ALERT The Winds of War Blow in Korea and The Far East
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Indo-Pacific News - Watching the CCP-China Threat
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#Vietnam frigate performs combat drills at Spratly islands "On the Spratly Islands, combat preparations are at the highest levels," the national broadcaster said. This amid tension with #China which has hundreds of maritime militia boats there.
View: https://twitter.com/IndoPac_Info/status/1379368839046033408?s=20
@IndoPac_Info
#Vietnam frigate performs combat drills at Spratly islands "On the Spratly Islands, combat preparations are at the highest levels," the national broadcaster said. This amid tension with #China which has hundreds of maritime militia boats there.
View: https://twitter.com/IndoPac_Info/status/1379368839046033408?s=20
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Beijing Accelerating Timeline For Possible Invasion Of Taiwan, Expert Warns
BY TYLER DURDEN
ZERO HEDGE
TUESDAY, APR 06, 2021 - 09:45 PM
Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times,
The Chinese communist regime is accelerating its plans to invade Taiwan, an expert warns, as Beijing ratchets up military maneuvers against the island.
Twenty Chinese military aircraft - including four nuclear-capable H-6K bombers, 10 J-16 fighter jets, two Y-8 anti-submarine warfare aircraft, and a KJ-500 airborne early warning and control aircraft - entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) on March 26, according to Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense. It was the largest incursion ever reported by the ministry.
Taiwan’s ADIZ, located adjacent to the island’s territorial airspace, is an area where incoming planes must identify themselves to the island’s air traffic controller.
The incursion caps off a significant increase in hostility by Beijing against Taiwan since 2020. Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen, re-elected last January, has taken a hard line against threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), while the island has deepened its cooperation with the United States—prompting the regime to escalate its warmongering towards the island.
The CCP sees Taiwan as a part of its territory and has threatened war to bring the island under its fold. The self-ruled island is in reality a de-facto independent country with its own democratically-elected government, military, constitution, and currency.
The Republic of China (ROC)—Taiwan’s official name—overthrew China’s Qing Dynasty emperor in 1911. After the ROC retreated to Taiwan upon being defeated by the CCP during the Chinese Civil War, the CCP established a communist state called the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, while Taiwan gradually transitioned to become a democracy. But to this day, the Chinese regime has refused to recognize Taiwan’s sovereignty.
Last year, the Chinese air force flew about 380 sorties into Taiwan’s ADIZ, the highest number in a given year since 1996. So far this year, the Chinese military has been sending aircraft into the ADIZ on a near-daily basis.
The island’s coast guard on April 1 announced that Beijing has been flying unmanned drones near Taiwan’s Dongsha Island, located in the northern part of the South China Sea. The authority said it could not rule out that Beijing was using the drones to carry out reconnaissance.
Alongside military actions, the regime has sharpened its rhetoric towards the island. Earlier this year, a Chinese defense spokesperson threatened war against Taiwan if it declared independence.
On March 31, Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of hawkish state-run media Global Times, wrote on his social media, that he would like to order able-bodied men to go blow up bunkers in Taiwan in the event of war.
An unnamed Chinese pilot, who flew one of the Chinese aircraft crossing into Taiwan’s ADIZ on March 29, said, “This is all ours” after being asked to leave the airspace by the pilot of a Taiwanese interceptor aircraft, according to local media, who obtained a recording of the pilot’s remark from the Facebook page “Southwest Airspace of TW.”
Preparing to Invade
Beijing’s incursions are part of a series of dry runs in preparation for an invasion of Taiwan, John Mills, the former director of cybersecurity policy, strategy, and international affairs at the Office of the Secretary of Defense, told The Epoch Times.
Mills projects that these exercises could culminate in a large-scale dry run in the next two years. These dry runs are necessary, Mills said, given the complexity of amphibious landing operations—as well as how the Chinese military has never conducted a forced landing on a hostile power in a real-life situation before.
Any amphibious assault on Taiwan may also involve swarms of Chinese civilian merchant vessels and fishing boats, Mills said.
He believes that an invasion could come in the next three years—much earlier than the six-year estimate given by U.S. Adm. Philip Davidson, head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), during a congressional hearing in early March.
U.S. Adm. John Aquilino, the nominee to replace Davidson as head of INDOPACOM, at his confirmation hearing in March declined to endorse Davidson’s six-year estimate, but said the threat of a Chinese invasion is “much closer to us than most think.”
This point was echoed by former national security advisor H.R. McMaster, who in March said that Xi believes “he has a fleeting window of opportunity that’s closing” in relation to attacking Taiwan. McMaster said the period from 2022 onward marks the time “of greatest danger” to Taiwan, noting that this coincides with after the conclusion of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
But right now, the Chinese military is still not ready for an attack against the island, Mills said. The problem is, however, that the longer it waits to invade, the more ready and fortified Taiwan will be.
China is heavily dependent on foreign semiconductors—tiny chips that power everything from cellphones to missiles. According to Bloomberg, China imported $380 billion-worth of chips in 2020, accounting for about 18 percent of all its imports.
The regime is now struggling to secure foreign semiconductors following a series of sanctions slapped on Chinese companies by the Trump administration. U.S. sanctions have crippled the smartphone business of Chinese tech giant Huawei. Chinese chipmaker SMIC has also been put on a trade blacklist.
Hitting Back at US
Soong Hseik-wen, a professor at the Institute of Strategic and International Affairs (ISIA) of Taiwan’s National Chung Cheng University (NCCU), told The Epoch Times that the Chinese regime was making a statement with its incursion on March 26, in response to actions by the U.S. government in March.
These events included President Joe Biden’s first summit with Quad leaders from Australia, India, and Japan; the meeting in Tokyo between Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin, and their Japanese counterparts; and the Sino-U.S. talks in Anchorage, Alaska, according to Soong.
The two-day talks in Anchorage were marked by heated exchanges on March 18, during which the CCP’s top diplomat Yang Jiechie lashed out at U.S. foreign and trade policies, and over what he said was the United States’ struggling democracy and poor treatment of minorities.
The meeting highlighted how far apart the Chinese regime and United States are on critical issues, as the Chinese delegation rejected U.S. concerns about Beijing’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, its crackdown on freedoms in Hong Kong, and its intimidation of Taiwan, on the grounds that they were China’s “internal affairs.”
Viewing U.S. actions as escalating efforts to confront the regime, Beijing decided to flex its military muscle by sending a large aircraft squadron into Taiwan’s ADIZ on March 26, Soong said.
A bilateral agreement on coast guard cooperation between Taiwan and the United States—signed the day before the incursion—may have played into Beijing’s plan to take military action against Taiwan on March 26, Soong added. The agreement, he said, was a clear attempt to push back against Beijing after it passed a law in January to allow its coast guard to fire on foreign ships if needed.
With the agreement, the U.S. government was “explicitly saying” that the coast guard would also be a part of its maritime strategy to secure peace and stability in the region, Soong said.
China’s coast guard law has drawn widespread concern from its neighbors, including Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam.
On March 28, U.S. Ambassador to Palau John Hennessey-Nilan arrived in Taiwan as part of a Palau delegation headed by President Surangel Whipps. Palau is one of Taiwan’s 15 diplomatic allies.
Soong suggested that Beijing could have received intelligence of the U.S. ambassador’s visit to Taiwan, which would have prompted Beijing to show its disapproval, since the visit marked the first time a sitting U.S. diplomat has traveled to Taiwan since Washington ended diplomatic ties in favor of Beijing in 1979.
Kelly Craft, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nation, was originally going to visit Taiwan in mid-January, before her trip was canceled at the last minute.
Defending Taiwan
In the face of an escalating military threat from China, Mills said the Biden administration should adopt an unambiguous policy of deterrence towards the CCP. Specifically, Mills said the United States should have a visible navy and air force presence around Taiwan, as well as in the East China Sea and the South China Sea.
Boosting Taiwan’s self-defense capability is also important, and the Biden administration should sell the island any weapons that it asks for, in accordance with the Taiwan Relations Act, according to Mills. Under the legislation, the United States is obliged to supply the island with weapons needed for its self-defense.
Finally, the Pacific Deterrence Initiative (PDI) created under the fiscal 2021 Pentagon spending bill, would also be vital for U.S. forces in defending the region, Mills added. The PDI, akin to the European Deterrence Initiative, is aimed at securing advanced military capabilities to deter China’s military threats in the Indo-Pacific region.
To defend against a possible invasion, Taiwan “can never have enough ammunition,” Mills said, adding that the island’s recent move to begin producing long-range missiles that could reach deep into mainland China was a “big deal.”
Taiwan’s missiles are “a clear message that they’re going to reach out and inflict cost,” according to Mills.
Soong suggested that the Biden administration could support Taiwan in two ways: assisting Taiwan to participate in international organizations and welcoming Taiwan to become a part of a “trusted industry alliance.”
In February, Biden signed an executive order to begin a 100-day review of U.S. supply chains in several key sectors, including semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, and rare-earth minerals.
The American Institute in Taiwan, the de-facto U.S. embassy in Taiwan, announced on April 1 that a virtual forum was held on Wednesday between high-level Taiwanese and American officials, to discuss the effort to expand Taiwan’s participation in “U.N. organizations and other international fora,” including the World Health Organization (WHO).
Taiwan is currently not a member of the WHO because of Beijing’s objections.
The Biden administration could also take active steps to enforce several pieces of pro-Taiwan legislation that were signed into law by former President Donald Trump, Soong said. The legislation includes the Taiwan Travel Act, the TAIPEI Act, and the Asia Reassurance Initiative Act.
Taiwan, located on the first island chain, would be among the first targets of any Chinese military aggression in Asia. The first island chain is an arbitrary demarcation from the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, Taiwan, the Philippines, to Indonesia. For decades, the CCP’s military strategists have seen the first island chain as a barrier to the regime’s air and naval power, leaving the second island chain and beyond out of its reach.
As a result, Soong said that some European and Asian countries, in particular Japan and Australia, are observing Taiwan closely to see whether cooperation between Taipei and Washington is solid.
The Biden administration has said its commitment to Taiwan is “rock-solid.” But according to Soong, how serious the administration is in defending the island remains to be seen, especially given that Biden himself has never used the word “threat” to describe the CCP.
Biden has instead framed the regime as America’s “most serious competitor.”
Soong said he foresees the United States and China engaging in small-scale military conflicts in the near future, especially at two Taiwan-controlled islands in the South China Sea—Dongsha and Taiping.
“I believe the United States and China are in a new cold war,” Soong said.
Beijing Accelerating Timeline For Possible Invasion Of Taiwan, Expert Warns | ZeroHedge
BY TYLER DURDEN
ZERO HEDGE
TUESDAY, APR 06, 2021 - 09:45 PM
Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times,
The Chinese communist regime is accelerating its plans to invade Taiwan, an expert warns, as Beijing ratchets up military maneuvers against the island.
Twenty Chinese military aircraft - including four nuclear-capable H-6K bombers, 10 J-16 fighter jets, two Y-8 anti-submarine warfare aircraft, and a KJ-500 airborne early warning and control aircraft - entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) on March 26, according to Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense. It was the largest incursion ever reported by the ministry.
Taiwan’s ADIZ, located adjacent to the island’s territorial airspace, is an area where incoming planes must identify themselves to the island’s air traffic controller.
The incursion caps off a significant increase in hostility by Beijing against Taiwan since 2020. Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen, re-elected last January, has taken a hard line against threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), while the island has deepened its cooperation with the United States—prompting the regime to escalate its warmongering towards the island.
The CCP sees Taiwan as a part of its territory and has threatened war to bring the island under its fold. The self-ruled island is in reality a de-facto independent country with its own democratically-elected government, military, constitution, and currency.
The Republic of China (ROC)—Taiwan’s official name—overthrew China’s Qing Dynasty emperor in 1911. After the ROC retreated to Taiwan upon being defeated by the CCP during the Chinese Civil War, the CCP established a communist state called the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, while Taiwan gradually transitioned to become a democracy. But to this day, the Chinese regime has refused to recognize Taiwan’s sovereignty.
Last year, the Chinese air force flew about 380 sorties into Taiwan’s ADIZ, the highest number in a given year since 1996. So far this year, the Chinese military has been sending aircraft into the ADIZ on a near-daily basis.
The island’s coast guard on April 1 announced that Beijing has been flying unmanned drones near Taiwan’s Dongsha Island, located in the northern part of the South China Sea. The authority said it could not rule out that Beijing was using the drones to carry out reconnaissance.
Alongside military actions, the regime has sharpened its rhetoric towards the island. Earlier this year, a Chinese defense spokesperson threatened war against Taiwan if it declared independence.
On March 31, Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of hawkish state-run media Global Times, wrote on his social media, that he would like to order able-bodied men to go blow up bunkers in Taiwan in the event of war.
An unnamed Chinese pilot, who flew one of the Chinese aircraft crossing into Taiwan’s ADIZ on March 29, said, “This is all ours” after being asked to leave the airspace by the pilot of a Taiwanese interceptor aircraft, according to local media, who obtained a recording of the pilot’s remark from the Facebook page “Southwest Airspace of TW.”
Preparing to Invade
Beijing’s incursions are part of a series of dry runs in preparation for an invasion of Taiwan, John Mills, the former director of cybersecurity policy, strategy, and international affairs at the Office of the Secretary of Defense, told The Epoch Times.
Mills projects that these exercises could culminate in a large-scale dry run in the next two years. These dry runs are necessary, Mills said, given the complexity of amphibious landing operations—as well as how the Chinese military has never conducted a forced landing on a hostile power in a real-life situation before.
Any amphibious assault on Taiwan may also involve swarms of Chinese civilian merchant vessels and fishing boats, Mills said.
He believes that an invasion could come in the next three years—much earlier than the six-year estimate given by U.S. Adm. Philip Davidson, head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), during a congressional hearing in early March.
U.S. Adm. John Aquilino, the nominee to replace Davidson as head of INDOPACOM, at his confirmation hearing in March declined to endorse Davidson’s six-year estimate, but said the threat of a Chinese invasion is “much closer to us than most think.”
This point was echoed by former national security advisor H.R. McMaster, who in March said that Xi believes “he has a fleeting window of opportunity that’s closing” in relation to attacking Taiwan. McMaster said the period from 2022 onward marks the time “of greatest danger” to Taiwan, noting that this coincides with after the conclusion of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
But right now, the Chinese military is still not ready for an attack against the island, Mills said. The problem is, however, that the longer it waits to invade, the more ready and fortified Taiwan will be.
Beijing’s Taiwan ambitions stem primarily from its desire to get its hands on the island’s semiconductor-making capability, according to Mills. Taiwan is home to TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker.
China is heavily dependent on foreign semiconductors—tiny chips that power everything from cellphones to missiles. According to Bloomberg, China imported $380 billion-worth of chips in 2020, accounting for about 18 percent of all its imports.
The regime is now struggling to secure foreign semiconductors following a series of sanctions slapped on Chinese companies by the Trump administration. U.S. sanctions have crippled the smartphone business of Chinese tech giant Huawei. Chinese chipmaker SMIC has also been put on a trade blacklist.
Hitting Back at US
Soong Hseik-wen, a professor at the Institute of Strategic and International Affairs (ISIA) of Taiwan’s National Chung Cheng University (NCCU), told The Epoch Times that the Chinese regime was making a statement with its incursion on March 26, in response to actions by the U.S. government in March.
These events included President Joe Biden’s first summit with Quad leaders from Australia, India, and Japan; the meeting in Tokyo between Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin, and their Japanese counterparts; and the Sino-U.S. talks in Anchorage, Alaska, according to Soong.
The two-day talks in Anchorage were marked by heated exchanges on March 18, during which the CCP’s top diplomat Yang Jiechie lashed out at U.S. foreign and trade policies, and over what he said was the United States’ struggling democracy and poor treatment of minorities.
The meeting highlighted how far apart the Chinese regime and United States are on critical issues, as the Chinese delegation rejected U.S. concerns about Beijing’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, its crackdown on freedoms in Hong Kong, and its intimidation of Taiwan, on the grounds that they were China’s “internal affairs.”
Viewing U.S. actions as escalating efforts to confront the regime, Beijing decided to flex its military muscle by sending a large aircraft squadron into Taiwan’s ADIZ on March 26, Soong said.
A bilateral agreement on coast guard cooperation between Taiwan and the United States—signed the day before the incursion—may have played into Beijing’s plan to take military action against Taiwan on March 26, Soong added. The agreement, he said, was a clear attempt to push back against Beijing after it passed a law in January to allow its coast guard to fire on foreign ships if needed.
With the agreement, the U.S. government was “explicitly saying” that the coast guard would also be a part of its maritime strategy to secure peace and stability in the region, Soong said.
China’s coast guard law has drawn widespread concern from its neighbors, including Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam.
On March 28, U.S. Ambassador to Palau John Hennessey-Nilan arrived in Taiwan as part of a Palau delegation headed by President Surangel Whipps. Palau is one of Taiwan’s 15 diplomatic allies.
Soong suggested that Beijing could have received intelligence of the U.S. ambassador’s visit to Taiwan, which would have prompted Beijing to show its disapproval, since the visit marked the first time a sitting U.S. diplomat has traveled to Taiwan since Washington ended diplomatic ties in favor of Beijing in 1979.
Kelly Craft, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nation, was originally going to visit Taiwan in mid-January, before her trip was canceled at the last minute.
Defending Taiwan
In the face of an escalating military threat from China, Mills said the Biden administration should adopt an unambiguous policy of deterrence towards the CCP. Specifically, Mills said the United States should have a visible navy and air force presence around Taiwan, as well as in the East China Sea and the South China Sea.
Boosting Taiwan’s self-defense capability is also important, and the Biden administration should sell the island any weapons that it asks for, in accordance with the Taiwan Relations Act, according to Mills. Under the legislation, the United States is obliged to supply the island with weapons needed for its self-defense.
Finally, the Pacific Deterrence Initiative (PDI) created under the fiscal 2021 Pentagon spending bill, would also be vital for U.S. forces in defending the region, Mills added. The PDI, akin to the European Deterrence Initiative, is aimed at securing advanced military capabilities to deter China’s military threats in the Indo-Pacific region.
To defend against a possible invasion, Taiwan “can never have enough ammunition,” Mills said, adding that the island’s recent move to begin producing long-range missiles that could reach deep into mainland China was a “big deal.”
Taiwan’s missiles are “a clear message that they’re going to reach out and inflict cost,” according to Mills.
Soong suggested that the Biden administration could support Taiwan in two ways: assisting Taiwan to participate in international organizations and welcoming Taiwan to become a part of a “trusted industry alliance.”
In February, Biden signed an executive order to begin a 100-day review of U.S. supply chains in several key sectors, including semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, and rare-earth minerals.
The American Institute in Taiwan, the de-facto U.S. embassy in Taiwan, announced on April 1 that a virtual forum was held on Wednesday between high-level Taiwanese and American officials, to discuss the effort to expand Taiwan’s participation in “U.N. organizations and other international fora,” including the World Health Organization (WHO).
Taiwan is currently not a member of the WHO because of Beijing’s objections.
The Biden administration could also take active steps to enforce several pieces of pro-Taiwan legislation that were signed into law by former President Donald Trump, Soong said. The legislation includes the Taiwan Travel Act, the TAIPEI Act, and the Asia Reassurance Initiative Act.
Taiwan, located on the first island chain, would be among the first targets of any Chinese military aggression in Asia. The first island chain is an arbitrary demarcation from the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, Taiwan, the Philippines, to Indonesia. For decades, the CCP’s military strategists have seen the first island chain as a barrier to the regime’s air and naval power, leaving the second island chain and beyond out of its reach.
As a result, Soong said that some European and Asian countries, in particular Japan and Australia, are observing Taiwan closely to see whether cooperation between Taipei and Washington is solid.
The Biden administration has said its commitment to Taiwan is “rock-solid.” But according to Soong, how serious the administration is in defending the island remains to be seen, especially given that Biden himself has never used the word “threat” to describe the CCP.
Biden has instead framed the regime as America’s “most serious competitor.”
Soong said he foresees the United States and China engaging in small-scale military conflicts in the near future, especially at two Taiwan-controlled islands in the South China Sea—Dongsha and Taiping.
“I believe the United States and China are in a new cold war,” Soong said.
Beijing Accelerating Timeline For Possible Invasion Of Taiwan, Expert Warns | ZeroHedge
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Kim says North Korea facing its 'worst-ever situation'
In this undated photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, front right, visits the site of a planned area of riverside terraced houses in Pyongyang, North Korea. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: "KCNA" which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)
KIM TONG-HYUNG
Wed, April 7, 2021, 12:14 AM
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has acknowledged his country was facing the “worst-ever situation” as he addressed thousands of grassroots members of his ruling party during a major political conference in Pyongyang.
Experts say Kim is facing perhaps his toughest moment as he approaches a decade in rule, with North Korea’s coronavirus lockdown unleashing further shock on an economy devastated by decades of mismanagement and crippling U.S.-led sanctions over his nuclear weapons program.
The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said Kim made the comments during an opening speech at a meeting of the Workers’ Party’s cell secretaries on Tuesday.
“Improving the people’s living standards ... even in the worst-ever situation in which we have to overcome unprecedentedly numerous challenges depends on the role played by the cells, the grassroots organizations of the party,” Kim said.
He urged members to carry out the decisions made at a party congress in January, when he vowed to bolster his nuclear deterrent in face of U.S. pressure and announced a new five-year national development plan. The congress came months after Kim during another political conference showed unusual candor by acknowledging that his plans to improve the economy weren’t succeeding.
During Tuesday’s speech, Kim also criticized the party’s grassroots units for unspecified “shortcomings” that should be immediately corrected to ensure the “healthy and sustainable” development of the party.
Party cells, which consist of five to 30 members, are the smallest units of party authority that oversee the works and lives at factories and other places. The network is an important tool for Workers’ Party to perpetuate its power. The previous conference of cell secretaries was held in 2017.
The economic setbacks have left Kim with nothing to show for his ambitious diplomacy with former President Donald Trump, which collapsed over disagreements in lifting sanctions for the North’s denuclearization steps.
The North has so far rejected the Biden administration’s overture for talks, saying that Washington must discard its “hostile” policies first, and dialed up pressure by resuming tests of ballistic missiles last month after a yearlong pause.
Kim says North Korea facing its 'worst-ever situation'
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has acknowledged his country was facing the “worst-ever situation” as he addressed thousands of grassroots members of his ruling party during a major political conference in Pyongyang. Experts say Kim is facing perhaps his toughest moment as he approaches a...
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US military cites rising risk of Chinese move against Taiwan
The American military is warning that China is probably accelerating its timetable for retaking Taiwan, the island democracy that's widely seen as the most likely trigger for a potentially catastrophic U.S.-China war
By ROBERT BURNS AP National Security Writer
7 April 2021, 04:36
WASHINGTON -- The American military is warning that China is probably accelerating its timetable for capturing control of Taiwan, the island democracy that has been the chief source of tension between Washington and Beijing for decades and is widely seen as the most likely trigger for a potentially catastrophic U.S.-China war.
The worry about Taiwan comes as China wields new strength from years of military buildup. It has become more aggressive with Taiwan and more assertive in sovereignty disputes in the South China Sea. Beijing also has become more confrontational with Washington; senior Chinese officials traded sharp and unusually public barbs with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in talks in Alaska last month.
A military move against Taiwan, however, would be a test of U.S. support for the island that Beijing views as a breakaway province. For the Biden administration, it could present the choice of abandoning a friendly, democratic entity or risking what could become an all-out war over a cause that is not on the radar of most Americans. The United States has long pledged to help Taiwan defend itself, but it has deliberately left unclear how far it would go in response to a Chinese attack.
This accumulation of concerns meshes with the administration’s view that China is a frontline challenge for the United States and that more must be done soon — militarily, diplomatically and by other means — to deter Beijing as it seeks to supplant the United States as the predominant power in Asia. Some American military leaders see Taiwan as potentially the most immediate flashpoint.
“We have indications that the risks are actually going up," Adm. Philip Davidson, the most senior U.S. military commander in the Asia-Pacific region, told a Senate panel last month, referring to a Chinese military move on Taiwan.
“The threat is manifest during this decade — in fact, in the next six years,” Davidson said.
Days later, Davidson's expected successor, Adm. John Aquilino, declined to back up the six-year timeframe but told senators at his confirmation hearing: "My opinion is, this problem is much closer to us than most think.”
Biden administration officials have spoken less pointedly but stress the intention to deepen ties with Taiwan, eliciting warnings from Beijing against outsider interference in what it considers a domestic matter.
On Wednesday, Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said the military threat against his country is increasing, and while he said it was not yet “particularly alarming,” the Chinese military in the last couple of years has been conducting what he called “real combat-type” exercises closer to the island.
“We are willing to defend ourselves, that’s without any question,” Wu told reporters. “We will fight a war if we need to fight a war, and if we need to defend ourselves to the very last day, then we will defend ourselves to the very last day.“
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin calls China the “pacing threat” for the United States, and the military services are adjusting accordingly. The Marine Corps, for example, is reshaping itself with China and Russia in mind after two decades of ground-focused combat against extremists in the Middle East.
Hardly an aspect of China's military modernization has failed to rile the U.S. military. Adm. Charles Richard, who as head of U.S. Strategic Command is responsible for U.S. nuclear forces, wrote in a recent essay that China is on track to be a “strategic peer” of the United States. He said China's nuclear weapons stockpile is expected to double “if not triple or quadruple" in the next 10 years, although that goes beyond the Pentagon's official view that the stockpile will “at least double” in that period.
Taiwan, however, is seen as the most pressing problem.
U.S. officials have noted People’s Liberation Army actions that seem designed to rattle Taiwan. For example, Chinese aerial incursions, including flying around the island, are a near-daily occurrence, serving to advertise the threat, wear down Taiwanese pilots and aircraft and learn more about Taiwan’s capabilities.
Chinese officials have scoffed at Davidson's Taiwan comments. A Ministry of Defense spokesman, Col. Ren Guoqiang, urged Washington to “abandon zero-peace thinking” and do more to build mutual trust and stability. He said that “attempts by outside forces to use Taiwan to seek to restrain China, or the use by Taiwan independence forces to use military means to achieve independence, are all dead ends.”
The implications of a Chinese military move against Taiwan and its 23 million people are so profound and potentially grave that Beijing and Washington have long managed a fragile middle ground — Taiwanese political autonomy that precludes control by Beijing but stops short of formal independence.
Predictions of when China might decide to try to compel Taiwan to reunite with the mainland have long varied, and there is no uniform view in the United States. Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, said last week he doubts Chinese leaders are ready to force the issue.
“I don’t think it’s coming soon,” he said.
The Trump administration made a series of moves to demonstrate a stronger commitment to Taiwan, including sending a Cabinet member to Taipei last year, making him the highest-level U.S. official to visit the island since formal diplomatic relations were severed in 1979 in deference to China. The Biden administration says it wants to cooperate with China where possible but has voiced its objections to a wide range of Chinese actions.
Last week, the U.S. ambassador to the Pacific island nation of Palau, John Hennessey-Niland, became the first serving U.S. ambassador to visit Taiwan since Washington cut ties with Taipei in favor of Beijing.
China is a frequent target of criticism in Congress. Concerns about countering its growing military might are reflected in passage of the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, funded at $2.2 billion for 2021. Davidson wants it to support, among other initiatives, establishing a better air defense system to protect the U.S. territory of Guam from Chinese missiles and preserving U.S. military dominance in the region.
Rep. Adam Smith, a Washington Democrat and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is skeptical of the military's fixation on dominance.
“Given the way the world works now, having one country be dominant is just hopelessly unrealistic,” he said in a recent online forum sponsored by Meridian, a nonpartisan diplomacy center. He said the U.S. military can maintain sufficient strength, in partnership with allies, to send the message: “China, don't invade Taiwan because the price you're going to pay for that isn't worth it.”
———
Associated Press writer Ken Moritsugu in Beijing, AP writer Huizhong Wu in Taipei, Taiwan, and AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
US military cites rising risk of Chinese move against Taiwan - ABC News (go.com)
The American military is warning that China is probably accelerating its timetable for retaking Taiwan, the island democracy that's widely seen as the most likely trigger for a potentially catastrophic U.S.-China war
By ROBERT BURNS AP National Security Writer
7 April 2021, 04:36
WASHINGTON -- The American military is warning that China is probably accelerating its timetable for capturing control of Taiwan, the island democracy that has been the chief source of tension between Washington and Beijing for decades and is widely seen as the most likely trigger for a potentially catastrophic U.S.-China war.
The worry about Taiwan comes as China wields new strength from years of military buildup. It has become more aggressive with Taiwan and more assertive in sovereignty disputes in the South China Sea. Beijing also has become more confrontational with Washington; senior Chinese officials traded sharp and unusually public barbs with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in talks in Alaska last month.
A military move against Taiwan, however, would be a test of U.S. support for the island that Beijing views as a breakaway province. For the Biden administration, it could present the choice of abandoning a friendly, democratic entity or risking what could become an all-out war over a cause that is not on the radar of most Americans. The United States has long pledged to help Taiwan defend itself, but it has deliberately left unclear how far it would go in response to a Chinese attack.
This accumulation of concerns meshes with the administration’s view that China is a frontline challenge for the United States and that more must be done soon — militarily, diplomatically and by other means — to deter Beijing as it seeks to supplant the United States as the predominant power in Asia. Some American military leaders see Taiwan as potentially the most immediate flashpoint.
“We have indications that the risks are actually going up," Adm. Philip Davidson, the most senior U.S. military commander in the Asia-Pacific region, told a Senate panel last month, referring to a Chinese military move on Taiwan.
“The threat is manifest during this decade — in fact, in the next six years,” Davidson said.
Days later, Davidson's expected successor, Adm. John Aquilino, declined to back up the six-year timeframe but told senators at his confirmation hearing: "My opinion is, this problem is much closer to us than most think.”
Biden administration officials have spoken less pointedly but stress the intention to deepen ties with Taiwan, eliciting warnings from Beijing against outsider interference in what it considers a domestic matter.
On Wednesday, Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said the military threat against his country is increasing, and while he said it was not yet “particularly alarming,” the Chinese military in the last couple of years has been conducting what he called “real combat-type” exercises closer to the island.
“We are willing to defend ourselves, that’s without any question,” Wu told reporters. “We will fight a war if we need to fight a war, and if we need to defend ourselves to the very last day, then we will defend ourselves to the very last day.“
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin calls China the “pacing threat” for the United States, and the military services are adjusting accordingly. The Marine Corps, for example, is reshaping itself with China and Russia in mind after two decades of ground-focused combat against extremists in the Middle East.
Hardly an aspect of China's military modernization has failed to rile the U.S. military. Adm. Charles Richard, who as head of U.S. Strategic Command is responsible for U.S. nuclear forces, wrote in a recent essay that China is on track to be a “strategic peer” of the United States. He said China's nuclear weapons stockpile is expected to double “if not triple or quadruple" in the next 10 years, although that goes beyond the Pentagon's official view that the stockpile will “at least double” in that period.
Taiwan, however, is seen as the most pressing problem.
U.S. officials have noted People’s Liberation Army actions that seem designed to rattle Taiwan. For example, Chinese aerial incursions, including flying around the island, are a near-daily occurrence, serving to advertise the threat, wear down Taiwanese pilots and aircraft and learn more about Taiwan’s capabilities.
Chinese officials have scoffed at Davidson's Taiwan comments. A Ministry of Defense spokesman, Col. Ren Guoqiang, urged Washington to “abandon zero-peace thinking” and do more to build mutual trust and stability. He said that “attempts by outside forces to use Taiwan to seek to restrain China, or the use by Taiwan independence forces to use military means to achieve independence, are all dead ends.”
The implications of a Chinese military move against Taiwan and its 23 million people are so profound and potentially grave that Beijing and Washington have long managed a fragile middle ground — Taiwanese political autonomy that precludes control by Beijing but stops short of formal independence.
Predictions of when China might decide to try to compel Taiwan to reunite with the mainland have long varied, and there is no uniform view in the United States. Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, said last week he doubts Chinese leaders are ready to force the issue.
“I don’t think it’s coming soon,” he said.
The Trump administration made a series of moves to demonstrate a stronger commitment to Taiwan, including sending a Cabinet member to Taipei last year, making him the highest-level U.S. official to visit the island since formal diplomatic relations were severed in 1979 in deference to China. The Biden administration says it wants to cooperate with China where possible but has voiced its objections to a wide range of Chinese actions.
Last week, the U.S. ambassador to the Pacific island nation of Palau, John Hennessey-Niland, became the first serving U.S. ambassador to visit Taiwan since Washington cut ties with Taipei in favor of Beijing.
China is a frequent target of criticism in Congress. Concerns about countering its growing military might are reflected in passage of the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, funded at $2.2 billion for 2021. Davidson wants it to support, among other initiatives, establishing a better air defense system to protect the U.S. territory of Guam from Chinese missiles and preserving U.S. military dominance in the region.
Rep. Adam Smith, a Washington Democrat and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is skeptical of the military's fixation on dominance.
“Given the way the world works now, having one country be dominant is just hopelessly unrealistic,” he said in a recent online forum sponsored by Meridian, a nonpartisan diplomacy center. He said the U.S. military can maintain sufficient strength, in partnership with allies, to send the message: “China, don't invade Taiwan because the price you're going to pay for that isn't worth it.”
———
Associated Press writer Ken Moritsugu in Beijing, AP writer Huizhong Wu in Taipei, Taiwan, and AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
US military cites rising risk of Chinese move against Taiwan - ABC News (go.com)
northern watch
TB Fanatic
northern watch
TB Fanatic
Chinese Prof Says CCP “Accelerating Plans” To Replace American Dollar.
Catherine Salgado
April 7 2021
The National Pulse
Di Dongsheng, associate dean of the School of International Studies at Renmin University in Beijing, said recently that China is trying to use pandemic-caused economic shifts to challenge and replace the “dominance” of the US dollar in “global markets and trade,” in a February 4 video posted on Chinese social media.
“The currency that fixes the price will eventually be the renminbi (yuan),” stated Di. Last April, Di declared the Covid-19 pandemic an opportunity “unseen in 100 years,” an opportunity to make “all seven billion people in the world pay for [China].”
Di, who has “contributed to China’s foreign economic policy,” has regularly been a part of “policy discussions and overseas visits with various bodies of the Chinese regime, such as the foreign ministry.” Last year a video of his explicitly admitted the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influences the US through “old friends” on Wall Street.
Di described why China wants to supersede the US dollar, the Epoch Times reports: “If the Chinese yuan (or renminbi) achieves global hegemony, Beijing will be in a position to print more money to dilute the value of yuan held by the world’s population—thus transferring wealth to China.”
Western low-interest rate policies (meant to counteract the pandemic’s economic damage) have benefitted China, as foreign investors have been buying up “China’s higher-yield bonds, pumping $135 billion into Chinese bonds in the 12 months ended Sept. 30, 2020.” Investors do “naturally divert funds away from low-interest rate economies” (the US currently) to high-interest rate economies (China). But the investor must sell dollars and buy yuans to purchase Chinese bonds.
Di advised in April 2020 that China ought to attract more foreign investors during the pandemic, using yuan to support foreign countries and companies suffering from the pandemic’s economic effects. He said “regulatory changes” could increase foreign investment too.
He also advised the CCP issue loans to developing countries so as to collect “high-interest payments to offset the cost of relatively high-interest rates China pays on its bonds.”
He even suggested China could sell its foreign exchange reserves in order to make such loans. Di said last April, “(Our laws) should make other countries believe that China won’t confiscate other countries’ assets; make them believe that they can buy whatever they want to buy if they transfer their money to China; make them believe that they can withdraw their money whenever they want.”
Di did admit possible problems for China from this policy, saying the potential issue with a “number of creditors is that it could push the yuan to strengthen too much and impair the regime’s ability to control the exchange rate… creditors will dial-up scrutiny of Chinese financial markets, leaving less room for the regime to manipulate it.” (China usually uses an artificially weak currency to “spur exports”.)
The CCP has been seeking to replace the US dollar as global reserve currency for some time: “In 2009, then-governor of the regime’s central bank, Zhou Xiaochuan, called for the U.S. dollar to be replaced with an international reserve currency so the yuan could exert more influence,” the Epoch Times says, adding, “According to the data compiled by the International Monetary Institute of Renmin University, the Chinese yuan’s share of global payments increased from 0.02 percent in 2011 to over three percent in 2020.”
The 2019 Foreign Investment Law (to protect foreign investors’ rights) caused a “surge of foreign investment” into China in 2020. The yuan still has some significant catching up to do to the US dollar, however, if the CCP is to achieve its goal.
Chinese Prof Says CCP “Accelerating Plans” to Replace American Dollar. - The National Pulse
Catherine Salgado
April 7 2021
The National Pulse
Di Dongsheng, associate dean of the School of International Studies at Renmin University in Beijing, said recently that China is trying to use pandemic-caused economic shifts to challenge and replace the “dominance” of the US dollar in “global markets and trade,” in a February 4 video posted on Chinese social media.
“The currency that fixes the price will eventually be the renminbi (yuan),” stated Di. Last April, Di declared the Covid-19 pandemic an opportunity “unseen in 100 years,” an opportunity to make “all seven billion people in the world pay for [China].”
Di, who has “contributed to China’s foreign economic policy,” has regularly been a part of “policy discussions and overseas visits with various bodies of the Chinese regime, such as the foreign ministry.” Last year a video of his explicitly admitted the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influences the US through “old friends” on Wall Street.
Di described why China wants to supersede the US dollar, the Epoch Times reports: “If the Chinese yuan (or renminbi) achieves global hegemony, Beijing will be in a position to print more money to dilute the value of yuan held by the world’s population—thus transferring wealth to China.”
Western low-interest rate policies (meant to counteract the pandemic’s economic damage) have benefitted China, as foreign investors have been buying up “China’s higher-yield bonds, pumping $135 billion into Chinese bonds in the 12 months ended Sept. 30, 2020.” Investors do “naturally divert funds away from low-interest rate economies” (the US currently) to high-interest rate economies (China). But the investor must sell dollars and buy yuans to purchase Chinese bonds.
Di advised in April 2020 that China ought to attract more foreign investors during the pandemic, using yuan to support foreign countries and companies suffering from the pandemic’s economic effects. He said “regulatory changes” could increase foreign investment too.
He also advised the CCP issue loans to developing countries so as to collect “high-interest payments to offset the cost of relatively high-interest rates China pays on its bonds.”
He even suggested China could sell its foreign exchange reserves in order to make such loans. Di said last April, “(Our laws) should make other countries believe that China won’t confiscate other countries’ assets; make them believe that they can buy whatever they want to buy if they transfer their money to China; make them believe that they can withdraw their money whenever they want.”
Di did admit possible problems for China from this policy, saying the potential issue with a “number of creditors is that it could push the yuan to strengthen too much and impair the regime’s ability to control the exchange rate… creditors will dial-up scrutiny of Chinese financial markets, leaving less room for the regime to manipulate it.” (China usually uses an artificially weak currency to “spur exports”.)
The CCP has been seeking to replace the US dollar as global reserve currency for some time: “In 2009, then-governor of the regime’s central bank, Zhou Xiaochuan, called for the U.S. dollar to be replaced with an international reserve currency so the yuan could exert more influence,” the Epoch Times says, adding, “According to the data compiled by the International Monetary Institute of Renmin University, the Chinese yuan’s share of global payments increased from 0.02 percent in 2011 to over three percent in 2020.”
The 2019 Foreign Investment Law (to protect foreign investors’ rights) caused a “surge of foreign investment” into China in 2020. The yuan still has some significant catching up to do to the US dollar, however, if the CCP is to achieve its goal.
Chinese Prof Says CCP “Accelerating Plans” to Replace American Dollar. - The National Pulse
Last edited:
jward
passin' thru
theepochtimes.com
CCP Adviser Outlines Plan to Control South China Sea, Challenge US Dominance in Indo-Pacific
By Frank Fang
9-12 minutes
The Chinese regime aims to seize all of the South China Sea to eventually control parts of the wider Indo-Pacific and challenge U.S. dominance in the region, according to a well-known Chinese professor.
The plans illustrated by the professor, who also advises the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), stand in stark contrast with the CCP’s public declarations on its behavior in the waterway.
The Chinese regime has continued to lay claims to almost all of the South China Sea, despite a 2016 international tribunal ruling that rejected Beijing’s territorial claims. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam all have competing claims over various atolls, islands, and reefs in the strategic waterway that is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.
The communist regime has consistently portrayed itself as a non-aggressor in the territorial dispute. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in a September statement, said the regime “follows a policy of pursuing amity and friendship with its neighbors” with regards to the South China Sea.
But the CCP is in fact adopting a creeping strategy to take control of the entire waterway; once this is achieved it can challenge the U.S. presence in the Indian Ocean and invade Taiwan, Jin Canrong, a professor and associate dean of the School of International Studies at Beijing’s Renmin University of China, said in a July 2016 speech recently uncovered by The Epoch Times. Jin is also a well-known adviser to the CCP.
CCP’s Tactics
Jin boasted about the regime’s success in snatching control of Mischief Reef and Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines in 1995 and 2012 respectively.
“After we occupied [Mischief Reef], we drove away the Philippines’ fishermen. So the Filipinos were very upset,” Jin said. “Their fishermen had been there fishing for thousands of years.”
In 1995, Beijing began to occupy Mischief Reef, located within the Philippines’ 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ), by building huts that it claimed were shelters for Chinese fishermen. The construction effort angered Manila but Washington did not take a side at the time.
“[The U.S.] takes no position on the legal merits of the competing claims to sovereignty over the various islands, reefs, atolls, and cays in the South China Sea,” the U.S. State Department stated in 1995.
The regime has since built a large artificial island on the reef. In February, U.S.-based tech firm Simularity released satellite images showing that China was continuing to carry out new construction operations on the artificial island.
In April 2012, the spotting of eight Chinese fishing vessels anchored at Scarborough Shoal, a reef 120 nautical miles from the main Philippine island of Luzon, precipitated a naval standoff between the Philippines and China. The United States brokered a deal to defuse tensions, but Beijing later reneged on the deal and has blocked Filipino fishermen from fishing in the area.
Jin highlighted the effectiveness of using Chinese fishing boats to advance the CCP’s ambitions in the region. Even if the Philippines decided to hand over to the United States all of its territory in the South China Sea, U.S. forces wouldn’t be able to defend them from China, he said. The Philippines currently occupies at least eight reefs, shoals, and islands, in the Spratly archipelago.
“If the United States stations an aircraft carrier there, China can simply send 2,000 fishing boats and surround the carrier. The carrier doesn’t dare to fire at the fishing boats,” Jin said.
An aerial view of uninhabited island of Spratlys in the disputed South China Sea, on April 21, 2017. (Erik De Castro/Reuters)
Some Chinese fishermen are known to work with either the Chinese military or the coast guard in “gray-zone operations,” according to a recent article in Military Review, a publication of the U.S. Army. “Gray-zone” warfare refers to using nontraditional methods and actors to achieve the goals of war, but without triggering an armed conflict. If accused of aiding the Chinese military, these fishermen could hide behind plausible deniability due to their “dual identity as military personnel and civilian mariners,” the article states.
The article pointed to the Scarborough Shoal standoff as one of several incidents when China used its militia to assert maritime claims in the South China Sea.
In one incident in 2009, Chinese vessels including fishing trawlers harassed U.S. ocean surveillance ship USNS Impeccable in the South China Sea.
Last week, State Department spokesperson Ned Price took to Twitter, criticizing China after more than 200 Chinese fishing vessels, believed to be manned by maritime militia, moored at Whitsun Reef, located within Manila’s EEZ.
“We call on Beijing to stop using its maritime militia to intimidate and provoke others, which undermines peace and security,” Price wrote.
Philippine’s Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said on April 4 the continued presence of the Chinese vessels showed Beijing’s intent to occupy further areas of the South China Sea.
String of Pearls
Seizing the South China Sea is also critical to the CCP’s plan to challenge the United States’ influence in the Indo-Pacific region, Jin said.
“If the United States loses control of the Indian Ocean, it would lose its influence in the Middle East. Then the United States would lose its number-one standing in the world,” he said.
“We are working on a string of pearls strategy in the northern Indian Ocean, with bases stretching from Thailand, Burma, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan. If we complete this string strategy and own the South China Sea, we can wipe out the U.S. naval base at Diego Garcia in minutes.”
China’s “string of pearls” is a concept first coined in a 2005 Pentagon report used to describe how China intends to project its influence in the Indian Ocean by leveraging a network of Chinese military and commercial sites in South Asian countries. While CCP officials have publicly denied that Beijing was pursuing such a strategy in the Indian Ocean, the Chinese regime has over the years taken control of several seaports in the Indian Ocean in the form of a lease.
These ports include: Pakistan’s Gwadar port on a 40-year lease from 2015; Burma’s Kyaukpyu Port on a 50-year lease from 2015; Djibouti’s Obock Port on a 10-year lease beginning from 2016; Maldives’ Feydhoo Finolhu Port on a 50-year lease from 2017; and Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port on a 99-year lease from 2017, according to a 2018 report by Sweden-based Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
The U.S. military currently has a navy support facility at Diego Garcia, an island of the Chagos Archipelago in the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). The naval base served a critical role in the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the first Gulf war.
Currently, Mauritius, a former British colony, and the UK government are locked in a territorial dispute over the BIOT. In June last year, British politician Daniel Kawczynski wrote an article for the British newspaper the Daily Express, warning that if the UK were to lose the BIOT, it would be “a serious coup for Beijing.”
“If the BIOT is ceded to Mauritius, I have little doubt it will not be long before the naval facilities at Diego Garcia join Xi Jinping’s ‘string of pearls’—and become an anchor for a very different world order,” Kawczynski wrote.
Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen speaks in front of a domestically-manufactured F-CK-1 indigenous defense fighter jet during her visit to Penghu Air Force Base, Taiwan, on Sept. 20, 2020. (Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images) Seizing Taiwan
Having total control of the South China Sea would just be the first step, according to Jin. With the United States out of the picture in the area, he said the next target would be Taiwan.
At that time, Jin said that China’s large military presence in the region alone could force Taiwan to surrender without shedding blood.
“If Taiwan surrenders, the United States does not have any reason to interfere,” Jin explained.
The CCP sees Taiwan as a renegade province that must be united with the mainland, even though the communist regime has never ruled the island. The Republic of China, Taiwan’s official name, is a de facto independent entity with its own democratically-elected officials, military, constitution, and currency.
The United States sees Taiwan as a key ally in the Indo-Pacific and has been the island’s main military supplier. Last month, Adm. Philip Davidson, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, warned during a Senate hearing that the Chinese regime could invade Taiwan in the “next six years.”
With China having the South China Sea and Taiwan in its possession, Jin said Washington would see Beijing as an “equal partner.”
“As equal partners, China and the United States would be able to cooperate on many issues … this would be good for the entire world,” Jin added.
An overwhelming majority of Taiwanese people have rejected unification with the mainland.
According to a March telephone poll of 1,078 locals conducted by Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, a government agency responsible for cross-strait issues, only 2.3 percent of respondents said they wanted to unite with the mainland as soon as possible, while 5.3 percent said they wanted to maintain the status quo and reunite with the mainland at a later date.
Meanwhile, 6.5 percent wanted Taiwan to formally declare independence as soon as possible; 25.1 percent wanted Taiwan to maintain the current status quo and move toward an independent nation later; and 27.3 percent wanted Taiwan to maintain the current status quo forever.
Over 28 percent said that they wanted to maintain the current status quo and then make a decision on unification or independence later, while the remaining 5.4 percent did not have an opinion.
Follow Frank on Twitter: @HwaiDer
www.theepochtimes.com
CCP Adviser Outlines Plan to Control South China Sea, Challenge US Dominance in Indo-Pacific
By Frank Fang
9-12 minutes
The Chinese regime aims to seize all of the South China Sea to eventually control parts of the wider Indo-Pacific and challenge U.S. dominance in the region, according to a well-known Chinese professor.
The plans illustrated by the professor, who also advises the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), stand in stark contrast with the CCP’s public declarations on its behavior in the waterway.
The Chinese regime has continued to lay claims to almost all of the South China Sea, despite a 2016 international tribunal ruling that rejected Beijing’s territorial claims. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam all have competing claims over various atolls, islands, and reefs in the strategic waterway that is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.
The communist regime has consistently portrayed itself as a non-aggressor in the territorial dispute. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in a September statement, said the regime “follows a policy of pursuing amity and friendship with its neighbors” with regards to the South China Sea.
But the CCP is in fact adopting a creeping strategy to take control of the entire waterway; once this is achieved it can challenge the U.S. presence in the Indian Ocean and invade Taiwan, Jin Canrong, a professor and associate dean of the School of International Studies at Beijing’s Renmin University of China, said in a July 2016 speech recently uncovered by The Epoch Times. Jin is also a well-known adviser to the CCP.
CCP’s Tactics
Jin boasted about the regime’s success in snatching control of Mischief Reef and Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines in 1995 and 2012 respectively.
“After we occupied [Mischief Reef], we drove away the Philippines’ fishermen. So the Filipinos were very upset,” Jin said. “Their fishermen had been there fishing for thousands of years.”
In 1995, Beijing began to occupy Mischief Reef, located within the Philippines’ 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ), by building huts that it claimed were shelters for Chinese fishermen. The construction effort angered Manila but Washington did not take a side at the time.
“[The U.S.] takes no position on the legal merits of the competing claims to sovereignty over the various islands, reefs, atolls, and cays in the South China Sea,” the U.S. State Department stated in 1995.
The regime has since built a large artificial island on the reef. In February, U.S.-based tech firm Simularity released satellite images showing that China was continuing to carry out new construction operations on the artificial island.
In April 2012, the spotting of eight Chinese fishing vessels anchored at Scarborough Shoal, a reef 120 nautical miles from the main Philippine island of Luzon, precipitated a naval standoff between the Philippines and China. The United States brokered a deal to defuse tensions, but Beijing later reneged on the deal and has blocked Filipino fishermen from fishing in the area.
Jin highlighted the effectiveness of using Chinese fishing boats to advance the CCP’s ambitions in the region. Even if the Philippines decided to hand over to the United States all of its territory in the South China Sea, U.S. forces wouldn’t be able to defend them from China, he said. The Philippines currently occupies at least eight reefs, shoals, and islands, in the Spratly archipelago.
“If the United States stations an aircraft carrier there, China can simply send 2,000 fishing boats and surround the carrier. The carrier doesn’t dare to fire at the fishing boats,” Jin said.
An aerial view of uninhabited island of Spratlys in the disputed South China Sea, on April 21, 2017. (Erik De Castro/Reuters)Some Chinese fishermen are known to work with either the Chinese military or the coast guard in “gray-zone operations,” according to a recent article in Military Review, a publication of the U.S. Army. “Gray-zone” warfare refers to using nontraditional methods and actors to achieve the goals of war, but without triggering an armed conflict. If accused of aiding the Chinese military, these fishermen could hide behind plausible deniability due to their “dual identity as military personnel and civilian mariners,” the article states.
The article pointed to the Scarborough Shoal standoff as one of several incidents when China used its militia to assert maritime claims in the South China Sea.
In one incident in 2009, Chinese vessels including fishing trawlers harassed U.S. ocean surveillance ship USNS Impeccable in the South China Sea.
Last week, State Department spokesperson Ned Price took to Twitter, criticizing China after more than 200 Chinese fishing vessels, believed to be manned by maritime militia, moored at Whitsun Reef, located within Manila’s EEZ.
“We call on Beijing to stop using its maritime militia to intimidate and provoke others, which undermines peace and security,” Price wrote.
Philippine’s Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said on April 4 the continued presence of the Chinese vessels showed Beijing’s intent to occupy further areas of the South China Sea.
String of Pearls
Seizing the South China Sea is also critical to the CCP’s plan to challenge the United States’ influence in the Indo-Pacific region, Jin said.
“If the United States loses control of the Indian Ocean, it would lose its influence in the Middle East. Then the United States would lose its number-one standing in the world,” he said.
“We are working on a string of pearls strategy in the northern Indian Ocean, with bases stretching from Thailand, Burma, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan. If we complete this string strategy and own the South China Sea, we can wipe out the U.S. naval base at Diego Garcia in minutes.”
China’s “string of pearls” is a concept first coined in a 2005 Pentagon report used to describe how China intends to project its influence in the Indian Ocean by leveraging a network of Chinese military and commercial sites in South Asian countries. While CCP officials have publicly denied that Beijing was pursuing such a strategy in the Indian Ocean, the Chinese regime has over the years taken control of several seaports in the Indian Ocean in the form of a lease.
These ports include: Pakistan’s Gwadar port on a 40-year lease from 2015; Burma’s Kyaukpyu Port on a 50-year lease from 2015; Djibouti’s Obock Port on a 10-year lease beginning from 2016; Maldives’ Feydhoo Finolhu Port on a 50-year lease from 2017; and Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port on a 99-year lease from 2017, according to a 2018 report by Sweden-based Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
The U.S. military currently has a navy support facility at Diego Garcia, an island of the Chagos Archipelago in the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). The naval base served a critical role in the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the first Gulf war.
Currently, Mauritius, a former British colony, and the UK government are locked in a territorial dispute over the BIOT. In June last year, British politician Daniel Kawczynski wrote an article for the British newspaper the Daily Express, warning that if the UK were to lose the BIOT, it would be “a serious coup for Beijing.”
“If the BIOT is ceded to Mauritius, I have little doubt it will not be long before the naval facilities at Diego Garcia join Xi Jinping’s ‘string of pearls’—and become an anchor for a very different world order,” Kawczynski wrote.
Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen speaks in front of a domestically-manufactured F-CK-1 indigenous defense fighter jet during her visit to Penghu Air Force Base, Taiwan, on Sept. 20, 2020. (Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images) Seizing TaiwanHaving total control of the South China Sea would just be the first step, according to Jin. With the United States out of the picture in the area, he said the next target would be Taiwan.
At that time, Jin said that China’s large military presence in the region alone could force Taiwan to surrender without shedding blood.
“If Taiwan surrenders, the United States does not have any reason to interfere,” Jin explained.
The CCP sees Taiwan as a renegade province that must be united with the mainland, even though the communist regime has never ruled the island. The Republic of China, Taiwan’s official name, is a de facto independent entity with its own democratically-elected officials, military, constitution, and currency.
The United States sees Taiwan as a key ally in the Indo-Pacific and has been the island’s main military supplier. Last month, Adm. Philip Davidson, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, warned during a Senate hearing that the Chinese regime could invade Taiwan in the “next six years.”
With China having the South China Sea and Taiwan in its possession, Jin said Washington would see Beijing as an “equal partner.”
“As equal partners, China and the United States would be able to cooperate on many issues … this would be good for the entire world,” Jin added.
An overwhelming majority of Taiwanese people have rejected unification with the mainland.
According to a March telephone poll of 1,078 locals conducted by Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, a government agency responsible for cross-strait issues, only 2.3 percent of respondents said they wanted to unite with the mainland as soon as possible, while 5.3 percent said they wanted to maintain the status quo and reunite with the mainland at a later date.
Meanwhile, 6.5 percent wanted Taiwan to formally declare independence as soon as possible; 25.1 percent wanted Taiwan to maintain the current status quo and move toward an independent nation later; and 27.3 percent wanted Taiwan to maintain the current status quo forever.
Over 28 percent said that they wanted to maintain the current status quo and then make a decision on unification or independence later, while the remaining 5.4 percent did not have an opinion.
Follow Frank on Twitter: @HwaiDer
CCP Adviser Outlines Plan to Control South China Sea, Challenge US Dominance in Indo-Pacific
The Chinese regime aims to seize all of the South China Sea to eventually control parts of the wider Indo-Pacific and challenge U.S. dominance in the region, according to a well-known Chinese professor...
www.theepochtimes.com
jward
passin' thru
AFP News Agency
@AFP
30m
US warns China against what the Philippines and Taiwan see as increasingly aggressive moves, reminding Beijing of Washington's obligations to its partners http://u.afp.com/UMXG
View: https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1379955340804907009?s=20
@AFP
30m
US warns China against what the Philippines and Taiwan see as increasingly aggressive moves, reminding Beijing of Washington's obligations to its partners http://u.afp.com/UMXG
View: https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1379955340804907009?s=20
jward
passin' thru
Indo-Pacific News - Watching the CCP-China Threat
@IndoPac_Info
5m
#China’s Unrestricted War on #India China has pressured India via cyberattacks, reengineering of river flows & nibbling away at the Himalayas. It seeks to employ all means short of open war to curtail Indian ambitions and strike at Indian interests.
View: https://twitter.com/IndoPac_Info/status/1380027935956946949?s=20
jward
passin' thru
NK NEWS
@nknewsorg
31m
North Korea's ballistic missile test sparked widespread criticism on Chinese social media not seen for quite some time. Beijing's foreign ministry also gave a subdued response, suggesting that relations with the DPRK could worsen with more provocations.
View: https://twitter.com/nknewsorg/status/1380022668112621569?s=20
@nknewsorg
31m
North Korea's ballistic missile test sparked widespread criticism on Chinese social media not seen for quite some time. Beijing's foreign ministry also gave a subdued response, suggesting that relations with the DPRK could worsen with more provocations.
View: https://twitter.com/nknewsorg/status/1380022668112621569?s=20
jward
passin' thru
foreignpolicy.com
The U.S.-China Rivalry Is Ideological, Not Just Geopolitical
Andrei Lungu
12-16 minutes
Whether we call it great-power competition or a new Cold War, there’s no denying the United States and China are engaged in an intense long-term rivalry. But many observers, especially foreign-policy generalists and realists, seem to believe that the U.S.-China conflict is driven by geopolitics, not ideology.
They argue that China has embraced capitalism, doesn’t export its ideology, and doesn’t pose an existential threat to liberal democracy and the Western way of life in the way the Soviet Union once did. In this interpretation, sometimes bringing up Thucydides, the problem is simply the rise of China’s power, which inevitably clashes with the established superpower, the United States, regardless of their political systems. But in reality, ideology has always played a massive role in driving the conflict—and many tensions would have been avoided if the West dealt with a democratic China.
It always takes two to tango. Even if the United States somehow chose to ignore this ideological dimension, many in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership wouldn’t, as they already see this conflict through an ideological lens. That framing is already very clear in Beijing’s language—and its actions. In recent countersanctions against the European Union, Beijing has targeted not just members of European Parliament and member nations’ parliaments, researchers, and think tanks, but even committees of the European Parliament and the European Council. These measures came down even though EU leaders have been keen to sign an investment agreement with China, which is now in doubt.
Think about what a real geopolitical conflict looks like: China and India. Chinese leaders are not afraid that India wants to promote democracy and threaten the regime’s stability. In India, China could go democratic tomorrow and it wouldn’t matter as long as the active border dispute remains, China is Pakistan’s best friend, and Chinese military vessels remain increasingly active in the Indian Ocean. Equally, China doesn’t really care what system New Delhi uses.
In contrast, ideological fears have always underpinned Beijing and Washington’s views of each other. The U.S.-PRC rapprochement that began in 1971 finally led to the normalization of diplomatic relations in 1979, followed by ever-stronger economic ties. But previous decades of confrontation could not be easily undone. Among conservatives in the Chinese leadership, former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s decision to strengthen relations with the United States, like the economic reforms of the 1980s, was accepted as necessary but never fully embraced. The economic reforms themselves were seen by party leadership as a necessary tool to develop China and one day make communism possible, just as Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin implemented the New Economic Policy soon after taking power. They weren’t supposed to be a shift to capitalism and most certainly not to democracy.
And then came the Tiananmen Square massacre. Chinese conservatives and hard-liners saw it as a ploy to democratize and destabilize China. Even Deng said “the causes of this incident have to do with the global context. The Western world, especially the United States, has thrown its entire propaganda machine into agitation work and has given a lot of encouragement and assistance to the so-called democrats or opposition in China—people who in fact are the scum of the Chinese nation. This is the root of the chaotic situation we face today.” Democracy, the hard-liners argued, was a Western plot to bring chaos to China. The fall of the Soviet Union and the misery of the Russian 1990s only confirmed those feelings.
Suddenly, the PRC was the last great bastion of communism and, to Beijing, the main target of the United States and the capitalist world. Little did it matter that Washington tried to preserve relations. In fact, to party hard-liners, U.S. engagement with China was a strategy to subvert the CCP through “peaceful evolution,” taking advantage of economic ties to promote “Western values” and democracy.
To certain elements in the party, military and government, the next decade brought more proof of Washington’s perceived double-dealing, containment, and ultimate goal of regime change: the deployment of two U.S. aircraft carriers near Taiwan, the bombing of the PRC embassy in Belgrade, and the Hainan island incident. These people weren’t necessarily a coherent faction and, for many years, didn’t control the entire party. This view of the United States wasn’t pervasive in Beijing, but it influenced government actions, even among non-hard-liners. But the CCP was never a monolith: There were also officials who admired the United States and even hoped economic reforms would be accompanied by political ones.
Yet it was the conservatives and hard-liners who got lucky and piggybacked on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s rise to power starting in 2008, their views finally prevailing in the party beginning in 2012 and 2013. By then, to Beijing, the United States had already shown once again it cannot be trusted—the Obama administration had announced its Asia-Pacific rebalancing, which to quite a few in the leadership simply mean “containment.” But their main worry wasn’t geopolitical.
A relatively new concept was becoming popular—U.S. officials and analysts focused on whether places like the South China Sea might be referred to as core interests. But they missed the most important message: At the top of the PRC’s core interests weren’t rocks in the sea or even Taiwan—it was the safeguarding of its CCP-led political system. The greatest threat against the PRC wasn’t geopolitical but ideological. And that was before the conservatives and hard-liners even took power.
Once they did, they wasted no time. An internal party document, the “Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere,” spelled out the greatest threats for the PRC: universal values, constitutional democracy, civil society, neoliberalism, and the denial of the country’s socialist nature. A documentary made by elements in the Chinese military called Silent Contest also warned of how the United States was secretly trying to subvert the PRC by Westernizing and democratizing it while arguing the great struggle between the two countries would be an ideological one.
Military officials were warning not of U.S. warships but Western ideas. Since then, hard-liners’ power has only grown, finally taking control of party leadership in 2017—at the same time as a new group of U.S. hard-liners tried to use the 2017 U.S. administration to alter China policy back in Washington.
The ideological factor is prominent in Washington and the West as well. The PRC is seen not just as any other country but through the prism of its authoritarian government and the threat this poses to the liberal order and democracy. Ideological tensions are inevitable because Western governments and societies can never, at least as currently constituted, do what Beijing wants them to do, which is to not interfere in its internal affairs, meaning to utter no criticism and take no action, no matter what human rights abuses might take place on its territory. This, in turn, leads to counterreactions from the Chinese leadership in a never-ending downward spiral.
For many Westerners who have never experienced a communist system, it’s almost impossible to understand how Chinese hard-liners think: the belief that democracy is bad because it creates diversity and thus chaos; the obsession with control; the reflexive distrust of anything foreign; the sheer paranoia of containment, encirclement, and foreign coalitions ganging up on China; the conspiratorial mindset of “foreign hostile forces” and “black hands” secretly subverting the political system; and the utter unfamiliarity of how democratic and open societies function. At the same time, they embrace militarism and believe power can solve any problem while having few internal constraints on that power.
Many of the people in CCP leadership are fundamentally shaped by the propaganda and ideology they were exposed to but also by a political system in which there are no friends, no trust, and you could be stabbed in the back at any second. Four of the 24 high-level officials who served with Xi on the Politburo between 2007 and 2012 later became targets of a wide anti-corruption campaign. Across China, since 2013, more than 2 million officials were disciplined. And all these statistics don’t even compare to the climate of infighting and fear from Chairman Mao Zedong’s days. Primed by such a system, not only are officials prone to perceive external dangers and threats where none exist, but they see China and the world through an ideological lens. They define the interests of China first and foremost as a CCP-led state, prioritizing party rule over national interests, which could have been defined differently by a democratic polity.
These ideological demands and paranoias are exerting a real cost on China’s relationship with others. Right now, the European country with the worst diplomatic relations with China is peaceful and neutral Sweden, which also has relatively strong economic ties to China. Why? Because of the fate of just one man: Gui Minhai, a Hong Kong bookseller with Swedish citizenship whose imprisonment in China led to criticism and started a spiral of deteriorating relations. Ten years ago, peaceful Norway was in the same situation, again because of just one person: Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This pattern repeats across Europe: European countries have plenty to gain from diplomatic or economic cooperation with China—but human rights issues, whether Xinjiang or Hong Kong, keep tripping up relationships that European business elites might otherwise prefer were comfortable. Take the United Kingdom, torn between trying to find new markets in China post-Brexit and bipartisan demands for action on Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
All this is leading not just to a U.S.-PRC confrontation but, like the original Cold War, one between the democratic world and the PRC, perhaps alongside its mostly authoritarian allies like Russia. Until recently, Beijing clearly wanted to preserve its economic ties to developed democratic countries, but as democracies form a united front against the PRC and economic incentives for cooperation disappear, CCP leadership could start seeing democracy and a free society not just as enemies against which it must defend at home but which it should attack abroad.
If the ideological contest intensifies, there is a risk the CCP could really become an existential threat to democracy and freedom worldwide, regardless of whether “China is not really communist.” In fact, as China’s wealth increases, while external and internal tensions deepen and the CCP further radicalizes, it’s possible that some party members who believe in the need to go back to collective economic ownership might take control of the party, transform China into a real communist country, and promote world revolution. This scenario seems far-fetched, but it cannot be completely dismissed while China is ruled by a centralized authoritarian organization in which some leaders profoundly distrust capitalism and yearn for the days of Mao, while the initial decision to embrace markets was justified as a strategy to reach an advanced stage of socialism.
On the other hand, there’s a silver lining for the West in the fact that the U.S.-PRC struggle for global supremacy is ideological. It’s an opportunity to connect with the Chinese people and try to keep the conflict about leadership, not about China. Such a conflict could have an endgame: a liberal, peaceful, and cooperative China. There might still be hope that one day, China and the United States could get along well.
But for this to happen, the United States has to focus on the ideological sphere instead of the geopolitical one. Inviting authoritarian regimes like Russia or Vietnam in a geopolitical coalition against China would be a huge blunder. It would confirm to the Chinese people and the world that the United States doesn’t really care about democracy and will confront China regardless of its political system. An ideological conflict that might one day end is better than a never-ending geopolitical conflict with China. It’s vital that Washington focuses on the Chinese people, not just on fighting the CCP, and tries to prevent the future growth of anti-Americanism in China, especially if this conflict intensifies and party leadership tries to stoke nationalism.
Even though Washington and Beijing aren’t yet focused on overthrowing each other’s government, both are shaped by the ideological gulf between them and fear of the other’s intentions. This is not just a U.S.-China conflict but one between the PRC and most of the democratic world. Just because it looks different than the Cold War doesn’t mean ideology is dead. Ideology is in the driver’s seat. Buckle up.
posted for fair use
foreignpolicy.com
The U.S.-China Rivalry Is Ideological, Not Just Geopolitical
Andrei Lungu
12-16 minutes
Whether we call it great-power competition or a new Cold War, there’s no denying the United States and China are engaged in an intense long-term rivalry. But many observers, especially foreign-policy generalists and realists, seem to believe that the U.S.-China conflict is driven by geopolitics, not ideology.
They argue that China has embraced capitalism, doesn’t export its ideology, and doesn’t pose an existential threat to liberal democracy and the Western way of life in the way the Soviet Union once did. In this interpretation, sometimes bringing up Thucydides, the problem is simply the rise of China’s power, which inevitably clashes with the established superpower, the United States, regardless of their political systems. But in reality, ideology has always played a massive role in driving the conflict—and many tensions would have been avoided if the West dealt with a democratic China.
It always takes two to tango. Even if the United States somehow chose to ignore this ideological dimension, many in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership wouldn’t, as they already see this conflict through an ideological lens. That framing is already very clear in Beijing’s language—and its actions. In recent countersanctions against the European Union, Beijing has targeted not just members of European Parliament and member nations’ parliaments, researchers, and think tanks, but even committees of the European Parliament and the European Council. These measures came down even though EU leaders have been keen to sign an investment agreement with China, which is now in doubt.
Think about what a real geopolitical conflict looks like: China and India. Chinese leaders are not afraid that India wants to promote democracy and threaten the regime’s stability. In India, China could go democratic tomorrow and it wouldn’t matter as long as the active border dispute remains, China is Pakistan’s best friend, and Chinese military vessels remain increasingly active in the Indian Ocean. Equally, China doesn’t really care what system New Delhi uses.
In contrast, ideological fears have always underpinned Beijing and Washington’s views of each other. The U.S.-PRC rapprochement that began in 1971 finally led to the normalization of diplomatic relations in 1979, followed by ever-stronger economic ties. But previous decades of confrontation could not be easily undone. Among conservatives in the Chinese leadership, former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s decision to strengthen relations with the United States, like the economic reforms of the 1980s, was accepted as necessary but never fully embraced. The economic reforms themselves were seen by party leadership as a necessary tool to develop China and one day make communism possible, just as Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin implemented the New Economic Policy soon after taking power. They weren’t supposed to be a shift to capitalism and most certainly not to democracy.
And then came the Tiananmen Square massacre. Chinese conservatives and hard-liners saw it as a ploy to democratize and destabilize China. Even Deng said “the causes of this incident have to do with the global context. The Western world, especially the United States, has thrown its entire propaganda machine into agitation work and has given a lot of encouragement and assistance to the so-called democrats or opposition in China—people who in fact are the scum of the Chinese nation. This is the root of the chaotic situation we face today.” Democracy, the hard-liners argued, was a Western plot to bring chaos to China. The fall of the Soviet Union and the misery of the Russian 1990s only confirmed those feelings.
Suddenly, the PRC was the last great bastion of communism and, to Beijing, the main target of the United States and the capitalist world. Little did it matter that Washington tried to preserve relations. In fact, to party hard-liners, U.S. engagement with China was a strategy to subvert the CCP through “peaceful evolution,” taking advantage of economic ties to promote “Western values” and democracy.
To certain elements in the party, military and government, the next decade brought more proof of Washington’s perceived double-dealing, containment, and ultimate goal of regime change: the deployment of two U.S. aircraft carriers near Taiwan, the bombing of the PRC embassy in Belgrade, and the Hainan island incident. These people weren’t necessarily a coherent faction and, for many years, didn’t control the entire party. This view of the United States wasn’t pervasive in Beijing, but it influenced government actions, even among non-hard-liners. But the CCP was never a monolith: There were also officials who admired the United States and even hoped economic reforms would be accompanied by political ones.
Yet it was the conservatives and hard-liners who got lucky and piggybacked on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s rise to power starting in 2008, their views finally prevailing in the party beginning in 2012 and 2013. By then, to Beijing, the United States had already shown once again it cannot be trusted—the Obama administration had announced its Asia-Pacific rebalancing, which to quite a few in the leadership simply mean “containment.” But their main worry wasn’t geopolitical.
A relatively new concept was becoming popular—U.S. officials and analysts focused on whether places like the South China Sea might be referred to as core interests. But they missed the most important message: At the top of the PRC’s core interests weren’t rocks in the sea or even Taiwan—it was the safeguarding of its CCP-led political system. The greatest threat against the PRC wasn’t geopolitical but ideological. And that was before the conservatives and hard-liners even took power.
Once they did, they wasted no time. An internal party document, the “Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere,” spelled out the greatest threats for the PRC: universal values, constitutional democracy, civil society, neoliberalism, and the denial of the country’s socialist nature. A documentary made by elements in the Chinese military called Silent Contest also warned of how the United States was secretly trying to subvert the PRC by Westernizing and democratizing it while arguing the great struggle between the two countries would be an ideological one.
Military officials were warning not of U.S. warships but Western ideas. Since then, hard-liners’ power has only grown, finally taking control of party leadership in 2017—at the same time as a new group of U.S. hard-liners tried to use the 2017 U.S. administration to alter China policy back in Washington.
The ideological factor is prominent in Washington and the West as well. The PRC is seen not just as any other country but through the prism of its authoritarian government and the threat this poses to the liberal order and democracy. Ideological tensions are inevitable because Western governments and societies can never, at least as currently constituted, do what Beijing wants them to do, which is to not interfere in its internal affairs, meaning to utter no criticism and take no action, no matter what human rights abuses might take place on its territory. This, in turn, leads to counterreactions from the Chinese leadership in a never-ending downward spiral.
For many Westerners who have never experienced a communist system, it’s almost impossible to understand how Chinese hard-liners think: the belief that democracy is bad because it creates diversity and thus chaos; the obsession with control; the reflexive distrust of anything foreign; the sheer paranoia of containment, encirclement, and foreign coalitions ganging up on China; the conspiratorial mindset of “foreign hostile forces” and “black hands” secretly subverting the political system; and the utter unfamiliarity of how democratic and open societies function. At the same time, they embrace militarism and believe power can solve any problem while having few internal constraints on that power.
Many of the people in CCP leadership are fundamentally shaped by the propaganda and ideology they were exposed to but also by a political system in which there are no friends, no trust, and you could be stabbed in the back at any second. Four of the 24 high-level officials who served with Xi on the Politburo between 2007 and 2012 later became targets of a wide anti-corruption campaign. Across China, since 2013, more than 2 million officials were disciplined. And all these statistics don’t even compare to the climate of infighting and fear from Chairman Mao Zedong’s days. Primed by such a system, not only are officials prone to perceive external dangers and threats where none exist, but they see China and the world through an ideological lens. They define the interests of China first and foremost as a CCP-led state, prioritizing party rule over national interests, which could have been defined differently by a democratic polity.
These ideological demands and paranoias are exerting a real cost on China’s relationship with others. Right now, the European country with the worst diplomatic relations with China is peaceful and neutral Sweden, which also has relatively strong economic ties to China. Why? Because of the fate of just one man: Gui Minhai, a Hong Kong bookseller with Swedish citizenship whose imprisonment in China led to criticism and started a spiral of deteriorating relations. Ten years ago, peaceful Norway was in the same situation, again because of just one person: Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This pattern repeats across Europe: European countries have plenty to gain from diplomatic or economic cooperation with China—but human rights issues, whether Xinjiang or Hong Kong, keep tripping up relationships that European business elites might otherwise prefer were comfortable. Take the United Kingdom, torn between trying to find new markets in China post-Brexit and bipartisan demands for action on Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
All this is leading not just to a U.S.-PRC confrontation but, like the original Cold War, one between the democratic world and the PRC, perhaps alongside its mostly authoritarian allies like Russia. Until recently, Beijing clearly wanted to preserve its economic ties to developed democratic countries, but as democracies form a united front against the PRC and economic incentives for cooperation disappear, CCP leadership could start seeing democracy and a free society not just as enemies against which it must defend at home but which it should attack abroad.
If the ideological contest intensifies, there is a risk the CCP could really become an existential threat to democracy and freedom worldwide, regardless of whether “China is not really communist.” In fact, as China’s wealth increases, while external and internal tensions deepen and the CCP further radicalizes, it’s possible that some party members who believe in the need to go back to collective economic ownership might take control of the party, transform China into a real communist country, and promote world revolution. This scenario seems far-fetched, but it cannot be completely dismissed while China is ruled by a centralized authoritarian organization in which some leaders profoundly distrust capitalism and yearn for the days of Mao, while the initial decision to embrace markets was justified as a strategy to reach an advanced stage of socialism.
On the other hand, there’s a silver lining for the West in the fact that the U.S.-PRC struggle for global supremacy is ideological. It’s an opportunity to connect with the Chinese people and try to keep the conflict about leadership, not about China. Such a conflict could have an endgame: a liberal, peaceful, and cooperative China. There might still be hope that one day, China and the United States could get along well.
But for this to happen, the United States has to focus on the ideological sphere instead of the geopolitical one. Inviting authoritarian regimes like Russia or Vietnam in a geopolitical coalition against China would be a huge blunder. It would confirm to the Chinese people and the world that the United States doesn’t really care about democracy and will confront China regardless of its political system. An ideological conflict that might one day end is better than a never-ending geopolitical conflict with China. It’s vital that Washington focuses on the Chinese people, not just on fighting the CCP, and tries to prevent the future growth of anti-Americanism in China, especially if this conflict intensifies and party leadership tries to stoke nationalism.
Even though Washington and Beijing aren’t yet focused on overthrowing each other’s government, both are shaped by the ideological gulf between them and fear of the other’s intentions. This is not just a U.S.-China conflict but one between the PRC and most of the democratic world. Just because it looks different than the Cold War doesn’t mean ideology is dead. Ideology is in the driver’s seat. Buckle up.
posted for fair use
The U.S.-China Clash Is About Ideology After All
Claims that the rivalry is purely geopolitical don’t hold water.
foreignpolicy.com
jward
passin' thru
Duan Dang
@duandang
China's Type 022 missile boats chased and blocked a boat chartered by ABS-CBN news crew from approaching Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea. Kudos to
@chiarazambrano
! View: https://twitter.com/duandang/status/1380127615336337412?s=20
jward
passin' thru
Global: MilitaryInfo
@Global_Mil_Info
3h
After the buildup of Chinese maritime militia at the Julian Felipe Reef in the West Philippine Sea, SoS Blinken has said -an armed attack against the Philippines armed forces, public vessels or aircrafts will trigger our obligations under the US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty.
jward
passin' thru
Indo-Pacific News - Watching the CCP-China Threat
@IndoPac_Info
7m
#China has drilled deep in the #SouthChinaSea to retrieve sediment core from the seabed, state media reports, amid tensions over disputed waters with rival claimants #Taiwan and the #Philippines, as well as with the #US
2) Chinese scientists on a marine research vessel used China’s home-made “Sea Bull II” drilling system to obtain a sediment core 231 meters (253 yards) long at a depth of 2,060 metres (6,760 feet), the official Xinhua news agency said.
3) The system can help explore natural gas hydrate resources in the seabed, Xinhua added, referring to the solid ice-like crystals formed from a mixture of methane and water that are touted as a promising source of energy.
View: https://twitter.com/IndoPac_Info/status/1380386275794898945?s=20
@IndoPac_Info
7m
#China has drilled deep in the #SouthChinaSea to retrieve sediment core from the seabed, state media reports, amid tensions over disputed waters with rival claimants #Taiwan and the #Philippines, as well as with the #US
2) Chinese scientists on a marine research vessel used China’s home-made “Sea Bull II” drilling system to obtain a sediment core 231 meters (253 yards) long at a depth of 2,060 metres (6,760 feet), the official Xinhua news agency said.
3) The system can help explore natural gas hydrate resources in the seabed, Xinhua added, referring to the solid ice-like crystals formed from a mixture of methane and water that are touted as a promising source of energy.
View: https://twitter.com/IndoPac_Info/status/1380386275794898945?s=20
jward
passin' thru
Tyler Rogoway
@Aviation_Intel
Now China has cruise missile-carrying catamarans chasing away ships in the South China Sea. Full story: https://thedrive.com/the-war-zone/4
View: https://twitter.com/Aviation_Intel/status/1380262588450136066?s=20
Mehdi H.
@mhmiranusa
Replying to
@Aviation_Intel
Interesting. That's why Iran is following the same path. They planned to deploy 2 new missile-carrying catamarans this year.
@Aviation_Intel
Now China has cruise missile-carrying catamarans chasing away ships in the South China Sea. Full story: https://thedrive.com/the-war-zone/4
View: https://twitter.com/Aviation_Intel/status/1380262588450136066?s=20
Mehdi H.
@mhmiranusa
Replying to
@Aviation_Intel
Interesting. That's why Iran is following the same path. They planned to deploy 2 new missile-carrying catamarans this year.
Tyler Rogoway
@Aviation_Intel
Now China has cruise missile-carrying catamarans chasing away ships in the South China Sea. Full story: https://thedrive.com/the-war-zone/4
View: https://twitter.com/Aviation_Intel/status/1380262588450136066?s=20
Mehdi H.
@mhmiranusa
Replying to
@Aviation_Intel
Interesting. That's why Iran is following the same path. They planned to deploy 2 new missile-carrying catamarans this year.
Yeah. Those vessels are analogous to Second World War motor torpedo/gun boats. Attrition units that punch way above their displacement and can flood an area in such a way that they can contest access very significantly.
jward
passin' thru
I remember when the scary thing hiding under the bed was the run of the mill monsters; now it's monstrosities like this, and worse... :: eek face ::
jward
passin' thru
Indonesia begins construction of submarine base in South China Sea
by Ridzwan Rahmat
The Indonesian Navy (Tentara Nasional Indonesia – Angkatan Laut: TNI-AL) has held a ceremony to mark the start of construction of a submarine ‘support station’ in the South China Sea.
The TNI-AL’s second Cakra-class submarine, KRI Nanggala, seen here near Surabaya during a demonstration of its abilities. (Janes/Ridzwan Rahmat)
A foundation stone for the facility was ceremonially laid down on 5 April by the service’s chief, Admiral Yudo Margono, on Pulau Natuna Besar, the biggest of the Natuna Islands cluster, which is located near the disputed maritime region. The facility is located along the Lampa Strait and will come under the command of the TNI-AL’s Armada I once it is completed.
Janes first reported in 2016, citing the transcript of a meeting between then Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) chief General Gatot Nurmantyo and the Indonesian House of Representatives commission on defence, intelligence, and foreign affairs, that Indonesia would develop a submarine base on Pulau Natuna Besar. The TNI requested a sum of about USD40 million in that meeting to fund this facility.
According to details provided by the TNI-AL on 5 April, the support station will occupy 1,050 m2 of land area, with 1,008 m2 of workable space on each of its two storeys. The facility will also feature a 585 m2 annex with 11 rooms, which will serve as the living quarters and mess area for submariners.
In addition to this facility, the TNI-AL has also engaged local power company PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) to provide a 555 kVa electrical relay along the jetty that has already been built at the facility, to better support the berthing of more submarines, the service added.
Rest Behind Paywall
by Ridzwan Rahmat
The Indonesian Navy (Tentara Nasional Indonesia – Angkatan Laut: TNI-AL) has held a ceremony to mark the start of construction of a submarine ‘support station’ in the South China Sea.
The TNI-AL’s second Cakra-class submarine, KRI Nanggala, seen here near Surabaya during a demonstration of its abilities. (Janes/Ridzwan Rahmat)
A foundation stone for the facility was ceremonially laid down on 5 April by the service’s chief, Admiral Yudo Margono, on Pulau Natuna Besar, the biggest of the Natuna Islands cluster, which is located near the disputed maritime region. The facility is located along the Lampa Strait and will come under the command of the TNI-AL’s Armada I once it is completed.
Janes first reported in 2016, citing the transcript of a meeting between then Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) chief General Gatot Nurmantyo and the Indonesian House of Representatives commission on defence, intelligence, and foreign affairs, that Indonesia would develop a submarine base on Pulau Natuna Besar. The TNI requested a sum of about USD40 million in that meeting to fund this facility.
According to details provided by the TNI-AL on 5 April, the support station will occupy 1,050 m2 of land area, with 1,008 m2 of workable space on each of its two storeys. The facility will also feature a 585 m2 annex with 11 rooms, which will serve as the living quarters and mess area for submariners.
In addition to this facility, the TNI-AL has also engaged local power company PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) to provide a 555 kVa electrical relay along the jetty that has already been built at the facility, to better support the berthing of more submarines, the service added.
Rest Behind Paywall
Indonesia begins construction of submarine base in South China Sea
The Indonesian Navy (Tentara Nasional Indonesia – Angkatan Laut: TNI-AL) has held a ceremony to mark the start of construction of a submarine ‘support station’ in the...
www.janes.com
Indonesia begins construction of submarine base in South China Sea
by Ridzwan Rahmat
The Indonesian Navy (Tentara Nasional Indonesia – Angkatan Laut: TNI-AL) has held a ceremony to mark the start of construction of a submarine ‘support station’ in the South China Sea.
The TNI-AL’s second Cakra-class submarine, KRI Nanggala, seen here near Surabaya during a demonstration of its abilities. (Janes/Ridzwan Rahmat)
A foundation stone for the facility was ceremonially laid down on 5 April by the service’s chief, Admiral Yudo Margono, on Pulau Natuna Besar, the biggest of the Natuna Islands cluster, which is located near the disputed maritime region. The facility is located along the Lampa Strait and will come under the command of the TNI-AL’s Armada I once it is completed.
Janes first reported in 2016, citing the transcript of a meeting between then Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) chief General Gatot Nurmantyo and the Indonesian House of Representatives commission on defence, intelligence, and foreign affairs, that Indonesia would develop a submarine base on Pulau Natuna Besar. The TNI requested a sum of about USD40 million in that meeting to fund this facility.
According to details provided by the TNI-AL on 5 April, the support station will occupy 1,050 m2 of land area, with 1,008 m2 of workable space on each of its two storeys. The facility will also feature a 585 m2 annex with 11 rooms, which will serve as the living quarters and mess area for submariners.
In addition to this facility, the TNI-AL has also engaged local power company PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) to provide a 555 kVa electrical relay along the jetty that has already been built at the facility, to better support the berthing of more submarines, the service added.
Rest Behind Paywall
Indonesia begins construction of submarine base in South China Sea
The Indonesian Navy (Tentara Nasional Indonesia – Angkatan Laut: TNI-AL) has held a ceremony to mark the start of construction of a submarine ‘support station’ in the...www.janes.com
The Indonesian Navy has five SSKs on strength right now. With the number of islands that make up the nation, they're pretty patrol ship to guided missile frigate focused.
jward
passin' thru
humm
NK NEWS
@nknewsorg
6m
Kim Jong Un referenced North Korea's deadly famine from the 1990s in a speech on Thursday. The DPRK leader asked party officials to "wage another more difficult Arduous March," implying that economic hardship is ahead.
View: https://twitter.com/nknewsorg/status/1380596409913769986?s=20
NK NEWS
@nknewsorg
6m
Kim Jong Un referenced North Korea's deadly famine from the 1990s in a speech on Thursday. The DPRK leader asked party officials to "wage another more difficult Arduous March," implying that economic hardship is ahead.
View: https://twitter.com/nknewsorg/status/1380596409913769986?s=20
northern watch
TB Fanatic
danielboon
TB Fanatic
Duan Dang
@duandang
·
11h
Breaking News: China's Liaoning aircraft carrier entered the South China Sea this morning.
@duandang
·
11h
Breaking News: China's Liaoning aircraft carrier entered the South China Sea this morning.
danielboon
TB Fanatic
danielboon
TB Fanatic
Near Taiwan Southwest water area.
jward
passin' thru
U.S. And Chinese Carrier Groups Mass In The South China Sea
The northern reaches of the South China Sea have become very busy as of late with two U.S. carrier groups and one Chinese carrier group in the region.
By Adam Kehoe April 10, 2021
Tensions between China and its regional neighbors in the South China and Philippine Seas increased markedly this week. Naval exercises by both the United States and China have massed an unusual number of warships in the South China Sea at a time of renewed diplomatic friction as concerns over China’s territorial ambitions grow.
The uptick began late last week. The War Zone reported that China’s Liaoning Carrier Strike Group (CSG) maneuvered through the strategic Miyako Strait on Sunday, just southwest of Okinawa. Since then, a separate point of tension between China and the Philippines over a mass of fishing vessels identified as part of China’s People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia (PAFMM) led to a series of heated diplomatic exchanges between Manila and Beijing.
Open-source intelligence analysts tracked the movements of the Liaoning carrier strike group this week as it appeared to traverse the Luzon strait, the body of water that, along with the Bohai Channel, separates the Philippines and Taiwan. This crucially strategic area is also the primary boundary between the Philippine Sea and the South China Sea and connects the greater Pacific to the northern reaches of the South China Sea.
As such, this area is of intense reconnaissance interest to all stakeholders in the region. The United States military paid particularly close attention to these waters in July last year, regularly flying intelligence-gathering planes such as the EP-3E Aries II and RC-135V/W Rivet Joint into the area. Since then, the surveillance flights have continued, often spiking at times when there is heavy Chinese naval activity in the area.
The Liaoning CSG maneuvers around the strait were closely observed by Japan and the United States. Analysts identified a U.S. Navy Alreigh Burke class destroyer shadowing the group, as it headed west towards the South China Sea:
This striking shot captured U.S. Navy Cmdr. Robert J. Briggs and Cmdr. Richard D. Slye as they monitored the Liaoning, just thousands of feet away, from the bridge wings of the USS Mustin earlier in the week on April 4.
USN
By April 10th, analysts flagged one Type 055 Renhai class missile destroyer and one Type 052D Luyang class destroyer splitting from the group and heading north towards the Taiwan strait:
Imagery derived from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellite identified an unusually large number of military vessels in the South China Sea on Saturday:
The increased number of ships was not just due to the Chinese naval exercise alone. Yesterday the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group and the Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) conducted a coordinated exercise in the South China Sea. The TRCSG consists of the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71), Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 11, the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill (CG 52), Destroyer Squadron 23, and the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Russell (DDG 59). The USS Makin Island's group also consisted of amphibious assault ships the USS Somerset and USS San Diego.
A cluster of vessels was spotted via satellite imagery just east of Taiwan’s Pratas Islands. In recent years, Pratas Island has been of increasing concern to observers of the South China Sea. Writing for The Diplomat, analyst Yoshiyuki Ogasawara has focused on the Pratas Islands as a potential target of China’s geopolitical ambitions as it approaches the centennial anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party on July 23 this year. Ogasawara argues that capturing the island could be a way for China to demonstrate progress towards its goal of reunifying Taiwan without sparking a wider conflict.
The small island located between China, Taiwan, and the Philippines has a strategic vantage on the South China Sea. Its small size and flat geography make it difficult to defend. According to Ogasawara, the island typically has no permanent residents but has seen a quiet build-up of a garrison of about 500 Taiwanese Marines. Last year Taiwanese F-16s began flying patrols with live Harpoon anti-ship missiles in an effort to deter China’s interest in potentially capturing the island. U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidons have done the same. Chinese military exercises apparently focused on capturing the island were reported in May last year.
Google Earth
Pratas Island
Google Earth
Pratas island is quite small, but it includes an airstrip and some accommodations.
The area has also recently seen an increase in drone incursions. On Wednesday, Taiwanese official Ocean Affairs Council Chair Lee Chung-wei addressed the drone issue, describing them as circling the island. He declared a willingness to shoot them down, stating “if we need to open fire, we will open fire.” Additionally, China has recently invested heavily in coastal bases, such as a massive new helicopter base directly across the strait of Taiwan that could prove essential to a major offensive against the island.
Meanwhile, the week saw a near-constant stream of Chinese overflights of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone. According to Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense, there have been 46 overflights across the southwestern portion of the Taiwan Strait. These flights have included as many as fifteen People’s Liberation Army aircraft at one time, including 8 J-10 and 4 J-16 fighter aircraft in one incident.
Taiwan MoD
Sample photos of J-10s and J-16s involved in the flights.
Taiwan MoD
Chart showing the approximate tracks of the Chinese aircraft.
China and the Philippines also appeared to deepen their dispute over more than two hundred Chinese vessels occupying an area in the West Philippines Sea known as Whitsun Reef. On April 5th, the Chinese embassy in the Philippines issued a statement expressing that it is “completely normal for Chinese fishing vessels to fish in the waters and take shelter near the reef during rough sea conditions.”
On Thursday, the U.S. State Department provided a readout stating that Secretary of State Blinken had spoken with his Philippine counterpart Teodoro Locsin, Jr. about the “massing of PRC maritime military vessels.” Blinken additionally “reaffirmed the applicability of the 1951 U.S.-Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty to the South China Sea.”
China’s foreign minister spokesman Zhao Lijian responded by saying that the United States should stop “inciting quarrels and sowing discord.”
Compounding matters, a news team from the Philippines’ ABS-CBN described Chinese Coast Guard Vessels “pursuing” Philipine fishing vessels on Friday. The War Zone recently covered the incident, including the apparent new role for China’s stealthy catamaran fast-attack missile craft in tense South China Sea waters.
Earlier in the year, China adopted a new law that some have claimed violates the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) that permits the Chinese Coast Guard to fire on foreign vessels in some circumstances. The legal change added ongoing concern about China’s growing network of artificial outposts through the South China Sea.
Last month, Australia, India, Japan, and the United States issued a joint statement as part of the so-called “quadrilateral security dialogue” or “Quad,” affirming each country's commitment to upholding the “rules-based maritime order in the East and South China Seas.” Security concerns and the future of the Quad alliance will almost certainly be a key subject in upcoming talks between Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and President Biden on April 16th.
In the coming weeks, it will be crucial to see if regional stakeholders are able to manage these tensions. Negotiations and inter-alliance relationships, especially within the emerging Quad, will be crucial to creating an effective counterbalance to the increasingly capable and assertive Chinese military’s operations in the region.
The War Zone will continue to watch and report developments in the East and South China Seas.
Contact the editor: Tyler@thedrive.com
Posted for fair use
www.thedrive.com
The northern reaches of the South China Sea have become very busy as of late with two U.S. carrier groups and one Chinese carrier group in the region.
By Adam Kehoe April 10, 2021
Tensions between China and its regional neighbors in the South China and Philippine Seas increased markedly this week. Naval exercises by both the United States and China have massed an unusual number of warships in the South China Sea at a time of renewed diplomatic friction as concerns over China’s territorial ambitions grow.
The uptick began late last week. The War Zone reported that China’s Liaoning Carrier Strike Group (CSG) maneuvered through the strategic Miyako Strait on Sunday, just southwest of Okinawa. Since then, a separate point of tension between China and the Philippines over a mass of fishing vessels identified as part of China’s People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia (PAFMM) led to a series of heated diplomatic exchanges between Manila and Beijing.
Open-source intelligence analysts tracked the movements of the Liaoning carrier strike group this week as it appeared to traverse the Luzon strait, the body of water that, along with the Bohai Channel, separates the Philippines and Taiwan. This crucially strategic area is also the primary boundary between the Philippine Sea and the South China Sea and connects the greater Pacific to the northern reaches of the South China Sea.
As such, this area is of intense reconnaissance interest to all stakeholders in the region. The United States military paid particularly close attention to these waters in July last year, regularly flying intelligence-gathering planes such as the EP-3E Aries II and RC-135V/W Rivet Joint into the area. Since then, the surveillance flights have continued, often spiking at times when there is heavy Chinese naval activity in the area.
The Liaoning CSG maneuvers around the strait were closely observed by Japan and the United States. Analysts identified a U.S. Navy Alreigh Burke class destroyer shadowing the group, as it headed west towards the South China Sea:
This striking shot captured U.S. Navy Cmdr. Robert J. Briggs and Cmdr. Richard D. Slye as they monitored the Liaoning, just thousands of feet away, from the bridge wings of the USS Mustin earlier in the week on April 4.
USN
By April 10th, analysts flagged one Type 055 Renhai class missile destroyer and one Type 052D Luyang class destroyer splitting from the group and heading north towards the Taiwan strait:
Imagery derived from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellite identified an unusually large number of military vessels in the South China Sea on Saturday:
After conducting simultaneous military exercises & maneuvers around #Taiwan, #China's suspected aircraft carrier Liaoning & its escorts are observed entering the #SouthChinaSea on Saturday, 10 April 2021 pic.twitter.com/IjWdnY5sFW
— d-atis(@detresfa_) April 10, 2021
The increased number of ships was not just due to the Chinese naval exercise alone. Yesterday the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group and the Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) conducted a coordinated exercise in the South China Sea. The TRCSG consists of the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71), Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 11, the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill (CG 52), Destroyer Squadron 23, and the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Russell (DDG 59). The USS Makin Island's group also consisted of amphibious assault ships the USS Somerset and USS San Diego.
A cluster of vessels was spotted via satellite imagery just east of Taiwan’s Pratas Islands. In recent years, Pratas Island has been of increasing concern to observers of the South China Sea. Writing for The Diplomat, analyst Yoshiyuki Ogasawara has focused on the Pratas Islands as a potential target of China’s geopolitical ambitions as it approaches the centennial anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party on July 23 this year. Ogasawara argues that capturing the island could be a way for China to demonstrate progress towards its goal of reunifying Taiwan without sparking a wider conflict.
The small island located between China, Taiwan, and the Philippines has a strategic vantage on the South China Sea. Its small size and flat geography make it difficult to defend. According to Ogasawara, the island typically has no permanent residents but has seen a quiet build-up of a garrison of about 500 Taiwanese Marines. Last year Taiwanese F-16s began flying patrols with live Harpoon anti-ship missiles in an effort to deter China’s interest in potentially capturing the island. U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidons have done the same. Chinese military exercises apparently focused on capturing the island were reported in May last year.
Google Earth
Pratas Island
Google Earth
Pratas island is quite small, but it includes an airstrip and some accommodations.
The area has also recently seen an increase in drone incursions. On Wednesday, Taiwanese official Ocean Affairs Council Chair Lee Chung-wei addressed the drone issue, describing them as circling the island. He declared a willingness to shoot them down, stating “if we need to open fire, we will open fire.” Additionally, China has recently invested heavily in coastal bases, such as a massive new helicopter base directly across the strait of Taiwan that could prove essential to a major offensive against the island.
Meanwhile, the week saw a near-constant stream of Chinese overflights of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone. According to Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense, there have been 46 overflights across the southwestern portion of the Taiwan Strait. These flights have included as many as fifteen People’s Liberation Army aircraft at one time, including 8 J-10 and 4 J-16 fighter aircraft in one incident.
Taiwan MoD
Sample photos of J-10s and J-16s involved in the flights.
Taiwan MoD
Chart showing the approximate tracks of the Chinese aircraft.
China and the Philippines also appeared to deepen their dispute over more than two hundred Chinese vessels occupying an area in the West Philippines Sea known as Whitsun Reef. On April 5th, the Chinese embassy in the Philippines issued a statement expressing that it is “completely normal for Chinese fishing vessels to fish in the waters and take shelter near the reef during rough sea conditions.”
On Thursday, the U.S. State Department provided a readout stating that Secretary of State Blinken had spoken with his Philippine counterpart Teodoro Locsin, Jr. about the “massing of PRC maritime military vessels.” Blinken additionally “reaffirmed the applicability of the 1951 U.S.-Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty to the South China Sea.”
China’s foreign minister spokesman Zhao Lijian responded by saying that the United States should stop “inciting quarrels and sowing discord.”
Compounding matters, a news team from the Philippines’ ABS-CBN described Chinese Coast Guard Vessels “pursuing” Philipine fishing vessels on Friday. The War Zone recently covered the incident, including the apparent new role for China’s stealthy catamaran fast-attack missile craft in tense South China Sea waters.
Earlier in the year, China adopted a new law that some have claimed violates the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) that permits the Chinese Coast Guard to fire on foreign vessels in some circumstances. The legal change added ongoing concern about China’s growing network of artificial outposts through the South China Sea.
Last month, Australia, India, Japan, and the United States issued a joint statement as part of the so-called “quadrilateral security dialogue” or “Quad,” affirming each country's commitment to upholding the “rules-based maritime order in the East and South China Seas.” Security concerns and the future of the Quad alliance will almost certainly be a key subject in upcoming talks between Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and President Biden on April 16th.
In the coming weeks, it will be crucial to see if regional stakeholders are able to manage these tensions. Negotiations and inter-alliance relationships, especially within the emerging Quad, will be crucial to creating an effective counterbalance to the increasingly capable and assertive Chinese military’s operations in the region.
The War Zone will continue to watch and report developments in the East and South China Seas.
Contact the editor: Tyler@thedrive.com
Posted for fair use
U.S. And Chinese Carrier Groups Mass In The South China Sea
The northern reaches of the South China Sea have become very busy as of late with two U.S. carrier groups and one Chinese carrier group in the region.
www.thedrive.com
danielboon
TB Fanatic
Very dangerous
jward
passin' thru
EndGameWW
@EndGameWW3
7m
S. Korea, U.S. authorities assess N.K. has completed building new 3,000-ton submarine: sources
View: https://twitter.com/EndGameWW3/status/1381114915700797440?s=20
@EndGameWW3
7m
S. Korea, U.S. authorities assess N.K. has completed building new 3,000-ton submarine: sources
View: https://twitter.com/EndGameWW3/status/1381114915700797440?s=20
jward
passin' thru
Indo-Pacific News - Watching the CCP-China Threat
@IndoPac_Info
19m
Biden backs #Taiwan, but some call for a clearer warning to #China A debate is under way whether the #US should make a clearer commitment to the island’s defense, in part to reduce the risk of a miscalculation by China that could lead to unwanted war.
View: https://twitter.com/IndoPac_Info/status/1381145651551989760?s=20
@IndoPac_Info
19m
Biden backs #Taiwan, but some call for a clearer warning to #China A debate is under way whether the #US should make a clearer commitment to the island’s defense, in part to reduce the risk of a miscalculation by China that could lead to unwanted war.
View: https://twitter.com/IndoPac_Info/status/1381145651551989760?s=20
jward
passin' thru
Yonhap News Agency
@YonhapNews
3m
Cheong Wa Dae denies report U.S. requested S. Korea join Quad
View: https://twitter.com/YonhapNews/status/1381157759773642753?s=20
@YonhapNews
3m
Cheong Wa Dae denies report U.S. requested S. Korea join Quad
View: https://twitter.com/YonhapNews/status/1381157759773642753?s=20
jward
passin' thru
Indo-Pacific News - Watching the CCP-China Threat
@IndoPac_Info
2h
#Japan Toughens on #China as #Beijing Issues Threats This is an unusual position for Japan, which has historically taken a conciliatory approach in its relations with Beijing and sought to avoid escalation
View: https://twitter.com/IndoPac_Info/status/1381169409553657856?s=20
@IndoPac_Info
2h
#Japan Toughens on #China as #Beijing Issues Threats This is an unusual position for Japan, which has historically taken a conciliatory approach in its relations with Beijing and sought to avoid escalation
View: https://twitter.com/IndoPac_Info/status/1381169409553657856?s=20
jward
passin' thru
Alert 5
@alert5
Word on the street. Chinese second carrier Shandong is underway. Two Chinese and two American aircraft carriers operating in South China Sea today.
3:50 AM · Apr 11, 2021·Twitter Web App
( america has only one carrier in scs sice the other is not a strike carrier but an amphibious ship, however. . . )
@alert5
Word on the street. Chinese second carrier Shandong is underway. Two Chinese and two American aircraft carriers operating in South China Sea today.
3:50 AM · Apr 11, 2021·Twitter Web App
( america has only one carrier in scs sice the other is not a strike carrier but an amphibious ship, however. . . )
jward
passin' thru
aww my first map :: beamin' ::
Indo-Pacific News - Watching the CCP-China Threat
@IndoPac_Info
37m
A good map showing the maritime disputes with #China in the East & #SouthChinaSea
Indo-Pacific News - Watching the CCP-China Threat
@IndoPac_Info
37m
A good map showing the maritime disputes with #China in the East & #SouthChinaSea