Mr Opinion,

Have you decided on which of the many languages spoken by the Chinese is going to be your bi-lingual other half?

Dear ttbn,

If Australia sides with the US in the conflict what do you think will happen to the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement?

Do you think China could fear that the Australian government might move to nationalise China's business interests in Australia if there is a war?

Do you think Turnbull and the Liberals will risk losing government by turning the large minority of Chinese voters against them at the federal election?

Where are you going to house the several million Chinese in Australia who would be resentful that Australia has turned against the land of their kin and ancestors?

What ever they'd do they won't be speaking Chinese as there ain't no such language.

I'm in New Delhi at the moment and brushing up on my Hindi and French as were visiting Indian friends who are originally from the former French colony of Pondicherry
Hindi is handy and many Indians are fluent in it but I'm fortunate that my wife knows many of the dialect variations.

Dear Is Mise,

I get the impression you think that China's annexation of the greater part of the South China Sea is something of a joke. You either have a low IQ or a very poor knowledge of the world or even worse, both!

China has clearly violated international laws and treaties that it has signed, and is trying bully it neighbors and take their territorial claims by force. Unless Paul and EJ (traditionally Yank haters) are suggesting that this level of aggression is allowed to continue unchecked, some level of action needs to be taken, and presently China is counting on its neighbors being unable to challenge it militarily.

Of course this is having the effect of boosting America's pivot into Asia, with the countries around the south china sea boosting military co operation with the US and offering the use of their ports and bases.

The US and China's neighbors also have the option of sanctions, which given the weakened state of China's economy could tip it into recession, or stagnation.

The Prison Republic of China, PRC, has planted its flag on an uninhabited reef that's not territory of (or even claimed by) any nation except of course the Prison Republic of China itself. Far from being terra nullius it isn't even terra. If this is aggression, against whom is it aggression? The Chinese tried to brush aside the right to free air passage over airspace that isn't anyone's national territory and the Americans have very properly defended this right under international law and flown their aircraft accordingly. The Americans have every right to group their warships anywhere on the Pacific Ocean that they choose and so do the Chinese or even (regrettably) the Indos. For any nation to sail its warships too close to another nation's warships without permission [1] would be aggression, and God has not given the Americans the right to do this even though the Americans may claim ownership of the ocean as they claim ownership of God.

The Pacific Ocean isn't an American lake, PNAC or no PNAC, global Monroe Doctrine or no global Monroe Doctrine.

Of course one may speculate about Chinese intentions to reduce other nations (i.e. us) to the status of Tibet, but speculations about intentions are no excuse for aggression (any aggression) as the Krauts' aggression based on these kinds of assertions got them crushed. Twice.

The ANZUS Treaty which has been a recipe for us meekly making ourselves Deppity Dawg for America is worth reading in full, especially Article V [2]

[1] as is currently being demanded by the freak wing of the LNP.

[2] Google “ANZUS Treaty text”