US- China WAR_ Now China Wants Okinawa, Site of U.S. Bases in Japan

THE DAILY BEAST


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12.31.15 12:01 AM ET

Now China Wants Okinawa, Site of U.S. Bases in Japan

Beijing is pushing out in all directions, from the South China Sea to several Japanese islands, with an eye on the eastern Pacific that laps American shores.

On the day after Christmas, three Chinese boats, one modified to carry four cannons, entered Japan’s territorial waters surrounding the Senkaku Islands in the southern portion of the East China Sea. The move, a dangerous escalation, is the first time the People’s Republic of China sent an armed vessel into an area that Tokyo claims as its own.

The sending of the three Chinese vessels on Dec. 26 appears to signal a new phase of incursions to grab not just the Senkaku Islands but the nearby—and far more important—Ryukyu Islands. Those include Okinawa, which hosts more than half of the 54,000 American military personnel in Japan, including those at Kadena Air Force Base, the Army’s Fort Buckner and Torii Station, eight Marine Corps camps, as well as Air Station Futenma and Yontan Airfield, and the Navy’s Fleet Activities Okinawa.

Geopolitically, Okinawa is key to the American-Japanese alliance and the heart of America’s military presence in Japan. But if Beijing gets its way, U.S. military bases will be off Okinawa soon. And Japan will be out of Okinawa, too.

Chinese authorities in the spring of 2013 brazenly challenged Japan’s sovereignty of the islands with a concerted campaign that included an article in a magazine associated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; a widely publicized commentary in People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s flagship newspaper and therefore China’s most authoritative publication; two pieces in the Global Times, the tabloid controlled by People’s Daily; an interview of Maj. Gen. Luo Yuan in the state-run China News Service; and a seminar held at prestigious Renmin University in Beijing.

At the same time, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs refused to affirm that China recognized Okinawa and the Ryukyus as Japanese.

The close timing of events indicated these efforts had been directed from the top of the Chinese political system.

Over the last decade, Beijing has been moving in on Okinawa step by step, almost island by island. It has regularly dispatched its ships and planes to the Senkaku Islands, often entering sovereign water and airspace, in a campaign to wrest from the Japanese those small and uninhabited specks in the ocean. The provocations around the islets, which China first claimed in 1971 and now calls the Diaoyus, spiked upward in 2012 and then noticeably declined the following year.

Whatever Beijing’s genuine intentions, Tokyo is not taking any chances. Japanese authorities are now fortifying 200 islands strung across the 870-mile gap between Kyushu, the most southern of Japan’s main islands, and the island of Taiwan.

When completed, the line of anti-ship and anti-aircraft missile batteries will dot the Ryukyu chain, blocking a critical passage linking the Chinese coast to the Western Pacific. Reuters notes that for the first time Japanese officials are publicly admitting that these fortifications are intended to keep China, in the words of the wire service, “at bay.”

As a result of the new barrier, the naval and air elements of China’s People’s Liberation Army will pay a dear price to get from the west side of the Ryukyus to the east in wartime.

Today, however, Chinese ships and planes can transit this line of islands unimpeded. Eleven Chinese military aircraft—eight H-6K bombers and three surveillance and electronic intelligence planes—did just that on Nov. 27.

The group split into two before reaching the Ryukyus, with at least four bombers flying through a critical chokepoint, the Miyako Strait, which cuts that island group in two.

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Once Chinese leaders showed their real intention was to dismember Japan, China essentially foreclosed further discussion.

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The Japanese were obviously concerned.

After clearing the Miyako Strait, the H-6Ks flew 620 miles into the Pacific. From their turnaround point, the Chinese aircraft could have fired CJ-10K cruise missiles, which from there had the range to land conventional munitions—or nuclear warheads—on Guam, the American fortress in the Mariana Islands.

The H-6Ks, China’s most modern bomber, could also have launched their devastating payloads toward Hawaiian targets if they had proceeded deeper into the Pacific. And as Rick Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center told The Daily Beast, China’s next-generation bombers, the H-10s, will be able to hit West Coast cities from locations over that body of water.

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Once Chinese leaders showed their real intention was to dismember Japan, China essentially foreclosed further discussion.

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What do YOU think?
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Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
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