Lebensraum?

One joke aside for another, the Chinese say the airbase and harbour they've built in the middle of the SCS is for "search and rescue' operations. So caring.

The time to start melting the ploughshares?

Dear Is Mise and Luciferase,

Can you two stop behaving like engineers for a moment and start acting like intelligent people?

Dear Luciferase,

China has another word for Lebensraum. They call it Australia.

Hi Mr Opinion,

You ask, "Why do you think China is doing this?"

Pretty obviously, to bully states neighbouring the south China Sea into agreeing that China can

(1) 'nationalise' the south China Sea, i.e. international waters, shoals and reefs, and

(2) control whatever resources may lie underneath.

As for what they might do afterwards, in relation to other areas, and eventually to Australia, I'll let you make suggestions :)

For the record, I think that China's pretensions are totally illegal. Those areas have been used by local people for perhaps thousands of years. The Austronesians traded across that region, for as long. Over the past thousand years, Arabs, Thais, Indians, Indian kingdoms in what is now Indonesia and Malaya, the Chams, etc. have been sailing and trading across that entire area, with Japan and Korea, and even with China: hence mosques and Hindu temples in Canton six hundred years ago.

The Chinese claims are laughably threadbare: what, a Chinese ship sailed off the coast of the Philippines in 1420 and therefore can now claim it ? How imperialist is that ?!

Joe

Opinion,

How can we take seriously the wanderings of someone so laughingly out of touch as to urge us to learn a language that does not exist?