China's SCS Strategy Thread
- Thread starter lilzz
- Start date
what I don't understand is that why is the radar range of KJ-500 about the same as anti-ship cruise missiles? Does that mean that the KJ-500 are expected to only operate within the protective shells of SAMs?
Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
This article proof that China's communication, ISR,(Intelligence, surveillance,target acquisition) are robust, redundant and extensive, sophisticated. Coupled with stationing of SAM, Fighter squadron, naval,submarine ship it is formidable fortress in the sea. So the idea that those islet are vulnerable and easily overcome is nothing but hubris. anyway on different subject
Now where is gadget cool? US fail to block the selection of Chinese judge as International tribunal law of sea judge This comes after the fiasco with Iran. I though US just snap the finger and everybody follow according to Gadgetcool
UPDATE: Chinese diplomat’s election to sea tribunal with high count of votes reflects intl recognition: FM
By Xu Keyue and Cui Fandi Source: Global Times Published: 2020/8/25 15:34:43
The guided-missile destroyer Hohhot (Hull 161) attached to a destroyer flotilla with the navy under the PLA Southern Theater Command steams in waters of the South China Sea during a realistic maritime training exercise in early August, 2020. (eng.chinamil.com.cn/Photo by Li Wei)
Chinese Ambassador to Hungary Duan Jielong was on Monday elected as a member of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea with a high count of votes, which reflected the international community's recognition of China's claims and actions on maritime issues and was a "slap in the face" of the US, as the country had not accepted the law but instead pointed its finger at and smeared China's moves.
Duan is one of the six to have been elected in the first round of voting by the States Parties to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to become a judge settling maritime disputes, the Xinhua News Agency reported Monday.
Other members are David J. Attard of Malta, Ida Caracciolo of Italy, Maria Teresa Infante Caffi of Chile, Maurice Kengne Kamga of Cameroon and Markiyan Kulyk of Ukraine.
One of the tribunal seats has yet to be filled and a second round of restrictive voting will be held on Tuesday, reports said. The contenders will be Kathy-Ann Brown of Jamaica and Rodrigo Fernandes More of Brazil.
The tribunal is an intergovernmental body set up by UNCLOS and has 21 judges who hold nine-year terms. A third of the members are replaced every three years.
The election of Duan once again shows China's voice is reaching further into the international community, Li Haidong, a professor at the Institute of International Relations of the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
"China's voice is gaining more recognition and support, which proves that the international community is recognizing China's important role given its past efforts," Li noted. "As the world's major powers have vast differences regarding perception of maritime rights, China's gradual prominence will help bring consensus in future disputes."
The US, which has no right to vote on the matter, has been seeking to stop China after Duan was nominated as a candidate, arguing that "Beijing has flouted international sea laws in the disputed South China Sea," US media outlet CNBC reported on August 3.
Li warned the US not to overestimate its ability to do evil in the international community. "This is no longer the era of Western-led colonialism, as countries are awakening their international consciousness," he said.
Shen Yi, a professor of international politics at Fudan University in Shanghai, told the Global Times that US' failure to intervene shows that the international influence of US hegemony is steadily declining, which is a foreseeable trend for the future. In contrast, China's international influence is growing "as a result of past contributions."
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently attempted to smear China by accusing it of seeing the South China Sea as its "maritime empire." In a tweet in late April, Pompeo said, "The South China Sea is not China's maritime empire" and urged "free nations" to unite to prevent China from taking "more territory."
The US, which is thousands of miles from the South China Sea, has sought to dictate regional affairs, repeatedly sending aircraft carriers and warplanes to the waters to assert its hegemony. The US has also constantly tried to stir up the situation regarding South China Sea disputes.
By contrast, China has been committed to promoting the peaceful settlement of disputes with other South China Sea claimants in the region, said analysts. Thanks to the joint efforts of the relevant parties, negotiations on the Code of Conduct on the South China Sea are progressing steadily, the analysts noted.
Li warned the US to reflect on its responsibilities as a great power, considering its actions over the past few decades.
Since the establishment of the tribunal in 1996, three Chinese have served as judges: Zhao Lihai (1996-2000), Xu Guangjian (2001-07) and Gao Zhiguo (2008-20).
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Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
This is important win for China unlike the private arbitrage tribunal which is private and has no connection to UN. The international tribunal for law of sea is formal body under UN charter and has the jurisdiction and legal international law to settle sea dispute
China Wins Seat at International Tribunal on Law of the Sea
By Drake Long
2020-08-25
Judges of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) are seated during a hearing in Hamburg in a file photo.
Reuters
China’s candidate has won an election to be a judge on a key United Nations-affiliated agency responsible for hearing cases concerning the Law of the Sea, despite U.S. opposition to what it views as Beijing’s growing influence in international organizations.
Duan Jielong, the current Chinese ambassador to Hungary and a law school graduate of Columbia University and China Foreign Affairs University, will sit as one of 21 judges at the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS). It is the international legal body responsible for adjudicating disputes related to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS.
Duan was nominated by China to represent Asia and won his seat unopposed on Monday, with 149 out of 166 votes gathered among member-states of the tribunal. Seventeen member-states abstained.
“China's success in the election illustrates once again that [a] certain country's suppression of the Chinese nominee out of selfish interest is both unwelcome and futile,” China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at his daily conference in Beijing, alluding to the United States’ last-minute effort to stop China’s pick from winning.
At a think tank conference on the South China Sea last month, David Stilwell, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said the U.S. was concerned about China’s nomination of its judge to ITLOS and urged other countries against voting for the candidate.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo echoed these concerns at a hearing in the U.S. Senate on July 30, where he requested funding for a special team at the State Department that would push back on China’s growing domination of UN agencies and international organizations.
“It’s not just the leaders that matter at these UN organizations. They have big bureaucracies underneath them. And we are sadly inadequately represented at every level inside of these international bodies, and it matters,” Pompeo told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
While Pompeo championed the successful U.S. effort to stop China’s preferred pick from winning leadership of another U.N. agency, the World Intellectual Property Organization – the winner was from Singapore -- the U.S. had little ability to replicate that in the case of ITLOS.
Since the U.S. has never ratified the law of the sea convention, UNCLOS, it is not permitted to submit candidates for any positions in ITLOS. No other candidates from Asian countries were put forward to compete against China’s pick.
Meanwhile, Beijing is seeking to displace America's leadership in the UN, said Kristine Lee, an Associate Fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for a New American Security. "And it's doing this first and foremost through its personnel."
"It's mapped out strategically important Specialized Agency elections and has done the diplomatic legwork to get Chinese officials elected to these positions," she said, adding, "This is problematic because the [Chinese Communist Party] expects its nationals to run counter to the principle of neutrality enshrined in the UN Charter."
"Chinese officials serving in senior posts at the UN serve the narrow interests of and report back to the CCP, even as UN employees are expected to be impartial and independent," Lee said.
Advantages for China
Hoang Viet, a professor at Ho Chi Minh City University of Law, pointed out there are “certain advantages” for China in its continuing push to place candidates at international legal forums.
“Psychologically or politically, it is very clear that Vietnam does not like a Chinese candidate to be elected as an ITLOS’ judge because that thing may cause disadvantages for Vietnam,” he said. “For instance, when ITLOS organizes meetings or discussion, there will only be a Chinese representative to speak Chinese viewpoints, and Vietnam cannot [participate].”
There are 21 members of the tribunal in total. Judges must represent different geographic areas of the world according to the statute that first established ITLOS. Five judges represent Asia, and China has held at least one seat on the tribunal since it was created in the mid-1990s. Its current judge, Gao Zhiguo, will end his term on Sept. 30.
Still, China may have limited capacity to control the proceedings of ITLOS in a meaningful way by controlling just a single seat. Of the other tribunal seats, five are held by representatives from Africa, three from Eastern Europe, 4 from Latin America and the Caribbean, three from Western Europe, and one member who can be elected from either Africa, Asia, or Western Europe.
And the tribunal, which is based in Hamburg, Germany, isn’t very active. According to its annual report for 2019, it heard just four cases last year, and only made a judgment on one of them.
Julian Ku, a professor at the Hofstra University School of Law in New York, believes that although China has only one judge in the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, there is still the potential for that judge to hold management positions, and participate in specific cases China may take an interest in.
"They can form small trial teams to deal with specific disputes. For example, there is a team of 11 judges about disputes over seabed territories," he said in an interview with Radio Free Asia’s Mandarin-language service.
He added that having Chinese officials serve as judges in the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea is part of a long-term strategy by China to control leadership positions in international organizations and ultimately make them less critical of China.
China's claims challenged
The most consequential court case in recent years concerning the Law of the Sea did not actually happen through ITLOS, but through The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration.
Through that tribunal, the Philippines challenged the legal basis of China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea, and in 2016 won a landmark award that found China’s claim to ‘historic rights’ over the disputed waterway were invalid. That award set a key precedent on what is and is not a valid maritime or territorial claim in the South China Sea under UNCLOS, and has been cited by the Association of Southeast Nations as well as the U.S.
China refused to recognize that award, although the Permanent Court of Arbitration is empowered to hear disputes under Annex VII of UNCLOS. China continues to maintain it has historic rights to the South China Sea even though those claims overlap with those of five other Asian governments, as well as the maritime borders of Indonesia.
The U.S. accuses China of flouting international law and bullying its neighbors – a sentiment echoed this week in a letter from 80 civil society groups from countries around the world. Some groups who signed include the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) Veterans Association in Australia, the Regional Tibetan Youth Congress of Toronto, and the Japan-based South China Sea Issue Consideration Council.
The letter called on the top diplomats of Britain, Japan, and India to “reject China’s arbitrary claims in the South China Sea,” and echo previous statements by the U.S. and Australia rebuking the legality of China’s claims in the disputed waters.
China Wins Seat at International Tribunal on Law of the Sea
By Drake Long
2020-08-25
Judges of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) are seated during a hearing in Hamburg in a file photo.
Reuters
China’s candidate has won an election to be a judge on a key United Nations-affiliated agency responsible for hearing cases concerning the Law of the Sea, despite U.S. opposition to what it views as Beijing’s growing influence in international organizations.
Duan Jielong, the current Chinese ambassador to Hungary and a law school graduate of Columbia University and China Foreign Affairs University, will sit as one of 21 judges at the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS). It is the international legal body responsible for adjudicating disputes related to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS.
Duan was nominated by China to represent Asia and won his seat unopposed on Monday, with 149 out of 166 votes gathered among member-states of the tribunal. Seventeen member-states abstained.
“China's success in the election illustrates once again that [a] certain country's suppression of the Chinese nominee out of selfish interest is both unwelcome and futile,” China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at his daily conference in Beijing, alluding to the United States’ last-minute effort to stop China’s pick from winning.
At a think tank conference on the South China Sea last month, David Stilwell, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said the U.S. was concerned about China’s nomination of its judge to ITLOS and urged other countries against voting for the candidate.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo echoed these concerns at a hearing in the U.S. Senate on July 30, where he requested funding for a special team at the State Department that would push back on China’s growing domination of UN agencies and international organizations.
“It’s not just the leaders that matter at these UN organizations. They have big bureaucracies underneath them. And we are sadly inadequately represented at every level inside of these international bodies, and it matters,” Pompeo told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
While Pompeo championed the successful U.S. effort to stop China’s preferred pick from winning leadership of another U.N. agency, the World Intellectual Property Organization – the winner was from Singapore -- the U.S. had little ability to replicate that in the case of ITLOS.
Since the U.S. has never ratified the law of the sea convention, UNCLOS, it is not permitted to submit candidates for any positions in ITLOS. No other candidates from Asian countries were put forward to compete against China’s pick.
Meanwhile, Beijing is seeking to displace America's leadership in the UN, said Kristine Lee, an Associate Fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for a New American Security. "And it's doing this first and foremost through its personnel."
"It's mapped out strategically important Specialized Agency elections and has done the diplomatic legwork to get Chinese officials elected to these positions," she said, adding, "This is problematic because the [Chinese Communist Party] expects its nationals to run counter to the principle of neutrality enshrined in the UN Charter."
"Chinese officials serving in senior posts at the UN serve the narrow interests of and report back to the CCP, even as UN employees are expected to be impartial and independent," Lee said.
Advantages for China
Hoang Viet, a professor at Ho Chi Minh City University of Law, pointed out there are “certain advantages” for China in its continuing push to place candidates at international legal forums.
“Psychologically or politically, it is very clear that Vietnam does not like a Chinese candidate to be elected as an ITLOS’ judge because that thing may cause disadvantages for Vietnam,” he said. “For instance, when ITLOS organizes meetings or discussion, there will only be a Chinese representative to speak Chinese viewpoints, and Vietnam cannot [participate].”
There are 21 members of the tribunal in total. Judges must represent different geographic areas of the world according to the statute that first established ITLOS. Five judges represent Asia, and China has held at least one seat on the tribunal since it was created in the mid-1990s. Its current judge, Gao Zhiguo, will end his term on Sept. 30.
Still, China may have limited capacity to control the proceedings of ITLOS in a meaningful way by controlling just a single seat. Of the other tribunal seats, five are held by representatives from Africa, three from Eastern Europe, 4 from Latin America and the Caribbean, three from Western Europe, and one member who can be elected from either Africa, Asia, or Western Europe.
And the tribunal, which is based in Hamburg, Germany, isn’t very active. According to its annual report for 2019, it heard just four cases last year, and only made a judgment on one of them.
Julian Ku, a professor at the Hofstra University School of Law in New York, believes that although China has only one judge in the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, there is still the potential for that judge to hold management positions, and participate in specific cases China may take an interest in.
"They can form small trial teams to deal with specific disputes. For example, there is a team of 11 judges about disputes over seabed territories," he said in an interview with Radio Free Asia’s Mandarin-language service.
He added that having Chinese officials serve as judges in the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea is part of a long-term strategy by China to control leadership positions in international organizations and ultimately make them less critical of China.
China's claims challenged
The most consequential court case in recent years concerning the Law of the Sea did not actually happen through ITLOS, but through The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration.
Through that tribunal, the Philippines challenged the legal basis of China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea, and in 2016 won a landmark award that found China’s claim to ‘historic rights’ over the disputed waterway were invalid. That award set a key precedent on what is and is not a valid maritime or territorial claim in the South China Sea under UNCLOS, and has been cited by the Association of Southeast Nations as well as the U.S.
China refused to recognize that award, although the Permanent Court of Arbitration is empowered to hear disputes under Annex VII of UNCLOS. China continues to maintain it has historic rights to the South China Sea even though those claims overlap with those of five other Asian governments, as well as the maritime borders of Indonesia.
The U.S. accuses China of flouting international law and bullying its neighbors – a sentiment echoed this week in a letter from 80 civil society groups from countries around the world. Some groups who signed include the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) Veterans Association in Australia, the Regional Tibetan Youth Congress of Toronto, and the Japan-based South China Sea Issue Consideration Council.
The letter called on the top diplomats of Britain, Japan, and India to “reject China’s arbitrary claims in the South China Sea,” and echo previous statements by the U.S. and Australia rebuking the legality of China’s claims in the disputed waters.
US is getting desperate.
U.S. targets Chinese individuals, firms amid South China Sea dispute
WASHINGTON — The United States on Wednesday blacklisted 24 Chinese firms and targeted individuals it said were part of construction and military actions in the South China Sea, its first such sanctions move against Beijing over the disputed strategic waterway.
The U.S. Commerce Department said the two dozen companies played a “role in helping the Chinese military construct and militarize the internationally condemned artificial islands in the South China Sea.”
Separately, the State Department said it would impose visa restrictions on Chinese individuals “responsible for, or complicit in,” such action and those linked to China’s “use of coercion against Southeast Asian claimants to inhibit their access to offshore resources.”
Companies blacklisted by the Commerce Department include Guangzhou Haige Communications Group, several firms that appear to be related to the China Communications Construction Co, as well as Beijing Huanjia Telecommunication, Changzhou Guoguang Data Communications, China Electronics Technology Group Corp and China Shipbuilding Group.
It was the latest U.S. move to crack down on firms whose goods may support Chinese military activities and comes in the run up to the Nov. 3 U.S. elections, in which both President Donald Trump and rival Joe Biden have been sharply critical of China.
The United States accuses China of militarizing the South China Sea and trying to intimidate Asian neighbors who might want to exploit its extensive oil and gas reserves.
U.S. warships have gone through the area to assert the freedom of access to international waterways, raising fears of clashes.
The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post newspaper quoted a source close to the Chinese military as saying that China had launched two missiles, including an “aircraft-carrier killer”, into the South China Sea on Wednesday morning in a warning to the United States.
China complained that the United States had sent a U-2 reconnaissance plane into a no-fly zone over Chinese live-fire military drills on Tuesday.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to the missile report but said earlier that a U-2 flight conducted in the Indo-Pacific region was “within the accepted international rules and regulations governing aircraft flights.”
The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately reply to a request for comment on U.S. announcements, but in July, Beijing said it was not afraid of any sanctions the United States might impose and accused Washington of stirring up trouble and destabilizing the region.
Washington warned last month it could respond with sanctions against Chinese officials and enterprises involved in coercion in the South China Sea after it announced a tougher stance rejecting Beijing’s claims to offshore resources there as “completely unlawful.”
China claims virtually all of the potentially energy-rich South China Sea, but Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also lay claim to parts of an area through which about $3 trillion of trade passes each year.
“This is the first time the U.S. has levied any type of economic sanction against Chinese entities for behavior in the South China Sea,” said Greg Poling, a South China Sea expert at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“It probably doesn’t make much impact on those entities directly – I doubt that there is much CCCC needs to buy from the U.S. that it can’t get from other suppliers. And these certainly aren’t the financial sanctions that some might have expected … But it could be a start at trying to convince Southeast Asian partners that the new policy is more than just rhetoric.”
Messages left with CCCC, a transport and infrastructure conglomerate, the Shanghai Cable Offshore Engineering Co Ltd, an engineering company that specializes in submarine cables, and Guangzhou Haige Communication Group, which manufactures communications equipment, were not immediately returned after business hours in China. Several other firms on the list could not immediately be reached or could not immediately be located.
The Commerce Department said it was adding the 24 firms to its “entity list,” which restricts sales of U.S. goods shipped to them and some more limited items made abroad with U.S. content or technology. Companies can apply for licenses to make the sales, but they must overcome a high bar for approval.
The actions follow the same blueprint used by Washington in its attempt to limit the influence of Huawei Technologies Co for what it says are national security reasons. (Reporting by Susan Heavey, Idrees Ali, Daphne Psaledakis, Raphael Satter and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Grant McCool)
U.S. targets Chinese individuals, firms amid South China Sea dispute
WASHINGTON — The United States on Wednesday blacklisted 24 Chinese firms and targeted individuals it said were part of construction and military actions in the South China Sea, its first such sanctions move against Beijing over the disputed strategic waterway.
The U.S. Commerce Department said the two dozen companies played a “role in helping the Chinese military construct and militarize the internationally condemned artificial islands in the South China Sea.”
Separately, the State Department said it would impose visa restrictions on Chinese individuals “responsible for, or complicit in,” such action and those linked to China’s “use of coercion against Southeast Asian claimants to inhibit their access to offshore resources.”
Companies blacklisted by the Commerce Department include Guangzhou Haige Communications Group, several firms that appear to be related to the China Communications Construction Co, as well as Beijing Huanjia Telecommunication, Changzhou Guoguang Data Communications, China Electronics Technology Group Corp and China Shipbuilding Group.
It was the latest U.S. move to crack down on firms whose goods may support Chinese military activities and comes in the run up to the Nov. 3 U.S. elections, in which both President Donald Trump and rival Joe Biden have been sharply critical of China.
The United States accuses China of militarizing the South China Sea and trying to intimidate Asian neighbors who might want to exploit its extensive oil and gas reserves.
U.S. warships have gone through the area to assert the freedom of access to international waterways, raising fears of clashes.
The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post newspaper quoted a source close to the Chinese military as saying that China had launched two missiles, including an “aircraft-carrier killer”, into the South China Sea on Wednesday morning in a warning to the United States.
China complained that the United States had sent a U-2 reconnaissance plane into a no-fly zone over Chinese live-fire military drills on Tuesday.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to the missile report but said earlier that a U-2 flight conducted in the Indo-Pacific region was “within the accepted international rules and regulations governing aircraft flights.”
The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately reply to a request for comment on U.S. announcements, but in July, Beijing said it was not afraid of any sanctions the United States might impose and accused Washington of stirring up trouble and destabilizing the region.
Washington warned last month it could respond with sanctions against Chinese officials and enterprises involved in coercion in the South China Sea after it announced a tougher stance rejecting Beijing’s claims to offshore resources there as “completely unlawful.”
China claims virtually all of the potentially energy-rich South China Sea, but Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also lay claim to parts of an area through which about $3 trillion of trade passes each year.
“This is the first time the U.S. has levied any type of economic sanction against Chinese entities for behavior in the South China Sea,” said Greg Poling, a South China Sea expert at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“It probably doesn’t make much impact on those entities directly – I doubt that there is much CCCC needs to buy from the U.S. that it can’t get from other suppliers. And these certainly aren’t the financial sanctions that some might have expected … But it could be a start at trying to convince Southeast Asian partners that the new policy is more than just rhetoric.”
Messages left with CCCC, a transport and infrastructure conglomerate, the Shanghai Cable Offshore Engineering Co Ltd, an engineering company that specializes in submarine cables, and Guangzhou Haige Communication Group, which manufactures communications equipment, were not immediately returned after business hours in China. Several other firms on the list could not immediately be reached or could not immediately be located.
The Commerce Department said it was adding the 24 firms to its “entity list,” which restricts sales of U.S. goods shipped to them and some more limited items made abroad with U.S. content or technology. Companies can apply for licenses to make the sales, but they must overcome a high bar for approval.
The actions follow the same blueprint used by Washington in its attempt to limit the influence of Huawei Technologies Co for what it says are national security reasons. (Reporting by Susan Heavey, Idrees Ali, Daphne Psaledakis, Raphael Satter and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Grant McCool)
Loved this, especially the bold part. Not only is where's gadgekool, where's Mr pony?
These people always preach us on here how the U.S., although not a signatory, but will still abide by the rules they drafted.
Well here's conclusive proof that if you haven't sign it, you don't belong to it, and you have no say in it, no matter how much you follow the rule to the letter!
It is purely for media consumption, if you don't sign the law to help to draft, what do you know about it , and what are you hiding?
The KJ-500 is vulnerable, so would have to be protected in one way or another.
And it's the anti-ship missiles being built with a certain range, based on how far a radar signal can reach
bajingan
Senior Member
Looks like the us is slowly changing its strategy in the scs they already realized how vulnerable there carriers is and now starting to utilize strategic bombers with standoff weapons
What should China response be? I think China should invest more in interceptors, uav, and missile defence systems to counter the us