US-China confrontation looms in troubled waters of South China Sea
Date October 17, 2015 - 12:09AM
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Nick O'Malley US correspondent for Fairfax Media
US warships expected to challenge sovereignty claimed by China in freedom of navigation exercise.
Defence Minister Maurice Payne, Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop and US Secretary John Kerry at a press conference at the US-Australia defence talks. Photo: AP
If you set out to design a maritime region destined to cause dispute between nations you could not do much better than forming the South China Sea.
Subject to competing claims by China, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Taiwan and Vietnam, more than half the world's merchant tonnage plies back and forth through this navigable chokehold between the Western Pacific and Indian oceans, as Robert Kaplan, a former member of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, writes in his book, Asia's Cauldron, The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific.
The so-called freedom of navigation exercise could see US and Chinese naval vessels operating inside Chinese-claimed waters within 1000 meters of each other.
Under its waters lies an estimated 900 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 130 billion barrels of oil.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, and US President Barack Obama on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington. Photo: Bloomberg
China's claims over vast swaths of the South China Sea have expanded in lockstep with its economic and military rise.
In 2010 China let the US know it considered the area to be of "core interest" and the following year the Global Times, published by the Communist Party's People's Daily, wrote an editorial warning other nations not to take a peaceful approach from China to disputes in the region for granted.
"If these countries don't want to change their ways with China, they will need to prepare for the sounds of cannons. We need to be ready for that, as it may be the only way for the disputes in the sea to be resolved."
Just as China is determined to assert its new strategic authority here, the US is determined not to allow it to forge new international norms in the South China Sea.
If there was ever to be a war between China and the US, it is here that people fear it might start, and it is here that observers expect the US to test China's resolve in the coming days.
For weeks now there have been reports from senior US naval sources – named and unnamed – that the US Navy is planning to conduct what it calls a freedom of navigation exercise through waters the US believes China is illegally claiming as its own.
On Thursday Vice-Admiral Peter Daly, who commanded a carrier strike group during the Iraq War before his retirement, told Fairfax Media that all the signs and diplomatic talk he has seen suggests such an exercise will be carried out within days.
The so-called freedom of navigation exercise could see US and Chinese naval vessels operating inside Chinese-claimed waters within 1000 metres of each other.
To understand the significance of the operation you need to understand Chinese claims. China claims it owns a string of small islands and reefs spread out across 2000 kilometres of sea. Much of that claim is disputed by many of its neighbours, most of them who enjoy US military or diplomatic support.
Some of these are subject to competing claims by other nations.
In the face of international protest and in order to further its claims, China has embarked on a process of building artificial islands on reefs in the region, and the 22-kilometre zone around the reclaimed land as exclusive territorial water.
In September the US revealed that not only had reclamation increased in pace, but port facilities and runways were under construction on several islands.
The US – and many other nations – reject the Chinese claims, noting that the United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty does not extend to reclaimed land.
"You cannot manufacture sovereignty", Daly says.
Further, the US says, China should not be operating on disputed islands until those disputes have been resolved.
And so we come to the stand-off. To assert what it sees as clear international law, the US appears to be planning to sail a fleet through the 22-kilometre zone around one or more of the reclaimed or disputed islands.
Daly, who has conducted similar exercises himself, says he does not know what vessels the USN is planning to use, though in the past it has been common to deploy between one and three destroyers.
The Chinese, Daly said, can be expected to closely shadow the fleet with its own warships.
Daly believes the exercise, which he describes as routine, will be completed without conflict, and China's response to it will be diplomatic.
The US insists it has no view on the competing claims on the region, it simply insists on asserting rights of freedom of navigation.
"The United States will continue to sail, fly and operate anywhere that international law allows,"President Barack Obama said during a joint press conference with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington last month. Senior US officials and diplomats have used the same words several times since.
Australia has echoed that position.
China, though, shows no signs of backing down. Indeed Bill Bishop, author of Sinocism China Newsletter, said in an interview published by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a leading US think tank, that given its propaganda, Chinese leaders have not given themselves room to back down – the Chinese people now accept the South China Sea as part of China.
Bishop told CSIS that Chinese land reclamation might even increase in the coming months because Beijing believes that a coming administration led by either Hillary Clinton or a Republican in 2017 could be more assertive.
During Xi's visit to Washington, DC, last month the extravagant diplomatic theatre went largely to script, except for one comment by Xi during the White House press conference.
Obama had again asserted the US intention to fly or sail wherever international law allows.
Xi gave a response that DC observers are still debating, saying that China had no intention on militarising the islands in question. According to one DC observer, Chinese officials at the event appeared to be shocked at the comment, and commentators are divided over what it means.
Could it be that policy has changed? Could it have been a mistake?
Could it be, as Bonnie Glaser, senior adviser for Asia and director of the China Power Project at CSIS, has suggested, that China does not consider the creation of ports and airports, even of radar, or the pre-positioning of equipment to be militarisation?
Either way, US officials have seen a gap in this language and they are pouring through it, taking every opportunity to cast it as China's new position.
Australia appears to be singing from the same song sheet.
During a joint press conference at the annual US-Australia defence talks in Boston this week Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop observed, "We do note and we do welcome President Xi's statement when he was here in the United States, in Washington, that the Chinese government did not intend to militarise the Spratly Islands. And we welcome that statement and we'll certainly hold China to it."
If and when the American warships do slip into disputed waters in the South China Sea under the eye of rival forces in the coming days, Daly imagines the mood on board would be focused, quiet and calm.
"It's not quite like any other day," he says of such operations, though it is a part of standard operations. But, he says, whenever two forces come that close together the risks of some unforeseen incident increase.
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Subject to competing claims by China, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Taiwan and Vietnam, more than half the world's merchant tonnage plies back and forth through this navigable chokehold between the Western Pacific and Indian oceans, as Robert Kaplan, a former member of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, writes in his book, Asia's Cauldron, The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific.______________
Vietnam dưới sự cầm quyền của bè lũ chó má việt cộng chủ trương BÁN NƯỚC cầu vinh, bọn khốn kiếp việt cộng chỉ ú a ú ớ lăng nhăng chứ không hề thực tâm chống lại những hành vi bạo ngược của tàu cộng, chiếm biển , chiếm đảo, thiết lập và củng cố căn cứ quân sự ảnh hưởng đến an ninh của cả thế giới trên vùng lãnh hải thuộc chủ quyền của Việt Nam mà thế giới đã và đang gọi là vùng biển đang có sự "tranh chấp chủ quyền" của một số quốc gia .
Bè lũ chó má việt cộng cầm tù, trói tay bịt miệng, hành hạ đọa đày, giết hại những người dân Việt Nam yêu nước lên tiếng chống lại tàu cộng "xâm lược" . Bọn chó má việt cộng cúc cung quỳ lạy tàu cộng để giữ ngôi vị thái thú cho tàu cai trị dân Việt, biến dân Việt thành những con vật nô lệ cho chúng, nô lệ bọn tàu cộng và nô lệ cho cả thế giới .
Vì đã ký công hàm BÁN NƯỚC Ô NHỤC ngày 14-9-1958, BÁN lãnh hải Việt Nam cho tàu cộng và nhiều văn tự BÁN lãnh thổ Việt Nam cho tàu cộng nên mãi đến ngày giờ này bè lũ chó má việt cộng vẫn tiếp tục lăng nhăng, ú a ú ớ rồi lại NGẬM MIỆNG .
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Xin mời Quý Anh Chị vào đọc bài viết mới nhất từ RFA để thấy rõ tâm địa chó má của việt cộng lê hải bình, một trong hàng triệu cái loa rỉ của cái gọi là "bộ ngoại giao" của cái đảng BÁN NƯỚC DIỆT NÒI việt cộng .
Tàu Mỹ áp sát đảo nhân tạo TQ: Việt Nam lấp lửng
Nam Nguyên, phóng viên RFA
2015-10-16
2015-10-16
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Bè lũ chó má BÁN NƯỚC DIỆT NÒI việt cộng còn tiếp tục ngồi trên đầu dân Việt Nam, Vietnam không thể chống tàu, cũng không bao giờ có chuyện "thoát trung" mà chỉ mục tiêu duy nhất là BÁM CHẶT QUYỀN LỰC cho cái đảng chó má việt cộng tiếp tục ngồi trên đầu Dân Việt, tiếp tục BÁN DÂN BÁN NƯỚC .
SỰ THẬT hiển nhiên và rõ ràng, thế giới đã thấy nhưng vì QUYỀN LỢI của họ, vẫn đồng tình với sự DỐI TRÁ THÂM ĐỘC BẨN THỈU của bè lũ chó má BÁN NƯỚC DIỆT NÒI việt cộng .
Câu hỏi đặt ra là để bảo vệ đất nước, để cứu nước và tự cứu chính mình thoát ách nô lệ Ô NHỤC, để được ĐỨNG LÊN LÀM NGƯỜI, DÂN VIỆT PHẢI LÀM GÌ ???
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Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
Xin được lắng nghe ý kiến chia sẻ của Quý Anh Chị trực tiếp tại Diễn Đàn Paltalk: 1Latdo Tapdoan Vietgian CSVN Phanquoc Bannuoc .
Kính chúc Sức Khỏe Quý Anh Chị .
conbenho
Tiểu Muội quantu
Nguyễn Hoài Trang
17102015
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Cộng sản Việt Nam là TỘI ÁC
Bao che, dung dưỡng TỘI ÁC là ĐỒNG LÕA với TỘI ÁC
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