Australia, in which case they'll find some other product to ban).
This is just bloodthirsty lol.
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.
>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 China. To produce an anti-CCP news piece in China is suicide for these companies.
Because that claim is wrong. Remember the cute stories earlier this year about Chinese internet users using various methods to circumvent censorship of a Renwu interview with Dr. Ai Fen: https://qz.com/1816219/chinese-internet-rallied-to-save-a-ce... ? Renwu is a Chinese magazine, publishing that interview hasn't been suicide for them.
I wish Japan would extend its navy and actively deter China. Too bad Mr. Abe had to resign his post serving as PM, he wanted to revisit article 9 of Japan's constitution. An reiterpretation was made allowing Japan to exercise collective self defense.
The nine-dash line claims were invalidated on the grounds that controlling small islands without permanent settlement doesn't extend the EEZ, so the EEZ is limited to 200 nautical miles from the coastline. But there's a lot within 200 nmi from the Chinese coast, including the Paracels, where those Vietnamese fishermen in the article were attacked by the Chinese coast guard. Simply defending their EEZ, as they have every right to do. Except the Paracels are also within 200 nmi of the Vietnamese coast, so the maritime boundary is up for negotiation. Vietnam and China have a treaty delineating the boundary in the Gulf of Tonkin, but otherwise it's still unspecified.
As for Japan, they're on the other side of Taiwan, so their EEZ doesn't extend nearly far enough to make any claims in the South China Sea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_Delimitation_in_the_B...
Vietnam should bring the case to court and employ some good negotiators. It's the only potentially constructive strategy for them, as outmuscling China is out of the question. If China won't respect the court's decision, the international community can then condemn them, issue tariffs and sanctions and Vietnam could legally fire warning shots and sink their coast guard vessles entering its EEZ.
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.
I did not use "yellow peril" or "orientalism", I used "ignorance". I'm not opposed to criticism of China or it's foreign policy, I'm opposed to getting the facts wrong.
You say that "no power is doing anything of substance about China expanding and laying a tacit claim out to the nine dash line", which I assume means you are ignorant of the many cases of other countries' coast guards attacking Chinese fishing boats (as linked in other comments), Vietnam subsidizing fishers specifically for fishing in Chinese-controlled but Vietnamese-claimed waters (as mentioned in the article) or the US Navy's "freedom of navigation" operations (also mentioned in the article).
There's a narrative circulating in right-wing Chinese blogs that the US plans to use its network of military bases and client states across the western Pacific to neutralize the Chinese fleet while simultaneously launching a land-based invasion across the Korean peninsula and amphibious assaults all along the coast. Hopefully you realize that that's quite an absurd scenario and just a transparent excuse to call for greater military spending.
Similarly, it's absurd to claim that there's no opposition to Chinese expansionism, while the overall media consensus is one of opposition and there are many instances where such opposition manifested as actual physical violence.
Talking up how strong your enemies are and how no one can stop them is one of the oldest tricks in the military propaganda book. Julius Caesar wrote about how strong and dangerous the Gauls were before he went and conquered all of their territory.
I have not got the facts wrong.
I said "no power is doing anything _of substance_ about China expanding" and that is a _fact_.
Coast guards attacking illegal Chinese fishing boats is a good step for illegal fishing but it is laughably small if it's meant to rebuke China for installing military bases on islands into the contested waters.
I don't see how Vietnam subsidizing fishers is relevant.
The US and other Navy forces are _entitled_ to sail through international waters by definition. Calling it "freedom of navigation" and doing _nothing_ else is on those trips is, for want of a better word, "cute".
None of these are acts _of substance_.
The _fact_ is that no power wants to poke the bear.
For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not saying those nations are wrong to avoid a substantial act. I'm not even saying China occupying those islands is wrong, nor am I saying it's right. I'm simply saying that no power has or will stand up properly to China. The govt / armed forces / press / etc don't like the expansion but they're not actually going to do anything about it.
As a result, in a couple of decades, the frog will be slowly boiled, and eventually the whole region will be assumed to be China's. That's all I'm saying.
> Similarly, it's absurd to claim that there's no opposition to Chinese expansionism
If you mean me, I made no such claim.
I simply said there have been no acts of substance to demonstrate this opposition.
I dearly wish I could read and speak Chinese. I haven't read the blogs you speak of (so I'll accept I'm ignorant on that), but with that said, is it really a shock that right wing blogs in country A says that nefarious forces in country B or C are itching to invade them? I see that ridiculous narrative often. Americans / Australians / insert-preferred-power-here thinking China will invade. It's tiresome and repetitive. For all of China's expansionist angst and insecurity-driven surveillance, I don't think of it as a warmongering nation.
I didn't follow your point about Caesar.
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 claimants combined. 14 Trillion GDP = capabilities to vastly out muscle everyone else. Same story with SCS islands, where China was _responding_ to other claimants reclamation and weaponization efforts. But Chinese reclaiming at Chinese scale will crush everyone else.
The fishing parallel is growing Chinese coast guard and structuring of maritime militia means Chinese fishing vessels get better support and more lenient treatment from other coat guards as Chinese force balance grows. Recent Chinese SCS skirmishes are relatively peaceful compared to others, whose mutual clashes frequently escalate to bloodshed because small peer countries can escalate and be brutal to each other. Obviously such reports rarely gets attention in western reporting, nor that per capita China underfishes, or fishing fleets from other wealthier per capita countries is sustained through foreign slave labour, whereas China's is just... cheap Chinese labour.
China SCS Monroe doctrine is balancing from this perspective. Philippines finally agreed to "cooperate" with China on SCS oil exploration, setting up frameworks for other members. RCEP this week without US or India. Short of war with USN, it's just a matter of time before China tames the SCS. For context, this is newly projected growth of PLA Navy 14th five-year plan for 2025. Only surface combatants.
https://preview.redd.it/yxsbgotn6kz51.jpg?width=1024&auto=we...
In the next 5 years, China will build approximately entire Japanese Navy in tonnage. It will do so with ~2% of GDP in defense spending, basically what Trump wants NATO members to comit. And as Australia, Japan, Korea are setting record high defense budget growth, China will be increasing national defense by 6.6% this year, lowest in decades. This is the fundamental reality of disportionate Chinese scale and industrial capability, even modest spending means the kind of acquisitions that will make neighbours shit bricks and US worry over hegemony. The alternative is... China not spending money a reasonable amount on defense and modernization, not enforcing her claims, which is a ridiculous expectation.
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 islands doesn't help Vietnamese fishermen much when they encounter other countries' coast guards out in the open sea, but the bases still provide a convenient place to shelter if they happen to be close by.
Military expenditure is just a good excuse to jumpstart a high tech manufacturing economy.
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).
Against whom? In practice, NATO is an offensive alliance: Afghanistan, Libya and Bosnia were not defensive wars.
NATO military spending already dwarfs that of any potential rival. Every dollar spent on the military is a dollar not spent on social programs, hospitals, schools, and other things that actually improve people's lives. Rather than pressuring everyone to ratchet up military spending, the world would be much better served by disarmament.
The NIH, NOAA, CDC, National Science Foundation, EPA, food stamps, farm subsidies, low income housing, and anything Obama ever cared about are obviously just wasting taxpayer dollars. But we need those extra aircraft carriers.
Yes, Europeans should invest more in Defence, but not in NATO, which should be let to fade into history.
The military is the strong arm of the political power. Giving a military branch to the EU would seal the deal in terms of creating a federal state.
This is why such initiatives are very limited and often more symbolic than anything else (e.g. Franco-German units) because sovereignty and control are very tricky matters to handle.
Then some countries, notably Germany, have issues with military power for historical reasons.
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 China. To produce an anti-CCP news piece in China is suicide for these companies.
External "free" media have their own interests and biases, meaning they may or may not publish articles depending on whether they coincide with their goals. If a bad China news piece makes the current President they support look bad, do you really think it makes headline news?
Honestly, I'm not really sure what to suggest here. Some HN users will post some ideas no doubt, but ultimately the most concerning thing is that none seem to have naturally emerged dominant so far.