Japanese ships disrupted Chinese naval exercises

[Jeff Head]

It amuses me that people think 'professionalism' would prevent the IJN from doing what was claimed. Professionalism has nothing to do with it since the decision to actively interfere with a PLAN exercise was a political one and the act was a deliberate one. No one was suggesting the IJN ship got lost on its way home and couldn't figure out how to leave the PLAN declared exercise zone for 3 days.

So far, the provocation and harassement has been entirely one way, and the only reason the IJN has upped the anti so much this time is precisely because of that inconvenient truth. It is abundantly clear that Tokyo would love nothing more than for China to get into a petty tit for tat escalation cycle with them like the Soviets. Because as much as they like to pretend that there is some grand Pan Asian coalition united against a 'more assertive' China, its all smokes and mirrors, and the facts on the ground just don't support that at all.

Japan is painfully aware that time is not on their side, so they are trying harder and harder to get a rise out of China so they can use that as 'proof' to get support for Obama's Asian pivot both in Asian and in the US as they are getting more desperate.

That is the main reason there has been relatively little follow up from China in past cases after they have public ally complained about provocations and slights - Beijing knows what tricks the other side is trying to pull, and they are deliberately not playing along. They raise the issue to shine a spotlight for the world to see a clear pattern of behaviour, but they don't want to follow-up and keep the story alive over a long period as that will inevitably cause the issue to snowball and escalate.

Wolf, that last part, "They raise the issue to shine a spotlight for the world to see a clear pattern of behaviour, but they don't want to follow-up and keep the story alive over a long period ", just makes no sense. I mean, come on, if they have the data...they should show it. Otherwise there is no way to tell which side is telling the truth, just like China and many posters on this fourm indicated when the Japanese made a similar claim about the Chinese "lighting" up their ships, but then would not show the data. Those things cut both ways.

There is no doubt the JMSDF vessel "interferred" with the PLAN exercise. No one has claimed she didn't.

But "interfering with," and hazarding, or harassing for that matter, are different things.

The PLAN has complained. Let them show the proof of the last two things (ie hazarding or harrassing). Until they do, the most likely thing is that the JMSDF vessel, in international waters, ignored the exercise zone the PLAN had set up so she could get as close as the captian deemed prudent and safe to get better intelligence.

This would be viewed by the PLAN as interference. But still occurred in international waters, and if it did not hazard or harrass, then there was no actual foul that rises to any kind of provocation.

Should the PLAN release data that shows the JMSDF vessel did, then yes, the JMSDF should be censored for it and the two countries should work out an acceptable agreement on such things, with the PLAN able to take the high ground.

Until that evidence is shown howerver, is is just speculation and posturing about any more than that.

 

[Jeff Head]

Type 051C: 115, 116
Type 054: 538, 529, 530, 570, 547
Type 052B: 168
Type 052: 113
Fuchi class: 881

That's a very powerful fleet! Throw in the Liaoning (with at least half of her full complements), Kunlunshan, Jinggangshan, and a couple of 093 attack SSNs and you have a CBG that's second only to USN CBGs.

So, four destroyers, five frigates, and an AOR vessel.

That's ten vessels altogether and doesn't which is a good sized exercise, but it doesn't even incldue the carrier.

Let's just say, for arguements sake, that the carrier, four more escorts, and two SSNs were involved. That would add another seven vessels, so 17 altogether. That would be about as big a group (or two) that the PLAN could possibly send and still leave adequate coverage back home and still have whatever vessels are in maintenance or refit.

Clearly, once again as I said earlier, nowhere near 100 vessels...nor could the PLAN put 100 vessels to sea for such exercises.

As to a Chinese CSG being as powerful as any except the US. That's not really accurate either.

Russia can put their carrier out there with two Sov DDGs, two Udaloy DDGs, a Kirov CGN, two Akula SSNs and an AOR vessel. That would be arguably more powerul.

With the Vikramaditya coming on line, the Indians could put that carrier, two modern destroyers, two to four modern frigates, their nuclear powered Akula sub, and an AOR vessel and be equally strong to the PLAN.

France could easily do the same, and their carrier, with the larger air wing and more capable mix of aircraft would also arguably be stronger. Once the Queen Elizabeth is commissioned, the English will be able to do the same.

So, these are the countries who either now, or soon, will be able to feild equally strong CSGs. The US with multiple carriers and so many DDGs and CGs and SSNs could field the strongest, but in terms of a single carrier group, all of these nations could field them now, or soon.

US Navy (CATOBAR)
Russian Navy (STOBAR)
Chinese Navy - PLAN (STOBAR)
Indian Navy (STOBAR)
French Navy (CATOBAER)
English Royal Navy (STOBAR)

And, the following nations could field very decent STOVL carrier groups (or a weaker CATOBAR group in the case of the Brazilains) with their own strike aricraft and strong escorts too:

Italian Navy (STOVL)
Spanish Navy (STOVL)
Brazilain Navy (CATOBAR)

 

[solarz]

That is the main reason there has been relatively little follow up from China in past cases after they have public ally complained about provocations and slights - Beijing knows what tricks the other side is trying to pull, and they are deliberately not playing along. They raise the issue to shine a spotlight for the world to see a clear pattern of behaviour, but they don't want to follow-up and keep the story alive over a long period as that will inevitably cause the issue to snowball and escalate , and that will play right into the hands of those who made the provocations in the first place. Because it will whip up public anger inside China and not even China's leaders can afford to disregard what its people are feeling and demanding if they feel strongly enough about it.

I would strongly disagree.

China should document every single case of Japanese interference in naval exercises, and publicize them each time. This will demonstrate a clear pattern of Japanese behavior and pre-empt any accusations in case any violence arises as a result of Japanese actions.

 

[plawolf]

I would strongly disagree.

China should document every single case of Japanese interference in naval exercises, and publicize them each time. This will demonstrate a clear pattern of Japanese behavior and pre-empt any accusations in case any violence arises as a result of Japanese actions.

Firstly, how is that different from what I said? The distinction I was addressing was one raised earlier questioning why there has been relatively little 'follow up' from China about all the instances where they have publically condemned provocations by others.

The reason is that after the initial announcement, keeping the stories alive would only serve to increase domestic Chinese anger towards the perpetrators and build pressure on Beijing to do something about it. But if China does that, then it would be playing right into the hands of those who made the provocations to start with. The biased western media is never going to give a full account of what led to the Chinese response, as soon as China does anything remotely threatening, they would seize it and that act, taken entirely out of context would become the entire story and make China look like the bad guy.

Similarly, unless the Japanese actually fire the first shot, and likely even if they did, any violence would be blamed entirely on China irrespective of the facts. So short of returning fire after being attacked, any escalation into actual violence would be a loss for China and should be avoided at all costs.

 

[solarz]

Firstly, how is that different from what I said? The distinction I was addressing was one raised earlier questioning why there has been relatively little 'follow up' from China about all the instances where they have publically condemned provocations by others.

The reason is that after the initial announcement, keeping the stories alive would only serve to increase domestic Chinese anger towards the perpetrators and build pressure on Beijing to do something about it. But if China does that, then it would be playing right into the hands of those who made the provocations to start with. The biased western media is never going to give a full account of what led to the Chinese response, as soon as China does anything remotely threatening, they would seize it and that act, taken entirely out of context would become the entire story and make China look like the bad guy.

Similarly, unless the Japanese actually fire the first shot, and likely even if they did, any violence would be blamed entirely on China irrespective of the facts. So short of returning fire after being attacked, any escalation into actual violence would be a loss for China and should be avoided at all costs.

You're assuming that if such an incident occurs, it will be clear who fired the first shot. That is far from true. Take for example the FC radar lock incident, almost every west-sourced news article points out that a ship's captain would be justified in firing first if he finds himself painted by a FC radar.

This is why China needs to start working on documenting Japanese provocations. If violence ever erupts, the more hard evidence China can present to the world, the more difficult it will be for certain interest groups to spin it against China.

What I'm saying is that China should not count on the fact that Japan won't fire the first shot.

 

[plawolf]

Wolf, that last part, "They raise the issue to shine a spotlight for the world to see a clear pattern of behaviour, but they don't want to follow-up and keep the story alive over a long period ", just makes no sense. I mean, come on, if they have the data...they should show it. Otherwise there is no way to tell which side is telling the truth, just like China and many posters on this fourm indicated when the Japanese made a similar claim about the Chinese "lighting" up their ships, but then would not show the data. Those things cut both ways.

Please read my previous post.

There is no doubt the JMSDF vessel "interferred" with the PLAN exercise. No one has claimed she didn't.

But "interfering with," and hazarding, or harassing for that matter, are different things.

The PLAN has complained. Let them show the proof of the last two things (ie hazarding or harrassing). Until they do, the most likely thing is that the JMSDF vessel, in international waters, ignored the exercise zone the PLAN had set up so she could get as close as the captian deemed prudent and safe to get better intelligence.

And who drew the line at actual endangering another ship? That is a pretty low bar to set, and I am sure you would feel very differently if it was an American fleet and exercise that was being harassed and interfered with. There are plenty of things the IJN ship could have done to actively interfere with the exercise to the point of making it impossible for the PLAN to carry on with the exercise that does not involve it trying to ram a PLAN ship. Is that all acceptable behaviour?

For example, if the PLAN deployed targets for naval gun fire or missile firing practice and the IJN ship put itself in between the Chinese fleet and those targets, would the PLAN be able to carry on with the live fire exercise? That does not create any navigational hazards by your extremely narrow standard, so is that not harassing and being provocative?

If the IJN ship did that, just how would video of the ship sailing beside the Chinese fleet prove anything? And that's just an example OTTOMH, there are plenty of other things the IJN ship could have done to make it impossible for the PLAN to conduct their exercises. In which case it is wasting everybody's time, and would run directly counter to you argument that they were just there to watch because if they made it impossible for the PLAN to actually carry out their planned exercises, then there is nothing for the Japanese to actually monitor.

What differentiate this from the normal kind of harassment from the IJN is that this time it seems the Japanese crossed the line from merely closely monitoring to actively interfering with what the PLAN was doing, and that was what drew the strong official reaction from Beijing.

 

[jacksprat]

Orig posted by PLAWOLF

"That is one of the main strengths of China's system, its leaders are not so enslaved to public opinion that they can be easily manipulated into compromising the nation's best interests to chase down some votes"

The truth might be that the Chinese leaders are "not so enslaved to public opinion" because they control what the public reads, sees and hears in the public media and on the internet.

Its pretty much a propaganda campaign and both China and Japan are playing it full tilt both to achieve their own ends. The truth is very likely somewhere in the middle but is very hard to discern due to all the noise being generated by personal biases and long standing historical grudges and nationalistic attitudes, not only from the government and medias involved, but by some of the participants in this forum.

Usually this fairly amusing, but this is getting out of hand and very repetitive.

 

[vincent]

Orig posted by PLAWOLF

"That is one of the main strengths of China's system, its leaders are not so enslaved to public opinion that they can be easily manipulated into compromising the nation's best interests to chase down some votes"

The truth might be that the Chinese leaders are "not so enslaved to public opinion" because they control what the public reads, sees and hears in the public media and on the internet.

Obviously you don't visit chinese social media. There's a report from NPR (from last week i think) that said Chinese censors don't remove anti-government posts unless they calls for a protest of some sort. The amusing part is the censors remove critism of the censors though.

 

[rhino123]

The truth might be that the Chinese leaders are "not so enslaved to public opinion" because they control what the public reads, sees and hears in the public media and on the internet.

Risking to being OT too much, but need to clear some air here.

You are still living in Mao's era, bro.

China had moved on since then. I know... I travelled to China six to seven times a year, and let me tell you, their media reported more stuff (with reasonable accuracy) than even my country back home and China had the largest internet market in the world, where you can actually get heaps of information. If the Chinese that effectively controlled the media, you would not be seeing heaps of people taking to the street now and then and openly supporting oppositions to the communist rules.

As of such... the only few country that actually have a strong control over media (from the back of my head) is North Korea...

Oh... and to make things simpler... we do have members in this forum that are from mainland China. And we do have threads that are not too friendly of the mainland Chinese government (although we don't like to have it here, but now and then things slipped.) If the Chinese government are that controlled with their media, do you seriously think that any of these Chinese could get to become or even assess Sinodefenceforum?

True the Chinese banned Facebook and youtube... but they have their own version - Tudou and weibo... which seriously is about the same and I read weibo (having an account even), and see some not too friendly discussion on the Chinese government too. So... not seeing any ban on those too.

Ok... lets get back to topic.

 

[volleyballer]

Is it playing some brinkmanship games? Probably. Both sides are.

The US will support its ally if it is attacked without cause or justification, or if its rights are violated abjectly. But it will not support insane or crazy actions by an ally that provokes a war or conflict. And Japan knows this.

I fully agree with you Jeff. [TL;DR]: The US is caught in between a dangerous high-stakes brinkmanship between two longtime rivals.