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Did they find huge reserves of straw there too?
Speaking of Vietnam, they have an interest in this too, which has nothing to do with the Americans.
They don't need bases in other countries when they are dealing with their neighbors. Their own bases serve them just fine for what they are doing right now.
Also your wrong if you think China won't be pushing its interests on it neighbors if the USA wasn't around. The dreaded USA is not the only reason China is building up its navy. But don't let me stop you from thinking that. Blame the USA for this if it makes you feel better; it changes nothing. China is an up and coming world power; they will have their own style of imperialism, only time will tell how bad it will be. Depending on how old we all are here we may or may not live to see that day. They need fuel for their economic fire and while China may not dominate the entire planet like some have they damn sure will dominate their region.
You're kidding, right?
Well acording to Unionist Vietnam is not even a country... or something like that. (I have no idea where he was going with that.)
For some strange reason I thought that link might take me to some evidence that the U.S. was setting up a military base in Vietnam.
But it doesn't, and no, I'm not kidding.
Sorry that stupid box you are trying to put me in has no basis in my personal views. Try talking about the subject matter instead of making up stupid straw man arguments based on NOTHING I posted.
No, you've got to be kidding with that post... that link shows NOTHING about Vietnam besides it being on the map.
Here let me help you out...
Vietnam Says Cnooc's South China Sea Bids Violate Territory
Vietnam, China tension escalates
It is apparent we don't share the same definition of international crisis. When NATO or the US sends its nuclear armadas into a region it raises a normal international dispute over trade into a high stakes game involving the whole planet and that is a crisis. You may be right that if the US wasn't sabre rattling that we would not hear about this because the parties involved would eventually reach an agreement without threatening to plunge the planet into a nuclear winter.
I presume both you and Bec understand that the only military threat to the Chinese homeland is nuclear. In any conventional war they are more than capable of defending themselves. Given they are one of the charter members of MAD we know they are prepared to strike back. I am seriously cynical and actually believe that if China did not have nukes and the capability of delivering them that Hillary would be talking about tactical nuclear strikes like in the dispute with Iran.
I also think that this is not really about countries but rather about petroleum companies. The Chinese want access to the oil every where on the planet. They are willing to pony up the cash to develop any oil fields and I think that left alone the dispute will be resolved by various face saving gestures on the "sovereignty" issues as long as the Chines oil companies get to do the developing. That will cut out the American and UK oil companies, ergo the sabre rattling about the rights of nations. The really bad thing from a western perspective is that there aren't some people on the deserted Philippine rock so that they could invoke the Duty to Protect doctrine.
Chinese aggression towards its neighbors is hardly a straw man argument and I'm not trying to put you in anything... Your views are your views, I respect that. I'm just giving you my answer and honest opinion to your question, you know, the one YOU asked me. I'm sorry if you didn't like it but it's not like anybody is going to change anybody's mind around here.
Oh and why are you editing my comments and adding stuff I didn't write? That's just wrong dude... the subject matter of your question to me was China, I'm not talking about the entire planet here.
I wonder though as my species rushes to unearth every last drop of carbon based oil and gas and burn it as quick as possible.
A pox on all the oil companies. No matter whether is Vietnam's or China's state owned petrol company that develops it makes it any more saner. My guess is that much of the carbon will get burned in China even if Vietnam develops the field. Now if the Philippines are the "rightful" owners then of course the fields will be developed by the US and UK oil companies and the bulk of the carbon will be shipped to America and Europe.
I don't support any of it I just think it is ludicrous to compare the US and China. Its like comparing the Hells Angels to an eighth grade bully. I also don't like either of those.
@ kropotkin1951 #38
matters between sovreign nations = international affairs.
Sorry, but China is not the only interested party, nor the only party in the region that is a sovereign nation, and in terms of local politics this is not all about them.
China wants to have its own companies do the developing? Well I'd like to have a coffee tree in my back yard, but I don't. And in terms of their situation, I think they might do better by actually negotiating with their neighbouring sovereign nations rather than threatening them.
I can agree with that in part (though I think you seriously underestimate China's power). So why are you rationalizing China's strongarming its neighbours with arguments that they just want a piece of the pie?
Any sentence that starts with, "Also your wrong if you THINK" is not being respectful of my views. I am not as naive as your stupid comment that I think that China would not be pushing its interest. Point to any of my posts where I have said that China does not push its interests. That is a the basis of my claim you are using a straw man argument the straw man is your saying I THINK ridiculous and naive ideas and then going on to crush my idiocy.
I personally don't find that respectful in the least.
Maybe this will help, maybe it woun't.
@1951: and I'm sure the USA is safe from Chinese attack. I really doubt anybody is going to war over this. But it does show how China is starting to get assertive with its neighbors as its military might grows (and that's all I'm really trying to say in this thread). Do you disagree with that?
(good point about the oil companies by the way)
[edit] Having read you post above I'm sorry you're taking this all too personnel. Have a nice day.
I stand corrected. That looks like the whole pie.
I think China is a dominant power in its region and has the muscle to push around its neighbours. I also think that they want access to resources to drive their economy and appear in Canada and Libya and other parts of the world to be quite happy with having the controlling interest.
In negotiations one always wants to go in with a strong hand. The Chinese have the muscle but I am not an international lawyer so I have no idea which country has the merits. It seems much like the Arctic in that the claims are overlapping. What would the US say if the Norwegians or Russians started drilling in waters subject to disputed claims? How helpful would it for the Chinese to send in its navy to stop the US from preventing the Norwegians from drilling before an international agreement had been concluded.
China can also claim that like the South China Sea the Arctic is international waters and therefore they have a rightful interest in marine traffic safety and security just as much as the Americans have an interest in marine traffic through the South China Sea.
@ kropotkin1951
A strong hand? Well they certainly showed that in their resolution regarding Taiwanese sovreignty.
I could make the very same argument to justify the American gunboat approach, and you say yourself that you dislike that tactic in principle, regardless of the scale. If it is wrong for one, it is wrong for the other.
So sorry, I can see why China's variousneighbours on all sides might feel threatened, and I think their tactics of turning down multinational talks and threatening withdrawl of investment is a bad one.
And running your boats through a piece of water is a matter of common security and interest. Resource revenues are another matter entirely.
Where I was going? LOL! You inadvertently spelled the word "C-O-U-N-T-I-E-S", thus prematurely and perhaps subconsciously annexing them into subdivisions of some U.S. states. So where I was going with that was to a dictionary. And to the history section of the library (you know - the textbooks on I-M-P-E-R-I-A-L-I-S-M). Why - where were you going with that?
The difference is that China is dealing with its neighbours. The US is not a regional country and they are the ones ramping up the rhetoric.
I agree with Unionist that this is essentially none of our business and the actual sovereign nations should be left alone to work it out. The outlier nation in this whole crisis is the one that is not ASIAN.
I posted mostly because I find the comparison of imperial China to the US so ludicrous that it reads like cheap propaganda. I missed the news of the countries that China is currently bombing with drones. I also missed the reports of the drone assassination strikes on the Tibetan "terrorists" hiding in Nepal and India. That is why I asked Bec how many countries the Chinese have military bases in. His only response was they are stronger than their neighbours. Vilifying any country that does not toe the Washington line is propaganda 101. The MSM is currently vilifying China.
Countries it seems to me are somewhat like people. None of us are without faults but I don't compare the Hell's Angels to the eighth grade bully and that is how I see comparisons of China to the US as imperial nations. One has a history of inflicting devastating damage up to and including murder and the other is trying to strong arm you for your lunch money. I don't want to deal with either but if you gave me my choice I think I'd take the lunch money heist over the kind of murderous extortion an organization like the Angels can bring to bear.
+1
So what are you saying? Are you suggesting the U.S. military buildup is about backing Vietnam and their territorial claims?
And btw, when will Uncle Sam be paying Vietnam the incalculable hundreds of billions of dollars in reparations for massive loss of life and destruction the US Military was directly responsible for the last time they helped out in that country?
The folks at BBC Imagery are always helpful aren't they? And their journalists have explained so much to us over the years. I find the occasional visit helps inform my take on things too.
So remind me please who here is arguing in favour of U.S. intervention in the area, since some people still seem to think it is a point of contention.
And SJ, at least Bec posted a map that didn't have Taiwan identified as a nation, unlike the Washington Post graphic from Fidel. Are we supposed to automatically disbelieve that one too because of its source, or does that only apply to things we disagree with?
And what's your point? Are you suggesting the map is wrong? Do you think China doesn't have a claim on those waters?
If you haven't noticed by now, there's a few of us around that take issue with Fidel on some of the finer points, like on the notion that the choice between three parties with an imperialist supporting track record represents no choice at all, along with the point about there being three such parties indeed, each of whom having earned the respective primetime slots currently assigned to them, in the usual manner. By the same token we don't necessarily have to always condemn the Washington Post's every attention to detail, or inattention as it were. Similar to a broken clock as the saying goes, they're still bound to be right at least twice a day through no mechanical effort of their own.
Yes about the map. I thought we were done with putting our faith in cartoons stills after Colin Powell's mobile WMD Lab showing at the UN. But then there's never a Douglas MacArthur laying around doing nothing when you need one. The BBC's red dotted line has the Chinese going right up against the beach for chrissakes. That's Doug's beach!
Anyone curious to know about China's claims in the region should be well advised to consider the source of that particular graphic, is all I'm saying.
Well I can see my devious divide and conquer strategy is working just fine.
And regarding the map, yes, it does seem a little bit overreaching, doesn't it? Thing is, if you start googling every map confirms that line.
http://www.eyedrd.org/2011/06/china-claims-80-of-the-south-china-sea.html
Here is another article regarding the dispute, including the sea's importance as a tramsport route. It also mentions some of the military conflicts that have happened there in recent years:
http://southchinaseastudies.org/en/conferences-and-seminars-/507-south-c...
One encounter involved a U.S. ship, but a number of then had nothing to do with any U.S. puppet states at all.
They seem to have stopped in 1998. Where do you see the ones in "recent years"?
"Mrs." Clinton shooting off her mouth doesn't count.
Well seeing as this concerns a country whose former leader , Zhou En Lai, said it was "too soon to tell" what the legacy of the French Revolution was, and which is basing its claim in this case on 700-year-old maps, I'd say the last 40 years IS recent history.
Are you making a point there, or is it just monkey poo?
It's just that you said this earlier:
Even though the U.S. Military and its NATO allies have attacked numerous countries around the world since 1991, you seem to be worried about China, a country that has withdrawn investment in various western enterprises since the military attacks on Libya and this business with trying to provoke war in Syria.
I do not fear China, I am not sure why anyone in the world would have reason to fear military aggression from China.
And by coincidence the U.S. Military buildup ringing China and Russia seems to be happening at a time when U.S. economic dominance is on the wane. It's as if colder war hawks feel a need to re-assert their presence in the Pacific all these years later.
OTOH if I were an Asian person, I might instead choose to be fearful of a certain western country ringing China with all manner of naval and military buildups including nuclear weaponry.
Just some observations. Carry on.
From The Economist (February 2011): The South China Sea: A sea of disputes
excerpt:
Some of these arguments might in theory be soluble under the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), established in 1982. Some of the parties have tried to align their claim with UNCLOS. In 2009, for example, Malaysia and Vietnam made a joint submission, showing where they thought their claims lay, based on their continental shelves. This implied that the Spratlys-a collection of reefs, rocks and tiny islands-were all too small to support human habitation and hence have their own exclusive economic zones (EEZs) under UNCLOS.
China, however, objected to that submission and tabled its own map, with nine dotted lines outlining its claim. Joined up, the dotted lines give it not just the two chains, but almost the whole sea. There seems to be no basis for this in UNCLOS. But China points to history. It says the map has been in use since the Republic of China published it in 1946, and, until quite recently, nobody minded. Indonesia, in turn, subsequently objected to China's objection, which gave China a claim over some Indonesian waters, too. According to American officials, China has upped the ante by talking of its territorial claims in the South China Sea as a "core" national interest, on a par with Tibet and Taiwan.
There is a huge amount at stake. Besides fisheries, the sea, particularly around the Spratlys, is believed to be enormously rich in hydrocarbons. The lure of such riches ought to make it attractive to devise joint-development mechanisms so that all could benefit. In practice, the resources potentially available make it even harder for any country to moderate its claim.
The sea is also a vital shipping route, accounting for a big chunk of world trade. It is the importance of the freedom of navigation and of overflight that has given America its pretext for louder involvement. This was initially welcomed by the members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations when voiced at a regional forum in Hanoi in July last year, So fiercely did China object to America's rather disingenuous offer of "mediation", however, that some countries may now be ruing it.
So a second related dispute is between two regional superpowers: China and America. In particular, America and China differ over whether military activities are permissible in another country's EEZ. America insists they are. China objects to them and has on occasion harassed America's spy planes and survey ships.
A third dispute is between China and ASEAN. These two reached a common "Declaration on Conduct" (DoC) in 2002 in an attempt to minimise the risk of conflict. But efforts to turn it into a formal and binding code have got nowhere, partly because of China's anger at ASEAN's attempts to develop a common approach.
China argues that ASEAN has no role in territorial issues, and insists on negotiating with the other claimants bilaterally. ASEAN sees this as an effort to pick off its members one by one. It argues that its own charter forces members to consult, as they do before each working group on the code of conduct (the next one is due in March).
excerpt:
In their complexity, the South China Sea disputes provide material for endless scholarly bickering. Now that America has made it a focus for its re-engagement in Asia's seas as a superpower and guarantor of the peace, and China has made clear it resents this, they also present some serious risks.
comment: who made America the World Police?
Interesting that both Taiwan and China agree that China in some form or another owns the whole shebang. Not surprising given the fact that China's claim predates Mao's defeat of Chiang. It was the KMT who first made this assertion in 1946.
Thx Boom Boom for that article I laughed at the part where the US offered to be a mediator. Gee I wonder why the Chinese don't see them as an honest broker. After all that is part of the centuries old American mythology. LOL