Graham Young

The insertion of the annoying tweakbit.com advertisement above the article title, and the deliberate use of “Haig” in lieu of “Hague” in the article title, give the impression that Online Opinion is going to the dogs.

You do not have to commiserate with our failing PM by dropping your standards.

This will be most interesting no doubt, considering China is permanent member of UN security council too. However, I believe they and the US see this as some kind of conversion process from the cold war which never really went away, it just morphed into something else like we have now with China V US.
Look at the space race, nearest rival to US "adventurousness" into space is China. Forget Russia, they have too many other problems to deal with.

All this rivalry between superpowers reminds me of the plot behind the story of the video game series "Fallout".

"On October 23, 2077, the United States, China, and other nuclear-armed countries commenced a brief but rapid exchange of nuclear strikes. Although the conflict lasted only two hours, the destruction it brought was staggering and complete: more energy was released in the early moments of the war than in all previous global conflicts combined."

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_world

Even though we are only in 2016, the current geopolitical tensions this had bought about are beginning to eerily take on this story line..

Strategic shock-jocking aside...

It think it more likely that the Hague's ruling on China in the South China Sea (SCS) will be lengthy and with many intentional ambiguities. This adhere's to the Hague's job of impartially judging, in so doing helping resolve disputes, not making them worse.

The Hague might more likely say "All those countries* involved in disputes over South China Sea landforms are asked to..."

* Countries with conflicting claims over SCS islands/reefs/shoals include, not only China, but the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Taiwan and Malaysia.

see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_disputes_in_the_South_China_Sea

Pete

State-protected industrial barons during German national socialism resemble the communist-capitalist party oligarchs of Russia and China. Red colour on banners was used by them all. Russians and Chinese are convinced they are each a privileged nationality under historic abuse by unpolished invaders resembling German purity being abused by Jews.
The denial of China's right to the sea named for it equals the denial of Russia's front door , Ukraine. And both are being rudely pushed at Russia and China by the same people in the same week. And maybe China is more reliable for Putin than Italy was for the Fuhrer.

Ja nicknamenick (unt WTF!?)

Time for zie Fuhrer to raise der blitzkrieg battleship Bismarck from zie Atlantik Ocean to invade South China Sea by vay of Poland.

Peiter Panzer

Bismarck may well add firepower to the People's navy and become a Chinese island when the Fairey Swordfish send torpedoes. With US electronics being fried like Peking Duck the iron bombs will win.
Indeed, its takeoff and landing speeds were so low that, unlike most carrier-based aircraft, it did not require the carrier to be steaming into the wind. On occasion, when the wind was right, Swordfish were flown from a carrier at anchor.

The Hague court has ruled against China.
Basically said you do not own the ocean.

yes I do
no you don't
yes I do

International law once only recognised "the three mile limit" on ocean based territorial claims. This changed when Iceland demanded that British fishing boats should not come within 200 miles of Iceland's coasts, which started the "Cod War." The new international standard became a 200 mile "Exclusive Economic Zone" from any nations coast, with presumably close coastal neighbours dividing ocean claims down the middle.

China is now going well beyond this by claiming an entire oceon well beyond it's national boundaries as it's sovereign territory. If other nations do the same, the fun will really begin. We could see all sorts of new territorial claims by competing powers all over the earth. Italy could claim the entire Mediterranean Sea.

This is an extremely dangerous situation. It is imperative that the belligerent nation should be prevented from succeeding in it's illegal territorial ambitions. This is exactly the same situation that has transpired previously in history where a new power military seeks territorial gain at he expense of it's weaker neighbours. Those days are supposed to be over. But China is now emulating Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany, and Imperial Japan.

Other posters on this topic have noted the similarity between Nazi Germany and China today. Nazi Germany was a socialist country like China is today. Both tolerated and even encouraged the private sector of their economy. Both are expansionist. Both extremely racist. The question is now, should the free world stand up to this new Nazi state? Or will the appeasers win again and encourage more territorial expansion by Nazi China?

The 200NM limit is the resource protected area and the territorial
limit is 12 Nautical Mile I believe.
It was increased from 3 to 12 because of artillery ranges at the time.

I think China made a mistake when they extended their 9 dash line
into Indonesian waters. I believe that is where troubles will begin.

Just as long as they leave Alexander Downer's oil zone inside East Timor artillery range. Does China's head-lock on Oz bank debt mean Canberra is within Beijing's protection ?

Yes Nick as the saying goes if you owe the bank a million dollars
you are in trouble, if you owe the bank a billion dollars the bank is in trouble !

Now we know the outcome of this judgment, which is not surprising really, it has most certainly set a precedent for other sovereign nations to disregard or deny any of the UN bodies like the arbitration court and its judgments.

It just reinforces the UN as the "paper tiger" it's always been known to be. At attempt at International law with unenforceable judgements from its arbitration court arm and the Chinese know it too.

This lets other so called "rogue" nations step up and play games with the UN and its related bodies. I'll bet Putin and other dictators are rubbing their hands in glee.

If there were a more hawkish president in the white house, I don't think the Chinese would be pushing this south china sea dilemma any further than where it got to in the last 6 years or so. Come November this year though and It will be a different foreign policy agenda that the next US president has to contend with and won't have much choice but to come down on China somehow, some way... we all hope! or else the future geopolitical tensions just got elevated to a new scarier level that we have never seen before.

Hi Rojama

China could well argue its OK for some (like the US) to disregard the Court.

The US is not a participant in this Court so does not consider itself automatically bound by the Court's judgements.

As we all know the US is above mere international institutions because it is morally exceptional.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_International_Criminal_Court

Pete

China is doing something that nation before in history has ever done. It is claiming an entire ocean as it's territory. So Plantagenet attacks the USA.

And you wonder why people such as myself think you lefties are fruit loops.

However the US is not party to the court it wants China to accept.
Russia annexes bits of Ukraine as Israel does outside its UN mandate with US agreement.
Personal abuse is also highly illegal.

Hi "LEGO" - or should I say: "Toddlers' Plastic Blocks"?

Ditto mate ditto.

:)

The only opposition to China that is possible is military might.

Or, perhaps there'll be a scramble by major powers to claim the world's oceans. Imagine Australia USA NZ claiming the Pacific, Australia, South Africa and India, the Indian Ocean and so on.

No joke tho', once fully established in the SCS, the Chinese will have Oz at its mercy, just a matter of come'n'get it, unless we have a huge allied naval presence.

The security of Darwin port is important to this, and I have no idea why we don't buy off the shelf quiet, long range, nuclear submarines to defend ourselves instead of buying a job creation project.

Oh, that's right, the Greens in the Senate would block it.

Hi Luciferase

The Government would have lost the July 2 Election if it hadn't backed the submarine "job creation project" in South Australia. Enough LNP seats in South Australia would have fallen to NXT and Labor - to lose LNP the Election.

Federal money = jobs = votes = winning Elections.

I don't think the current lack of strategic threat of China To Australia justifies nuclear subs - yet. But the Government can quietly negotiate with US Government to buy or lease nuclear subs in the future.

This is when the strategic threats force our public into accepting nuclear - a major hurdle.

No nation has claimed an ocean?
Maurizio Isabella, ‎Konstantina Zanou - 2015 - ‎
CHAPTER FOUR ... imperial presence in the Mediterranean, which by the 1840s had become a 'British lake'.
And Chinese today remember that Victoria Hong Kong was British until 15 years ago. The China sea is the size of Queensland , the same queen. Some rational observers believe UK and Oz are US territory but I don't.

Luciferase, The 12 submarines will spend their time tied up at the dock.
We will have no diesel to refuel them with if there is any sort of
a low or high level military event.
The cabinet did discuss nuclear subs but cabinet decided on jobs for
the boys.

I have one solution that would cripple China.
However it would need for some really bad action by China for a chance
for it to be activated.
A ban by all other countries on shipping passing through the Sth China Sea.

This would mean everything going to China, oil, coal, iron ore,
exports etc from China would have to be carried in Chinese ships.
However if those ships were banned from other ports, the Malacca and
Sunda Straits etc a great deal of damage would be done to the Chinese economy.
So China needs to consider what retaliation might be made.

Indeed there could be an insurance ban if China attacks any ships.
That would bring China to a grinding halt.
China does not hold all the cards.

Well Bazz that would just about lock the sea into Chinese control permanently. Poor old China is forced into a monopoly on Asian shipping..

No Nick, it would be forced into a no sea trade situation.
If the insurance companies took part nothing would move.
It would need very widespread support but actually I do not think it is about shipping at all.
It is all about oil.

The southern part is reputed to have large areas with oil prospects.
You might remember they installed a jack up rig in Vietnam's 200nm
resource zone and upset the Vietnamese no end.
They pulled it out after a while perhaps because it was dry.

Maybe the oil rig exploration was insured with these chappies:
The 5 Biggest Chinese Insurance Companies | Investopedia
www.investopedia.com/.../5-biggest-chinese-insurance-companies.asp
Sep 3, 2015 - Today, the biggest insurance companies in China rank among the largest companies in the world in terms of market capitalization. ... (NYSE: LFC) is the biggest insurance company in China and one of the top insurance companies in the world. ... China Life is listed on the Shanghai Stock ...

Funny, I thought the pseudo-Left would have put something up in support of socialist imperialism by now. Early days.

There are so many ironies about this ridiculous situation. Which Chinese imperial 'authority' [Since when did imperialism have any respectability in Leftists' eyes ? Ah sorry, yes Putin, Georgia, the Crimea and Ukraine, I forgot] are the neo-imperialist Chinese relying on ? The Mings of the 1420s, via Admiral Cheng Ho ? The Manchus, i.e. the Manchurian invaders of China ? Chiang Kai-Shek and the Kuomintang ? So Chiang Kai-Shek is now a great patriot in Beijing's eyes ?

As for any claim, on the grounds that some Chinese boats fished around those shoals, so did Thai, Javanese, Macassan, Filipino, Vietnamese, etc. fishing fleets worked around all of those shoals, as they did all across south-east Asian waters - even down to Australia. Macassans were still trading with Aboriginal groups barely a hundred years ago. So northern Australia belongs to Indonesia on those grounds ?

Actually, Chiang Kai-Shek's claim, 'the nine-dash line', may have been a response to Sukarno's post-War aspirations to unite all of Indonesia, Papua, New Guinea, Malaya, the Philippines into one country, straddling all of island south-east Asia. That too died in the arse.

It is also well-known that Imperial China disparaged any maritime role until the 1420s and Cheng Ho's visits to trading ports around south-east Asia, the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, and destroyed his maps and retreated to its land-based empire-building after then.

Their little toe in the water came after thousands of years of trade and fishing activity across all of those seas by all the island and coastal peoples of south-east Asia from the Coromandel Coast of India across to Melanesia, perhaps even Korean and Japanese fishermen as well. The notion that Chinese ships were the first to use those shoals as fishing grounds is so ludicrous, so easily disproven, that I feel a bit silly bringing it up.

TBC]

[continue]

Imperialism never seems to die. Most dangerously, it is usually open-ended, never satisfied until it has - logically - extended its power across the world. Alexander wept at the Ganges when he thought that there were no more worlds to conquer. Would the Nazis and the Japanese have stopped, if they had won the Second World War ? Or would they have been at each others' throats within a few decades, each drooling for total world domination ?

And how many shoals and reefs are there around the world ? Millions ? How hard would it be for any country to start pouring concrete on a shoal or reef just off another country's coast, plonking an airfield on it and then claiming 200-mile exclusion zone around it ? And then, after the event, inventing a back-history of love and longing to join their historic territory to the beloved mainland ?

Don't forget that New Zealand was once part of New South Wales. It has many shoals off its north coast. Many ships from NSW sailed through them, mapping and measuring. 'Our beloved country, now cruelly exploited by so-called New Zealanders (really Australians). Our hearts ache to get our stolen shoals back.'

I.e., make it up as you go. Well, it worked for Hitler with Danzig, and the Sudetenland. In this case though, just don't mention oil.

Joe

The 9 dash map is a bit late for China, eh . 1940's?
"Though Marco Polo never produced a map that illustrated his journey, his family drew several maps to the Far East based on the wayward's accounts. These collection of maps were signed by Polo's three daughters: Fantina, Bellela and Moreta. Not only did it contain maps of his journey, but also sea routes to Japan, Siberia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, the Bering Strait and even to the coastlines of Alaska, centuries before the rediscovery of Americas by Europeans."
--
In 1271 he travelled for Republic of Florence and China is legally signed-up to EU.

Hi Nicknick,

My bet is Marco Polo didn't get the information for those maps from coastal Chinese traders, but from Japanese, Korean and/or Thai traders - perhaps from Indian and Arab traders, as well as Sumatran and Javanese traders.

The seas were busy even in those days. I read somewhere that trade between Thai city-states and Japan, mainly for ceramics, was greater than all of Chinese trade. And around 1200, I don't think even Taiwan was under the Chinese, although Chinese fishermen would have used their waters, alongside Filipino, etc. fishermen.

Joe

The US Navy & perhaps our navy know what seismic work is going on in
the Sth China Sea. That would tell everyone what is going on.

We have been greedy fools in the west cashing in on the great emerging China and its economic opportunities.. very much like putting all our eggs into the one basket so to speak.. now we have fed the great Dragon and its big enough to arrogantly disregard a branch of the UN with its judgement in the south china sea. At the same time they remain a permanent member of the UN security council!... bit like Dracula in charge of the blood bank. Imo, they should be removed immediately.

Today, we hear in the news how our foreign affairs minister was "politely" told to go away and mind your own business when confronting the Chinese government about this disregard for the UN ruling. Bit like an ant telling an elephant to get out of the room!

In a worse case scenario which funnily enough, was proposed on ABC news 24 last night, (gotta love those lefties!)
The great Dragon could bribe Indonesia and setup ICBM bases in Papua and East Java or thereabouts, frighteningly close to Australia no doubt.

Is this country of less than 25 million going to stand idly by and pray that our US military alliance will save us? or will US politicians and the voting public over there think they have had enough of propping up their allies against this great Dragon?

I am geopolitical pragmatist, not trying to scare folks but is the world big enough for 2 superpowers to live peacefully side by side on the one planet?? I really don't think so and the mother of all global wars will happen one day soon no doubt... seriously can we have an economic trading position with the great Dragon while they steadily expand their military reach in this general part of the world?

Perhaps we should start "fighting back" by boycotting Chinese goods & services... pity they make about 90% of the world's goods!

The Indian Navy is now going to put its oar into this argument.
Pardon the pun !

http://tinyurl.com/juygwuj

um..yes..the Marco Polo punchline is :
He had a map and China has a map and his is earlier and he wins.
So Italy owns China and the China sea.
So we shut down the Pilbara and let Brazil get all the iron-ore billions. On Chinese ships with Chinese insurance which doesn't cover Australia's subs with sub-standard cyber gear. ( check US comments on their sad situation compared with the bad guys).

But China is now emulating...Imperial Japan (LEGO).
Would the Japanese have stopped, if they had won the Second World War? (Loudmouth).

One very important, cardinal axis in in prewar Japanese foreign policy since its opening up in 1854 had been to keep friendly relations as far as possible with Great Britain and the United States, as I said before.
"Many people who are familiar with WWII may think that the Japanese of the time were all solely fixated on going to war with the United States to win dominance in the Pacific, but Ambassador Grew reveals that most Japanese actually wanted peace with the US (Makr Thrice's comment on Joseph Grew/Ten Years in Japan, amazon usa)." Grew was in Japan for about ten years as the last US ambassadot to prewar Japan. (I do not agree to everything said in the book, though.)
"In the case of Pearl Harbor, FDR asked for it by giving Japan an ultimatum in late November, 1941 (By A Customer on Octobeer 6, 2003's comment on Hamilton Fish/Tragic Deception, amazon usa).
Japan finally decided to go to war on December 1, 1941, Japan Standard Time. Japan's War and Peace is far more interesting than Tolstoy's, if Australians read it correctly.

Australians, like Americans, seem to have a lot of difficulty in telling Chinese/China apart from Japanese/Japan. I (Yoshimichi Moriyama) told an easy rule for it in my four comments on eastasiaforum/Hugh White/Need to face the facts in Asia.
I also said the perfect Chinese logic in claiming to the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea in my three comments on eastasiaforum/Sam Bateman/Brinkmanship in the South China Sea helps nobody.
I hope you Australians will find them entertaining.

PS
www.eastasiaforum.org/2016/06/07/brinkmanship-in-the-south-china-sea-helps-nobody/.

www.eastasiaforum.org/2016/04/18/need-to-face-the-facts-in-asia/.

The Franklin Roosevelt administration was more willing than unwilling from the summer of 1941 to have war on Japan. But I do not intend to mean by this that therefore the United States was 100% responsible for the outbreak of the war.

The way things are going in the build up to the US election in November, Trump looks like he could achieve his goal of becoming president..
IF that happens, I've heard he has plans to scale back US investment in propping up defenses in Japan and South Korea. He expects them to fund their own defences. Not sure what he thinks of the other SE Asian countries that border the south china sea.
My worrying concern is if he considers the ANZUS treaty we have with them up for review or leave it as it is??

Anxious days ahead for all..

G'day Michi,

Neither China now, or Japan then, have any right, any more than any other country, to build empires.

But since you've put your toe in the water, it may help to point out that Japan did invade Taiwan back in the 1890s.

Japan invaded Korea around 1905.

Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931.

Japan invaded China proper in 1937.

Japan fought a war of possession of eastern Siberia with the Soviet Union around 1938.

Japan occupied French Indo-China in 1940.

Japan did attack Hong Kong, the Philippines, Burma, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, Papua-New Guinea and Australia in 1941-1942.

Japan sent planes to bomb eastern Indian cities (and ?perhaps Ceylonese coastal towns).

So you're right: the US may not have been 100 % responsible for the outbreak of war in the Pacific and South-East Asia. Gosh, I wonder who was then ?

Cheers,

Joe

Loudmouth,
I did not say that Japan did not have any imperialistic policy since 1868. I simply meant to say that she wanted to get out of the emaciating and hopeless war with China that had endured for over four years and that she alone should not be held responsible for the outbreak of the Pacific War; the United States was responcible for it.

Japan was the only country, though Turkey might be an exception, that made a quick transition to a modern industrialised nation-state. Thailand kept independent but was in a precarious situation. Japan owed its successful transformation not to its wickedness; if it was due to anything, it should be counted as its excellence and good luck.

If Japan had been forced to change from a premodern to a modern nation two hundred and fifty years earlier, she would have failed and been colonised by Western imperialism; if she had had to adjust to catch up with a compelx, highly advanced and sophisticated and computorised world as the West is today, the gap for her to fill was so enormous that she would certainly have failed.

Japan had to make the swift transition; she did not have much time for it because the West at that time was completely predatory and felt no hesitation in its colonial policy. To be continued.

Colin Clark was an Australian economist, well-known for his great work. His son, Gregory Clark, lives in Japan. I did not know this until he said it on Japanese TV. Accroding to him, the leaders of Meiji Japan (1868-1912) were very highly appreciated in the West. Almost all of them came from the samurai class of Edo Japan (1603-1868). They relinquished their feudal priviledges and gave themselves up to building a modern nation-state. This is where one deep, cultural difference between Japan and the two Confucianist countries, China and Korea, lay. Some knowledge of Edo Japan is prerequisite for some understanding of modern Japan, for the Edo period had happened to prepare for modern Japan.

A lot of misunderstandings on Japan still linger on, such as that democracy of postwar Japan was introduced by the occupation policy of the United States; the fact was that principles and ideas of democracy, human rights, and equality of men and women were taking root and spreading in prewar Japan.

The West still loves, for keeping its own narcissitic self-image at the expense of true Japan, "...a distorted image of a docile nation manipulated by a few fanatics in uniform...When one realizes how tenuous and frail democracy is elsewhere in the world,...one may conclude by wondering not why democracy failed in Japan, but rather how, despite the undemocratic tradition and the pressures of war, a totalitarin dictatorship did not evolve there...The political values of wartime Japan were part of a wider cultural milieu, in which traditional concepts had already been deeply modified by Western attitudes. Confrontation with the West in a bloody and protracted war created a cultural dilemma which could not be solved (Ben-Amy Shillony, Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan, Oxford University Press, 1981, Preface, vii).

I will be back and say a little about the Korean annexation of 1905, Manchuria of 1931, and etc. later. To be continued.

Hi Michi,

It's all water under the bridge though, isn't it ? The War has been over for more than seventy years. Japan is a totally different place from back then.

Imperialism may have been almost the rule for thousands of years in the past, but probably after the First World War, and certainly the Second, the phenomenon was well out of date. Even the British Empire didn't last as long as much smaller, earlier, empires, the Genoese or Parthian empires, for example.

In fact, the time when the British were fully rampant across Africa - in the 1890s - until the independence of many of those same countries - the 1960s - was barely a single lifetime. By contrast, the Moorish (Berber) invaders ravaged Spain for nearly eight hundred years.

So current attempts by China or Russia - or Turkey - to resurrect the stinking corpses of their old empires and even expand their boundaries, in the context of a multitude of nations which consider themselves their equals, is doomed to fail. But maybe not before they do a hell of a lot of damage.

To get back to topic, it's clear that China doesn't have a shred of legality in its claims on the South China Sea and beyond. It's illegal for any nation to build on shoals and reefs: China, the US, Australia, any nation. Then to compound the offence by claiming it as their national territory, with its own 200-mile EEZ.

By contrast, the islands in dispute between China and South Korea, and China and Japan, are not all shoals and reefs but bona fide islands. They have been under the control, respectively, of South Korea and Japan. The most peaceable approach of all countries concerned would be to respect the status quo. That approach is now very difficult in the South China Sea.

[TBC]

[continued]

My paranoid suspicion is that China won't stop at the limits of the South China Sea: already they have harassed fishermen around Indonesia's Natuna Islands, within cooee of Singapore. Will China stop at Singapore ? Will it claim some ancestral trading dominance in the Malacca Straits ? Beyond ? After all, here's no limit to most imperialisms: in their view, the entire world is theirs.

Cheers,

Joe

Loudmouth,
I just wanted to save you from the darkness and let you see the light, but since you seem to be uninterested and want to remain in the happy ignorance, just a few words more.

Japan wanted to save herself from being carved up by Western imperialism. It was why she fought the war of 1894-95 with Qing China.
She had to stop Czarist Russia's imperialistic advance in the Korean penisula for natinal defense in the war of 1904-05.

The Manchurian Incident of 1931 was nothing but Japan's imperialistic aggression. She had been allowed by the treaty with China to have a few units stationed in the Province of Guandong. The field-grade officers of the Japanese Guandong army secretly planed and prosecuted it as a sort of mutiny. The two cabinets, Wakatsuki and Inukai, did their utmost to bring the officers under discipline and stop it all but failed. (Inukai was murdered by radical officers in 1932. Wakatsuki was born near where I live. He opposed Japan's diplomatic drift toward confrontation with the United States. He was the one who tried to bring Japan to surrender.)

Several shots were fired into the Japanese units near the Marco Polo Bridge on the evening of July 7, 1937. It is presumed that they were fired by Chinese communists who had infiltrated into the Nationalist army. Both Japan and China wanted to contain it; they did what they could to keep it from turing it into a big war; neither wanted to escalate it, but it did and ultimately led to Pearl Harbour.

Thank you.

Hi Michi,

All imperialisms are equal, but some are more equal than others - is that what you are saying ? Japan invaded Taiwan to protect itself against the Russians ? Then Korea, to protect itself against the Russians ? Then Manchuria, to protect itself against the Russians ? Is that it ?

I remember, as a kid, finding all this Japanese English-language money in a little box of my dad's, but the War has been over for more than seventy years now, Michi. All is forgiven. Move on.

Cheers,

Joe

Loudmouth,
Japan was suddenly thrown into the age of rampant Westerm imperialism.
To fend it off and protect Japanese independence reqired more or less an imperialistic policy. If Japan had been situated geographically where Switzerland or Norway is, she would have been modernised herself without developing imperialistic response.

I do not think I said Japan had to take Taiwan to keep herself independent; details aside, Japan had to release Korea from Chinese suzerainty and to make her an independent country (and this is why Qing China and Japan fought the war of 1894-95,) so that Japan would not be carved up and partioned in the Russo-British imperialistic rivalry. Taiwan was a war booty that Japan got from Qing China. It would have been perfectly superb if she had not demanded and taken Taiwan and reparations from China after the war.

As I said, I do not deny that Manchukuo was the product of Japanese imperialism. Japan spent far more money on Manchurian economic development than she drew out from it, and it was the most industrialised part of China in 1945; Mao took it and it was one big reason for the communists' victory and also a big reason why they could fight the Koean War and why General MacArthur insisted on bombing it beyond the Yalu River which ran between Manchuria and North Korea. To be continued.

Loudmouth,
"...the best colonial master of all time has been Japan, for no ex-colonies have done so well as (South) Korea, and Taiwan,...(David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations)." Manchuria should have been added on the list. (This book has many misinterpretations of Japan, though.)
North Korea was well-industrialised due to Japanese rule and the South was an agrarian country, and this was why Kim started war of aggression in June,1950.

All is forgiven. Yes, a person or a country should be punished for the crime he/she/it committed, but Japan was penalized even for the crimes she did not commit, and seventy years is the time for reappraial of the past.

Initially Japan was not at all ambitiously intent on China. Japan was frightened with the West, so she asked Qing China to take the lead in setting up a common front to stand up to the Western imperialism. But China simply snubbed it with ridicule, so Japan had to do it for herself, and the imminent job to do was to separate Korea from China and make her an independent country.

China had not awakened at the defeat of the Opium Wars. She continued in her happy slumber of "These blue-eyed Western barbarian will soon admit her charm and greatness and and kneel down and kowtow."
It was the defeat of the 1894-95 war in the hands of Japan that really shocked and awakened and made her realise that something was awry with the Middle Kingdom, like a heavy-weight class boxing world champion who was knocked down by a novice who just started to learn boxing. A lot of people like Liang Qichao, Sun Yatsen, Chiang Kaishek, and Zhou Enlai came to Japan to learn the secret of modernisation. "...the Chinese have never reciprocated the warm feelings of the Japanese, viewing them with distrust and more than a little contempt (E. O. Reischauer, The Japanese)." Chinese school teaches children and young people that the Opium Wars taught a lesson and the need for change and of course that communists were the vanguard.

Evidence of Chinese media rhetoric about attacking Australian defense forces in the south china sea because of "freedom of navigation" activities in the region. > http://www.businessinsider.com.au/major-chinese-state-paper-calls-for-a-military-strike-on-australian-ships-that-enter-the-south-china-sea-2016-7

Also, news of china getting friendly with Russia over this issue as well. > http://www.smh.com.au/world/experts-wary-about-chinas-new-coziness-with-russia-in-the-south-china-sea-20160730-gqh99x.html

The situation is what it is, and it ain't going away anytime soon.

Hi Rojama,

I'm very disappointed with Vietnam's stance on all this, over-reaching only a bit less than China itself does.

Other states in the area, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia, seem to be quite rightly defending the internationally-recognised 200-mile Economic Exclusion Zones out from their coasts. But Vietnam is making a very similar claim as China's to the Paracels, which any sane person would agree should be recognised as coming within the EEZs of the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei, and differentiated accordingly.

Vietnam's position compromises any united effort to get it through to the Chinese that what they are trying to do blatantly breaches international law. I can't imagine what Vietnam's rationale might be for their claims, but if they rely on some historical evidence of fishing in those areas, then they can join the plethora of historical fishermen from many kingdoms across early Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Burmese states, the Indianised kingdoms across Indo-China, who all fished in each others' waters, going back for more than thousand years. As they still do.

Or are we to support some claim from Java that their fishermen used to fish along the north coast of Australia as evidence that Australia should now belong to Indonesia ? Where does imperialism end, and common sense begin ?

Take note, Michi :)

Joe

Hi Loudmouth, I understand what your saying but when you or anyone for that matter use terms like "sane" and "commonsense" they are open to individual interpretations.
One of the reasons why I avoid using these terms in any online discussion anywhere.

US thinktank, Rand corporation, has outlined a worse case scenario of war between US and China, although highly unlikely, I would never rule it out altogeather no matter what the so called trade links are between the two at the current time.
http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1140.html

Obviously, after the US presidential elections in November, this game could take serious deviations in any direction.

Hi Rojama,

Points taken :)

It's interesting that Taiwan's President has just apologised for four hundred years of oppression of the Indigenous people there. That puts the Ming invasion of Taiwan at around 1610-1620, some thirty years before the Manchu invasion of China itself.

If Taiwan was not part of China four hundred years ago, then how can we take seriously present-day Chinese claims of much further reach, much earlier, down into the South China Sea ?

Cheers,

Joe

Loudmouth,
The United States has and will continue to have, if it wills to, military superiority in the South China Sea. But it will not deter China from rewriting a military, political and strategic map there, because China knows how not to be deterred, because it knows that the Obama administration will not resort to its military power. Henry Kissinger said to a Japanese journalist that China would expand its sphere of influence by the process of osmosis.
"this (the Tribunal's award) will eventuate if other states are prepared to impose tangible costs on Beijing for non-compliance (John Lee/China's interests at stake in the South China Sea)."
http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2016/08/02/chinas-interests-at-stake-in-the-south-china-sea.

China has fishing and natural resources in the sea on its mind. But the unanimous opinion of Japanese experts is that China wants to send a nuclear submarine into the open Pacific Ocean, too. Once it is in the ocean, it is hard to detect it. A Chinese submarine cannot get into the ocean through the East China Sea without being detected by a Japanese or an American anti-Chinese submarine aircraft or boat. At present Chinese submarine cannot stealthly creep into the Pacific through the South China Sea, either.

According to a former Japanese defense minister, Morimoto, Japan had said to the United States for years what would entail if they allowed China to go on like that. To be continued.

"China is listening very carefully to American behavior." Yu Hua, a famous Chinese writer, said to a Japanese newspaper after reading a Japanese novel, The Snow Country, "We Chinese are always brawling at each other (unlike Japanese)."
They are intimidating each other in their brawls; they are threatening each other; they are trying to be frightening each other. But on account of this thousands-of-years of customary tactics or tactical custom, they are watching and calculating the power balance of what is safe and what is possible. Americans are being fooled.

"The sort of 'dialog' that the Chinese empire understands is the American show of determination. China will always say whatever to save its face. However, China is listening very carefully to American behavior. China will likely yield when/where it sees American determination (Fourierr's comment on Dialogue of the deaf: As China and America continue to talk past each other, Asia frets. http:www.economist.com/June 4th.

More evidence of China's willingness to be as flexible as possible with regards to Naval military power as demonstrated in this article about making commercial ship building industry factor in design guidelines for conversion to military operations if necessary > http://www.ibtimes.com/china-pla-navy-expansion-new-policy-mandates-commercial-ships-be-equipped-military-1978134?rel=rel1

Is this surprising? imo, no, not at all, kinda what I expect from them in their never ending pursuit of intimidating US world power and influence and for that matter anyone else who aspires to be potential world superpower.