|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Why is the Chinese Navy being confrontational? |
| They want to strut their (new) stuff, jingoistic style |
|
22% |
[ 4 ] |
| They want to see if they will push Obama's buttons |
|
27% |
[ 5 ] |
| They really believe the South China Sea is all theirs |
|
33% |
[ 6 ] |
| They don't want to be outdone by the North Koreans |
|
11% |
[ 2 ] |
| International waters is meaningless legal language to them |
|
5% |
[ 1 ] |
| Hainan isn't Hawaii, so the tourists need some sights |
|
0% |
[ 0 ] |
|
| Total Votes : 18 |
|
| Author |
Message |
ManintheMiddle
Joined: 20 Oct 2008
|
 Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 8:05 pm Post subject: WHY IS THE PRC NAVY BEING CONFRONTATIONAL? Take Poll |
 |
|
Here we go again.
Seems the Chinese Navy is flexing its muscles these days.
The latest intrigue involves an American ship.
| Quote: |
China says U.S. naval ship was breaking law: report
By Chris Buckley
BEIJING (Reuters) � China accused a U.S. naval ship of conducting illegal surveying off southern Hainan island, a Hong Kong TV website reported on Tuesday, after the Pentagon said Chinese vessels had harassed the ship in international waters.
Global oil prices rose 3 percent on Monday, partly in a knee-jerk reaction to tension between the world's top oil consumers. But the confrontation was unlikely to do lasting damage to ties between two countries closely involved in trying to end the global financial crisis, a Chinese analyst said.
The United States urged China to observe international maritime rules after the Pentagon said five Chinese ships, including a naval vessel, harassed the U.S. Navy ship in international waters.
The Chinese vessels "shadowed and aggressively maneuvered in dangerously close proximity" to the USNS Impeccable, an unarmed ocean surveillance vessel, on Sunday, with one ship coming within 25 feet, a U.S. Defense Department statement said.
The tropical resort island of Hainan is the site of a Chinese naval base that houses ballistic missile submarines, according to independent analysts.
An unnamed spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington denied the Chinese ships had violated maritime rules and said U.S. ships had been conducting illegal surveying, the website of Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television (news.ifeng.com) reported.
"The U.S. claim about operating in high seas is out of step with the facts," the report quoted the spokesman as saying. "The U.S. navy vessel concerned has been consistently conducting illegal surveying in China's exclusive economic zone," the station quoted the spokesman as saying.
"China believes this contravenes international laws of the sea and China's relevant laws."
Chinese authorities had "repeatedly used diplomatic channels to demand that the U.S. side cease unlawful activities in China's exclusive economic zone," the report added.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry was unavailable for comment.
U.S. defense officials said the incident followed days of increasingly aggressive Chinese conduct in the area, including fly-bys by Chinese maritime surveillance planes.
It comes just weeks after the two sides resumed military talks, postponed in November after a U.S. announcement of arms sales to Taiwan, a self-ruled island China claims as its own.
And it echoes a stand-off in 2001 between U.S. and Chinese military forces after a U.S. spy plane made an emergency landing on Hainan after a collision with a Chinese fighter jet. China released 24 crew after a U.S. apology.
NO MAJOR FALLOUT TO TIES-ANALYST
The dispute is unlikely to do deep damage to Sino-U.S. ties when both sides are grappling with the global financial crisis, but it suggests Beijing will take a tougher stance as its naval ambitions grow, said Shi Yinhong, an expert on regional security at Renmin University in Beijing.
"The United States is present everywhere on the world's seas, but these kinds of incidents may grow as China's naval activities expand," said Shi.
The Impeccable is one of five ocean surveillance ships that serve with the U.S. 7th Fleet, which is based in Yokosuka, Japan. The ships use low-frequency sound to search for undersea threats including submarines, a U.S. military official said.
A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said the Chinese vessels had surrounded the Impeccable, waving Chinese flags and telling the U.S. ship to leave.
The Pentagon also described accounts of half a dozen other incidents dating back to March 4, in which the Impeccable and its sister vessel, USNS Victorious, were subjected to aggressive behavior.
Oil prices rose on news of the maritime jostling, although analysts said it was hard to see how the tension could threaten oil supplies or inflate prices.
"I can see the geopolitical risk between two producing countries. But the U.S. and China are two major consumers. I don't know why oil prices would rise on that," said Tony Nunan, risk management manager at Tokyo-based Mitsubishi Corp.
The confrontation coincides with two sensitive anniversaries in Tibet, making China especially sensitive to outside scrutiny of its affairs. It also comes as neighboring North Korea says it is on full combat readiness in response to the start of annual military exercises by U.S. and South Korean troops.
Analyst Shi said the seas off Hainan were important to China's projection of its influence with a modern naval fleet.
"The change is in China's attitude. This reflects the hardening line in Chinese foreign policy and the importance we attach to the strategic value of the South China Sea."
Denny Roy, an expert on Asia-Pacific security at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, said the confrontation appeared intended to send a message to Washington.
"I don't think this happened spontaneously," he said. "...No doubt it had the endorsement of central leaders in Beijing."
A recent study of China's rising power by a top People's Liberation Army thinktank said the country should seek to avoid confrontation with Washington but not shrink when pressed.
"We don't want to stir up trouble, but nor will we fear it," said the study published last year by the PLA Academy of Military Science in Beijing.
"Especially on core interests involving our country's national unity and territorial integrity, we must keep an actively enterprising stance, defying brute force and daring to flash our sword." |
Personally, I'd like to see one of our ships ram them when they get so close. They can always say that they didn't have time to stop. |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
sharkey
Joined: 12 Oct 2008
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 9:05 pm Post subject: Re: WHY IS THE PRC NAVY BEING CONFRONTATIONAL? Take Poll |
|
|
| ManintheMiddle wrote: |
Personally, I'd like to see one of our ships ram them when they get so close. They can always say that they didn't have time to stop. |
Last edited by sharkey on Mon Mar 09, 2009 9:08 pm; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
sharkey
Joined: 12 Oct 2008
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 9:07 pm Post subject: Re: WHY IS THE PRC NAVY BEING CONFRONTATIONAL? Take Poll |
|
|
lol
Last edited by sharkey on Mon Mar 09, 2009 9:09 pm; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
sharkey
Joined: 12 Oct 2008
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 9:07 pm Post subject: Re: WHY IS THE PRC NAVY BEING CONFRONTATIONAL? Take Poll |
|
|
| ManintheMiddle wrote: |
Personally, I'd like to see one of our ships ram them when they get so close. They can always say that they didn't have time to stop. |
sounds like a great foreign policy agenda.. having million, perhaps billion dollar ships ram each other on the high seas with both ships probably laidened with nuclear weapons and other deadly weaponry... are you really that stupid? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
The evil penguin
Joined: 24 May 2003
Location: Doing something naughty near you.....
|
| Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 11:11 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Maybe i've really lost my bearings here....... but maybe the chinese are simply sick of US forces strutting around the globe as if they own it. Sure it's technically international waters, but what the hell are american ships doing in that particular region in the first place? It's not illegal to sit in a car on the public street looking at houses. But how would you feel if known house-invaders were parked outside your house and were trying to peer with binoculars through your windows? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
ManintheMiddle
Joined: 20 Oct 2008
|
| Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 1:17 am Post subject: |
|
|
evil penguin:
Yes, you've lost you're bearings.
World powers spy on one another. They've been doing that for a century or more. Of course, the US is spying on the submarine bases on Hainan. You do know about them, right?
Surely you aren't suggesting that while Western nations abide by international treaties on water rights that the Chinese don't need to?
sharkey:
Sorry to disrupt your sensibilities. Actually, I'd prefer a B-52 strike on these ships. But seriously, I was saying this only in jest. Nonetheless, the more the Chinese push the envelope (the US has had surveillance ships in the area for 15 years without much incident), the more likely a mishap will occur. And you can bet the Chinese will be the first to cry foul even if they provoke it. That's the Asian way.
Last time this happened, the Chinese fighter pilot got to close to the American spy plane and we all know what happened next.
And if either of you think that the Chinese don't regularly spy on US installations, then I've got oceanfront property in Nevada to sell to you. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
The evil penguin
Joined: 24 May 2003
Location: Doing something naughty near you.....
|
| Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 2:19 am Post subject: |
|
|
| ManintheMiddle wrote: |
evil penguin:
Yes, you've lost you're bearings.
World powers spy on one another. They've been doing that for a century or more. Of course, the US is spying on the submarine bases on Hainan. You do know about them, right?
Surely you aren't suggesting that while Western nations abide by international treaties on water rights that the Chinese don't need to?
sharkey:
Sorry to disrupt your sensibilities. Actually, I'd prefer a B-52 strike on these ships. But seriously, I was saying this only in jest. Nonetheless, the more the Chinese push the envelope (the US has had surveillance ships in the area for 15 years without much incident), the more likely a mishap will occur. And you can bet the Chinese will be the first to cry foul even if they provoke it. That's the Asian way.
Last time this happened, the Chinese fighter pilot got to close to the American spy plane and we all know what happened next.
And if either of you think that the Chinese don't regularly spy on US installations, then I've got oceanfront property in Nevada to sell to you. |
If the tables were turned and the chinese or russian navies were continually hovering off the coast of USA, just inside the international water boundary with clear openly hostile intentions of spying and/or strategic military positioning, are you suggesting that the good ol' defending forces of america would simply cry "oh golly gee" and go back to whatever they do when not acting aggressively to other countries?
I don't support china's actions.. but then again i don't agree with the tendency of the US to impose throw it's military weight around in regions far removed from american national boundaries. The US crying foul over the incident is somethng akin to a schoolyard bully running home to his mummy after another kid threw a pencil at him. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
jvalmer
Joined: 06 Jun 2003
|
| Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 2:46 am Post subject: |
|
|
You should have added another choice, that China doesn't want US military ships spying near their waters and just wants to send a message that they're watching.
If you actually believe they were only doing "marine surveys", then pigs can fly. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
ReeseDog
Joined: 05 Apr 2008
Location: Classified
|
| Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 5:57 am Post subject: |
|
|
| ...and if you believe that the US gives a flying fork what the Chinese think about where they happen to park their vessels, pigs fly then, too. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
mnhnhyouh
Joined: 21 Nov 2006
Location: The Middle Kingdom
|
| Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 6:48 am Post subject: Re: WHY IS THE PRC NAVY BEING CONFRONTATIONAL? Take Poll |
|
|
| ManintheMiddle wrote: |
Personally, I'd like to see one of our ships ram them |
Why is it that most people can recognise what is wrong with this on an international forum, but some cant?
h |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Leslie Cheswyck
Joined: 31 May 2003
Location: University of Western Chile
|
| Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 7:00 am Post subject: |
|
|
| We spy on them, they spy on us. Who is "shocked" by this? Oh, I know. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
|
| Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 8:34 am Post subject: |
|
|
| The evil penguin wrote: |
| Maybe i've really lost my bearings here....... but maybe the chinese are simply sick of US forces strutting around the globe as if they own it. Sure it's technically international waters, but . . . |
Yes, its technically international waters.
| the evil penguin wrote: |
But how would you feel if known house-invaders were parked outside your house and were trying to peer with binoculars through your windows? |
I would feel so angry, those arrogant Americans, what, do they think they have the privilege of conducting research in international waters unmolested?
*shakes head* |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
|
| Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 8:52 am Post subject: |
|
|
| China regards all of the South China Sea as her territory. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
|
| Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 10:18 am Post subject: |
|
|
| ManintheMiddle wrote: |
evil penguin:
Yes, you've lost you're bearings. |
Agreed. That or he never had any to begin with. In fact, sounds like another of N. Chomsky's parrots to me. And N. Chomsky takes his bearings from the New Left and its politics and agenda. And that is what the Evil Penguin is mimicking here.
All that being said, I share C. Layne and others' opinion that we ought to reach out to the Chinese as equals in a modified global order, more along the lines of FDR's "four policeman" model. This means we pull back from those sea lines of communication (and this is why we patrol locations such as the South China Sea, for all of those posters who remain ignorant but opinionated on the matter) that the Chinese Navy could eventually patrol. "Off-shore balancing," Layne calls it. Other partners include a Franco-German alliance in the EU. Layne also proposes Tehran -- but I think he has lost his mind on that one. Would rather consider Turkey or India, or as a last result, Egypt, to patrol the Arabian Sea/Indian Ocean SLOCs and the eastern Med.
Also, I chose your first option. The Chinese govt has adopted an unhelpful style in articulating its sphere-of-influence on the high seas. Then again, who knows what Washington and Beijing are saying to each other behind-the-scenes these days...?
| Quote: |
| At one point during the incident the unarmed USNS Impeccable turned fire hoses on an approaching Chinese ship in self defense, the Pentagon said. At another point a Chinese ship played chicken with the Americans, stopping dead in front of the Impeccable as it tried to sail away, forcing the civilian mariners to slam on the brakes. |
FoxNews Reports
Their singling out and then outnumbering smaller, unarmed American ships does not make them look like an emerging power by the way. When we asserted our sphere-of-influence in the Caribbean we (a) dictated a solution to Britain and Venezuela in a boundary dispute 1895 (per the Venezuelan govt's request); and (b) defeated the Spanish Navy in open battle in 1898. And before us, the British Navy established its position on the high seas through a war against Spain and especially the Napoleonic Wars. What the Chinese Navy is doing today just looks Mickey Mouse in comparison.
________
Mnhnhyouh: you sound like the Thought Police. Relax. We Americans -- or any other nationality, for that matter -- can use the first-person plural here if we please. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
ManintheMiddle
Joined: 20 Oct 2008
|
| Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2009 12:00 am Post subject: |
|
|
The fallout continues, with the Chinese military leadership now making completely asses of themselves:
| Quote: |
China navy officers harangue U.S. over ocean spat
By Chris Buckley Chris Buckley
Wed Mar 11, 2009
BEIJING (Reuters) � Senior Chinese navy officers poured scorn on the United States in the wake of a weekend naval confrontation, with one saying the "Americans are villains crying foul" as fallout between the two giants simmered.
In comments carried by the official China News Service, Chinese officers repeated their government's view that a U.S. naval vessel had violated the country's sovereignty during an encounter with Chinese boats in the South China Sea on Sunday.
Five Chinese boats jostled with the U.S. Navy survey vessel in waters off China's southern Hainan island, a major base for Beijing's expanding navy.
A senior U.S. intelligence official said the confrontation showed China's increasingly aggressive military stance in the South China Sea.
But Beijing pressed its claim the U.S. vessel was in the wrong.
"The Americans are villains crying foul first," said Zhang Deshun, a Chinese navy deputy chief of staff, the China News Service reported late on Tuesday.
"The U.S. side has twisted the facts. The U.S. survey ship was operating in China's exclusive economic zone on its continental shelf. Our vessels were just going about normal business ... This was itself harming China's sovereignty."
Chinese newspapers and websites played down the spat, apparently to avoid any diplomatic fallout.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry reissued on its website on Wednesday a statement by spokesman Ma Zhaoxu at a briefing on Tuesday, but dropped a phrase about the Americans "confusing black and white."
A Communist Party commissar in the navy, Wu Huayang, told the news agency the incident had been "stirred up by the U.S.."
There have been no signs the fracas will derail broader political and economic negotiations while Washington and Beijing are preoccupied with the global financial crisis.
Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi is visiting Washington to lay the groundwork for a meeting between Chinese President Hu Jintao and President Barack Obama at the G20 summit next month.
But the tough comments from China's navy suggest Beijing is hardening its stance on claims to stretches of the South China Sea.
"According to international sea laws and rules, in this (exclusive economic) zone the ships of various countries can merely pass through freely," said Wu, the commissar.
Chinese officials have said the U.S. vessel was carrying out illegal surveying activities.
U.S. National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair told Congress the Chinese had become more assertive in staking claims to international waters around economic zones and were "more military, aggressive, forward-looking than we saw a couple years before" in Southeast Asia and the South China Sea.
The United States accused China of harassing the U.S. ship, the Impeccable, in international waters off Hainan, site of a Chinese submarine base and other naval installations.
The Pentagon has said the American ship, an unarmed ocean surveillance vessel, was conducting routine operations in the South China Sea 75 miles south of Hainan.
But China insists the Impeccable's operations were neither routine nor legal.
The Impeccable was specifically designed to deploy two underwater listening devices to augment the Navy's anti-submarine warfare capability, according to http://www.globalsecurity.org.
"If people are loitering outside your bamboo fence and the owner goes out to check on things, and then they say you've violated their rights, what's the sense in that?" said Jin Mao, a Chinese vice admiral, according to the news agency. |
Is it just me, or are the Chinese acting immaturely here? I mean, this is utter rubbish, as the Brits would say. They know that we know that they are spying on us, not only off our coasts but industrial espionage of the most illegal sort and yet they seem to find our behavior galling.
Part of me thinks its mere posturing like puff fish. Another part of me thinks they're saving face (until I remember that jingoism is on the rise in China). So what gives?
Some of the posters here are really naive about these matters. Do you guys really believe China doesn't spy in kind? If nothing else, they are ignoring international laws and standards, thumbing their noses at it all like schoolyard bullies in the sandbox.
But oh my the usual leftist suspects always want to make it seem that the U.S. is being bellicose. If McCain were in office, they'd be in more vocal about it. Yet it's one of their own or almost one of their own and still they can't rationalize it. Can you say ideologically driven? Really, some of the posters here remind me of the cowards and sell-outs who work for that great propaganda machine otherwise known as CCTV and CRI Radio in Beijing just to get some on-air experience.
The Chinese haven't got a leg to stand on and the notion that they reacted without provocation is a joke. Let's see if Obama has any spine; I know his Secretary of Defense has one, since he was nominated by Bush. But what of the weak-kneed liberals in his cabinet?
And Jonathan Swift:
Go back to your Scriblerus Club because I'll keep using the plural pronoun to refer to OUR military regardless of whether you take umbrage. Oh so sorry to disturb your sensibilities.
jvalmer:
I wasn't suggesting that this was marine mapping although this ship has that capacity and the crew is civilian. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
