China's SCS Strategy Thread

[abc123]

How so? all these military toys only exist to ostensibly carry out our political wishes, whether to extend our power, protect our sovereignty, protect the sovereignty of each other.

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[Jura The idiot]

now I read Military.com Recent Developments Surrounding the South China Sea

A look at recent developments in the South China Sea, where China is pitted against smaller neighbors in multiple disputes over islands, coral reefs and lagoons in waters crucial for global commerce and rich in fish and potential oil and gas reserves:

BAD CHOICE OF WORDS?

In comments that could raise the stakes in the South China Sea, Donald Trump's choice for secretary of state said the U.S. should stop Beijing from constructing artificial islands and deny it access to them.

"We're going to have to send China a clear signal that first, the island-building stops, and second, your access to those islands also is not going to be allowed," former Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson said during his Senate confirmation hearing. He compared China's island-building in the disputed waters to Russia's annexation of Crimea.

The outgoing U.S. administration has challenged China by sending warships close to man-made islands on four occasions, but the talk of denying access to those features could significantly raise the risk of military confrontation. It wasn't clear if Tillerson was referring to the islands with a Chinese military presence already established or those like Scarborough Shoal, which Beijing wrested from the Philippines in 2012 but hasn't built on yet.

Blocking China's access to the islands "could spark armed conflict," said Mark Fitzpatrick, at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. "I can't help but think that he did not mean it this way."

A person familiar with deliberations inside the Trump transition team was aware of no such plans, raising the likelihood that Tillerson misspoke.

Retired Gen. James Mattis told his own confirmation hearing for secretary of defense that China's militarization of the South China Sea posed a threat to the global order. Asked about Tillerson's comments, Mattis said the U.S. needed an integrated government approach to avoid an incomplete or incoherent strategy. He stressed the importance of freedom of commerce and nurturing U.S. alliances in the region.

"The bottom line is that international waters are international waters and we have got to figure out how do we deal with holding on to the kind of rules that we have made over many years that led to the prosperity for many nations, not just for ours," Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

China's Communist Party-run Global Times newspaper called Tillerson's statements "astonishing," while China Daily says they are not to be taken seriously "because they are a mish-mash of naivete, shortsightedness, worn-our prejudices, and unrealistic political fantasies."

The outgoing secretary of state, John Kerry, said that China's assertiveness has tested "whether the U.S.-China relationship will be defined by our differences or by what we can achieve cooperatively."

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CHINA ANALYSTS SEE U.S. CARRIER DEPLOYMENT TROUBLESOME

The USS Carl Vinson battle group is on its way to the Western Pacific to augment the Japan-based USS Ronald Reagan -- a move seen by China analysts as a sign that Donald Trump's administration will ratchet up the U.S. military presence in the South China Sea.

The Carl Vinson's deployment coincides with Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration and the just-completed drills by China's sole aircraft carrier in and around the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea. The combat exercises involving the Liaoning , including takeoffs and landings by J-15 fighter jets and helicopters, have been closely shadowed by both Taiwan and Japan as China's largest warship sailed past its nervous neighbors.

The

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's dispatch "shows that the Pentagon, including the U.S.

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, wants to extend Obama's Asia-Pacific rebalancing strategy and further get involved in the West Pacific," Li Jie, a Beijing-based naval expert, told the state-run Global Times newspaper.

He said that facing pressure from the U.S., China needs to enhance building up of strategic forces and the construction of reefs and islands. "The waters are an effective maneuver to curb China, as 80 percent of China's crude oil imports come through the South China Sea. If the U.S. controls the waters, it will be a blow to China," he said.

The U.S. emphasis on freedom of navigation through waters China considers its sovereign territory is likely to intensify under the Trump administration, the Global Times quoted Lin Zhiyuan, a scholar with the People's Liberation Army Academy of Military Sciences, as saying. He believes the deployment of the Carl Vinson was a move by the Pentagon to disrupt potential talks between China and other claimants -- notably the Philippines -- on solving the disputes bilaterally.

"Although the U.S. relationship with the Philippines is deteriorating, it will continue colluding with Australia and India, as well as strengthen ties with Singapore, Vietnam and other ASEAN countries, in the hope of joint patrols," he said.

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[PanAsian]

now I read Military.com Recent Developments Surrounding the South China Sea

source:

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The Chinese naval expert quoted in the article makes sense. Since the PLA is hopelessly outmatched against the US military conventionally and in terms of forward basing China's only viable options are to build up and improve its strategic, aka nuclear, forces and its own potential frontline bases.

 

[solarz]

The Chinese naval expert quoted in the article makes sense. Since the PLA is hopelessly outmatched against the US military conventionally and in terms of forward basing China's only viable options are to build up and improve its strategic, aka nuclear, forces and its own potential frontline bases.

I do not believe this to be the case at all.

In the South China Sea, the US faces a huge logistical hurdle. On the domestic front, it has limited political appetite for escalation.

In the event of an open conflict over the SCS, China would be able to reinforce its fleets more rapidly, and be more willing to expend resources on the conflict, than would the US. This would more than make up for the technological advantage that the US has.

 

[solarz]

As the US-China tensions ramp up, I can't help but think that the one benefactor of such a conflict would be Russia.

The SCS theatre is geographically remote from Russia, who has no interest in the region. A US-China conflict (not necessarily war, just hostility) would pull significant pressure away from Russia, possibly even leading to a US-Russia detente.

Add the possibility that Russia may have had a hand in Trump's election victory, and we now have both a means and a motive.

Is Putin backstabbing Xi?

 

[N00813]

As the US-China tensions ramp up, I can't help but think that the one benefactor of such a conflict would be Russia.

The SCS theatre is geographically remote from Russia, who has no interest in the region. A US-China conflict (not necessarily war, just hostility) would pull significant pressure away from Russia, possibly even leading to a US-Russia detente.

Add the possibility that Russia may have had a hand in Trump's election victory, and we now have both a means and a motive.

Is Putin backstabbing Xi?

I would disagree, mainly based on the relative lack of strategic competition between Russia-China compared to Russia-US.

Russia was very optimistic back when Obama came into office in 2009, but we know how that ended. The mood there now seems to be a cautious optimism, where they aren't going to turn down better relations but they aren't putting all their eggs in 1 basket either.

Even if Trump and Russia do a détente, the Russians know Trump is only there for 8 years max, and given how hostile the US establishment is to even the theoretical détente that Trump proposes, I think the Russians expect that it'll be overturned within a decade.

At the very most, I expect Russia will sit on a middle ground in the SCS conflict, mediate and further their influence on both and all sides.

PS Russian leaders have a habit of badmouthing their predecessors. In my view, the biggest risk to China in the political scene is if Putin chooses not to take another term in office and retires, because then the next guy might choose to loosen the Russia-China partnership.

 

[Jura The idiot]

...

The SCS theatre is geographically remote from Russia, ...

... yes, even at the time the Tsar was active in the region:

(one of the problems was the country most to the east had been active, too)

 

[tphuang]

We can close this thread, but there will be 5 other threads opening where people dispute the same stuff. As much as we try to calm down geopolitical arguments here, it comes up a lot. So, I would ask people to keep this in mind and try to stay away from these topic.

 

[Hendrik_2000]

Instead of war and war why don't we just built and built . It is ironic that the skill that China hone during built up of SCS island is now put in good use to built "artificial island" off the coast of Davao city. This time NOT for military base but for commercial development and office tower and hopefully improve the economic condition of average Fillipino. I guess with China money and local Tzinoy expertise it might come to fruition

 

[Blackstone]

Another one bites the dust. Vietnam gives up the ghost and submits to China's view of how to resolve South China Sea disputes.

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The South China Sea is officially contested by six governments. But China is taking control by neutralizing those rivals one by one. The last may have just fallen.

They all need fish, smell oil under the seabed or just like the extraterritorial control you get by staking a claim to the sea stretching from Taiwan to Singapore. Beijing, had chafed with the other countries, all in Southeast Asia, since about 2010 by building artificial islands on 3,200 acres of landfill, sometimes for military use, and passing vessels into contested waters. Vietnam got into a boat ramming clash that set off deadly anti-China riots in 2014. The Philippines took China to a world arbitration court and won a verdict against China’s historical claims in July.

But about half a year after that Permanent Court of Arbitration verdict from The Hague, instead of backing down, China is running out outspoken opponents. It had kept peace all along with Malaysia by offering it lucrative trade and investment deals. Taiwan avoids going up against China over the 3.5 million-square-km (1.4 million square-mile) sea partly because both use the same dynastic-era historic records to call it their own. China also claims Taiwan itself. The two have bigger problems to solve.

And under Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, China and the Philippines have shelved their friction over competing sea claims as Duterte diversifies foreign policy away from old ally the United States.

But the biggest fall of an enemy would be Vietnam and it may have just made friends with China. The country with a stridently anti-China population was known since the 1970s for clashing with Beijing as needed over the contested sea’s Paracel and Spratly island chains. But Chinese state media say China and Vietnam just issued a communique proposing negotiations on the maritime disputes and interim answers that will not compromise either side’s political position. The statement followed Vietnamese Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong’s four-day visit last week to China, where he saw counterpart Xi Jinping and six other fellow Communist officials.

Vietnam might just be “hedging bets” because U.S. president-to-be Donald Trump’s America is hard to predict, says Sean King, senior vice president with the consultancy Park Strategies in New York. The United States previously has patrolled the sea with its own vessels and helped arm Vietnam as well as the Philippines. The statement pegged to Nguyen’s visit also just repeats points from a 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of the Parties in the South China Sea signed by countries throughout Southeast Asia, says Denny Roy, senior fellow at the U.S. think tank East-West Center. It’s hard to imagine Vietnam has cashed out.

Yet this agreement, like Beijing’s peace-building with Manila, points to a softening at least for now. It’s a new milestone in China’s effort to neutralize opponents around the South China Sea by working things out with them one by one rather than via a group of countries where it would be a weaker party. The arbitration court said China lacks rights to 95% of the sea despite what Beijing believes. China rejected the verdict but may have been privately goaded by it to step up bilateral talks. China of course is worth talking to if you’re a smaller country in need of a lift from the world’s second largest economy.