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Satellite images show China is making progress on building an airstrip on a reef in disputed territory in the South China Sea, a report says.

The images, published by IHS Jane's Defence Weekly, show construction work on reclaimed land on Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratly Islands.

The landmass could accommodate a runway about 3,000m long, the report said.

China's land reclamation work in the area has raised concern around the Asia-Pacific region.

China claims almost the whole of the South China Sea, resulting in overlapping claims with several other Asian nations including Vietnam and the Philippines.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32331964

http://www.janes.com/article/50714/chin ... nstruction

And so it begins...

They've built a large underground submarine base at Hainan island, too.

http://fas.org/blogs/security/2008/04/n ... aval-base/

Does china even have much of a military that isn't solely dedicated to "keeping the party image?"

Largest infantry corps in the world.

Those numbers (1.5 millionish versus the US which maybe has 500,000 troops total) aren't anything to sneeze at.

Their airforce isn't anything to ignore either, though the US can outmatch that.

Their navy is fairly amusing, but they are getting better.

GQfluffy wrote:Largest infantry corps in the world.

Those numbers (1.5 millionish versus the US which maybe has 500,000 troops total) aren't anything to sneeze at.

Their airforce isn't anything to ignore either, though the US can outmatch that.

Their navy is fairly amusing, but they are getting better.

Their navy though is still bigger than anything their South China Sea neighbours can muster. The biggest warships of the Philippines is the Gregorio de Pilar and her sister ship, former USCG cutters from the 1970s, now designated as a frigates. The next in line is a WW2 USN destroyer escort, one of the oldest still active warships.
Only Indonesia has a navy to counteract the pressure (they bought half the East German navy in the 1990s), but these ships are also getting long in the tooth.
Add to this that the various countries around the South China Sea also have claims against each other and won't really cooperate and China using her economic power. The philippines have brought her claims (based on UNCLOS geographical rules, not on spurious historical claims, like the Chinese, which can be faked)) to the International Court of Justice, but China does not recognise this. They refure any arbitration by outside institutions, insisting on bilateral agreements instead, where they know that they can bully the much poorer and weaker neighbours. Themain aim of the Chinese is to exclude the US from the region, as a starting point towards reclaiming Taiwan and then hegemony over all of East Asia (Read about the "Inner Island Chain" (Japan, Taiwan, Philippnes, Borneo, Indonesia, Malaysia) and the "outer Island Chain, which includes Saipan and Guam).
Another thing the Chinese want is to re-define the 200 NM EEZ (Economic Exclusion Zone) into territorial waters (currently 12 NM), where Chinese laws would apply and where they could control who is passing through.

Jan

And the best part is...the West will let them do it...then send strongly worded letters after.

I have been to the Philippines a few weeks ago and it is quite a hot topic there, especially the failure to get ASEAN to agree on a resolution. The problem with ASEAN is that everything has to be done based on an agreement, and there are some countries without diisputed borders with China, but e.g. border issues with Vietnam, which are playing China versus the US, so that the government officials will be bribed by both sides (Hun Sen of Cambodia, I mean you!). Last time he torpedoed the resolution because the Chinese promised lots of investment (and kickbacks) without questions asked about issues like human rights and democracy and threatened to withdraw this investment should Cambodia not be compliant.
In Vietnam the government is walking a tightrope. On one hand they want to stay in power, but modernise their country economically after China's example, but they can't let public sentiment (which is very anti-China due to a memory of thousand years of being China's vassall, read bitch)let loose. They also have to demonstrate a certain solidarity between "communist" parties, but on the other hand Vietnam needs the gas and oil from their claims (or at least part of it) to develop. like in China the party can only rule if the living standard of the population improves, else they'll get toppled.
Philippines is a mixed bag, while the countrynow has probably the most realistic claims so far (not the whole South china Sea, but only some eastern parts of it), some years, under the administration of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, some businessmen have been colluding to sell out the land to the Chinese for personal profit. They are of the rich Filipino-Chinese families of the "Ilustrados", upper class families, which originally fought against the Spanish colonial power, but then sided with the new American colnial power against the rebellion of the lower and middle class movements, like the Katipunan, and got rewarded by the American administration with huge areas of land taken from the Catholic Church. These families, maybe 5% of the population, still have a major political influence and are considered political dynasties, who run the country just for their own interests. Aquino is also one of them, though he acts more patriotic.

The presence of US forces is highly controvers in the region, partly due to memories of colonialism, but also because American troops have a reputation of being rowdy and undisciplined when off duty (Terms like LFBM(little brown f...king machine) and rapes of civilian women come to mind, plus massive prostitution and organised crime in the towns close to former American bases in the Philippines, e.g. Olangapo and Angeles City).
Also, even though the Philippines became independent in 1946, American troops based there have, up to the end of the bases agreement in the early 1990s, often acted as if the country still belonged to them, e.g. by letting foreign troops train on their bases in the Philippines without informing the Filipino government.
Then, especially in the Muslim South, there exist still memories of the Moro wars, where US troops carried out attrocities to stop a rebellion.

Interestingly the Philippines are now cooperating closely with the Japanese.
The JSDFN is holding regular exercises with the Filipino navy and coast guard. This surprises even more, as Japanese troops have committed some serious war crimes in the Philippines during WW2, but today the general attitude in the Philippines is that Japan isn't a threat anymore, but China's actions reek of the old Japanese Asian Co-prosperity Sphere.

What will probably happen is that there will be small local contigent of US troops based in the Philippines, which can be re-inforced quickly from a new base in northern Australia, if necessary. This way the US will have a presence in the region, but with a small number of disciplined troops, who won't cause trouble with the locals.

Currently American P-8 aircraft areregularly overflying the contested islands. Chinese troops hail them on the radio and tell them to move out of Chinese airspace, but the US Navy just ignores the calls. Unlike Filipino military aircraft, which are supplying the Filipino outposts on the islands, the Chinese so far did not use hostile measures, like lighting up the aircraft with AA missile targeting radar or firing warning shots, against the American aircraft.
You can bet that China is watching the West's reaction to the events in Ukraine very closely, and should the West turn out to be a paper tiger, expect more assertive land (and sea) grabs.

While the Filipino and Vietnamese goverments also have disputes, the Vietnamese and Filipino marines on neighbouring islands get along quite well and sometimes meet for basketball and soccer matches.

Taiwan also holds one of the Spratly Islands and has the same claims as the PRC, but I think that they would also agree to a reasonable arbitration by the ICJ.

Interestingly the two countries with the most solid claims for the region would be Britain and France, since they did the oceanographic research and surveying of the South China Sea. Historically the islands should belong to the Badjao (or Sea Gypsies), an ethnic group of people, who have been sailing the sea for thousands of years, living of trade and fishing. Believing in a moderate folk Islam, they get persecuted by the orthodox Muslims of the Filipino Tausug tribe and the AQ related Abu Sayaff terrorist group, but they live all over the region in the Southern Philippines, Malaysia and Borneo, often sill living in families on small boats.

MD11Engineer wrote:The JSDFN is holding regular exercises with the Filipino navy and coast guard.

One small correction to an excellent post. It's the JMSDF.

JSDF is divided into three branches, JASDF, JGSDF and JMSDF

The various forces refer to themselves using both the English abbreviations and Japanse names, such as:

Thanks for the correction! (and excuse the typos. My keyboard is a bit worn out).

I forgot to add that, should Putin turn out to be a paper tiger in Ukraine, China might go for the Siberian Far East. China has claims to Outer Manchuria, a huge part of Eastern Siberia, which got taken by the Czarist Russians during the mid-19th century and which includes Vladivostok and Port Arthur.


This area has a very low (and shrinking) population, but lots of natural resources. There are already Chinese companies and citizens living there (a few million) and there are intermarriages.

As in interesting aside to the influence of Russia on the situation, there's an anthology of science fiction stories and military thesis works called Riding the Red Horse. It can be bought in ebook for form about $5. It's worth every penny just to read one of the military strategy dissertations called Make the Tigers Fight. It is the most excellent study of Soviet/Russian use of political power and military force I have ever seen.

The PRC have one big problem: Since about ten years ago they turned from being self-sufficient to be a net food importer. Means they can't feed their population unless they import food. This is why Chinese companies have been buying up large areas in Africa to plant food for export to China (and acting like a colonial power). This is one reason why the PRC wants to control all access to the south and East China seas. Due to the quirks of geophysics all access to their coast is through some straits between islands and peninsulas and they want to control these countries (which are currently not aligned, and could close these straits).
According to what I have read oil and gas deposits in the South China Sea are neglegible, but Chinese fishing boats are already contributing to a large part to the overfishing in the contested waters and they are also destroying coral reefs by removing corals. The coral reefs on the other hand are important as breeding grounds for young fish.
This is actually a complaint by the Philippines, where there is slowly an ecological mindset developing.

MD11Engineer wrote:According to what I have read oil and gas deposits in the South China Sea are neglegible...

There is a huge amount right off the coast of Brunei at the very bottom of the South China Sea, which to no ones surprise, China just happened to draw their claim around.

But you did hit on a very important point. If you want to run any deep water shipping through the region you have to run it right through Chinas claim.

This red blob China is claiming:



... suddenly makes a lot more sense when you compare it to this map:

But even if they cornered all the Malayan and Bruneian oil, it would last the Chinese, at their current consumption, just a few years.

Jan

Just to give guys an idea how the colonial period is still very present in the Philippines (tomorrow is their independence day):
http://opinion.inquirer.net/85687/meditation-on-independence

Mabini counseled the young general that the first business of the day was to secure the support of the rest of the Filipino leaders for the declaration of independence that he had just made. He deemed it necessary to ensure a unified political leadership in view of the American presence. From the start, Mabini had been suspicious of America’s intentions. Long after Spain had given up its defense of the islands, America continued to send waves of troops to the islands, and he asked why.

America’s real intentions became clear after Spain ceded the islands to the United States in exchange for $20 million under the December 1898 Treaty of Paris. Aguinaldo’s government was deliberately kept out of the Paris talks. From that point onward, it was just a matter of time before the Filipino revolutionary forces would clash with American troops. The hostilities finally broke out in February 1899.

America demanded the immediate surrender of the Filipino revolutionary forces, declaring all those who opposed US rule as insurgents. The Philippine-American War was a brutal war of subjugation waged against a poor exhausted nation that had just freed itself from more than three centuries of Spanish colonial rule. That tragic and bloody episode in our nation’s history was successfully buried by America’s attempt to depict its project in the Philippines, not as a form of conquest, but as liberation and tutelage in the art of government.

The Americans doubted that there was a Filipino nation to speak of in the first instance. They only saw a collection of diverse ethnic groups, each one speaking a different language, and hardly capable of forming a unified government. The foremost proponent of this view was Sen. Alfred J. Beveridge, who, in a speech before the US Senate on Jan. 9, 1900, described what he saw during a brief visit to the Philippines.

“They are a barbarous race, modified by three centuries of contact with a decadent race. The Filipino is the South Sea Malay, put through a process of three hundred years of superstition in religion, dishonesty in dealing, disorder in habits of industry, and cruelty, caprice, and corruption in government…. My own belief is that there are not 100 men among them who comprehend what Anglo-Saxon government even means, and there are over 5,000,000 people to be governed.”

The National Inquirer is IMO the most serious English language newspaper in the Philippines.