|
Post by Admin on Jun 7, 2014 14:15:30 GMT
Vietnam has released a video showing a Chinese vessel sinking a Vietnamese fishing boat last week in the South China Sea. The Chinese ship in the video, played on National Television (VTV) Thursday, first separates two smaller Vietnamese fishing boats and then hits one of them, causing it to capsize and sink near the site of a controversial oil rig that China has located in disputed waters. Vietnam's state-owned TV channel calls the video “irrefutable evidence of China’s inhumane actions toward Vietnamese fishermen.” The captain of the lost fishing boat, Dang Van Nhan, told VOA's Vietnamese service last week that the Chinese vessels “came attacking us, trying to kill us.” Addressing the video Thursday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei, said the Vietnamese boats were the aggressors. “In the relevant seas, China’s ships were on the defensive and Vietnam’s ships were on the offence,” said Hong. "China’s ships were only about 17 nautical miles from China’s Zhongjian Island while Vietnam’s ships sailed a long way, almost 160 nautical miles, to reach the site. So which site initiated the clash at the site? Which side created tension at the site? This is very clear”. According to Vietnamese officials, Chinese ships have damaged 24 Vietnamese ships and injured 12 members of its fisheries surveillance force. The deployment of China’s oil rig in May sparked anti-Chinese protests in Vietnam, claiming acts of war on China’s part and breaking international law. These protests led to riots on Sunday in which Vietnamese protesters caused damage to buildings deemed to be owned by China and injured 100 Chinese citizens. China responded by evacuating 290 citizens from Vietnam. Another 7,000 approximately are due to exit the country this week. The Foreign Ministry of China confirmed two deaths of Chinese citizens during the riots in Vietnam as of May 16. Although these apparent acts of war caused by China and Vietnam’s dispute over the nine-dash-line and the UNCLOS Exclusive Economic Zone, China claims it is Vietnam breaking international law. “Vietnam is creating tension and violating international law,” stated during a daily briefing Tuesday by a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry. “Vietnam continues to conduct ramming activities.” These tensions are occurring alongside other territorial disputes between China and other Pacific Asian countries, including a dispute with Japan over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Jul 24, 2014 13:44:05 GMT
There’s no doubt that China’s Dong Feng 21D (DF-21D) anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) is, in theory, a formidable anti-access weapon. Since its alleged deployment circa 2010, many defense analysts have argued that the so-called “carrier killer” would be a game changer in any armed conflict in Northeast Asia and prevent the participation of U.S. carrier groups in regional contingencies, such as war in the Taiwan Strait. But is the missile really that much of a threat, or is all the hype part of an asymmetrical campaign by China to defeat its enemies without a fight? If last week’s statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee by Defense Intelligence Agency Director Michael T Flynn is any indication, the U.S. military is buying into the capabilities of the DF-21D. The unclassified version of Flynn’s annual threat assessment even states that China has augmented its 1,200 conventionally armed short-range ballistic missiles deployed opposite Taiwan with “a limited but growing number of conventionally armed, medium-range ballistic missiles, including the DF-21D.” But ever since the People’s Liberation Army then chief of general staff General Chen Bingde gave the first official confirmation in July 2011 that the PLA was developing the DF-21D ASBM, specifics about the missile have been few and far between, with officials refraining from discussing the program in detail. For the most part, the hype has been the result of reports in Chinese media, which were subsequently picked up by Western outlets and analysts — including the missile’s alleged maximum range of 2,700 km, which, it was later found, had been an erroneous addition by editors at the China Daily. Later assessments by the U.S. Department of Defense set the missile’s range “in excess of 1,500 km.” Although some analysis have posited that the lack of information given by Chinese officials about the DF-21D may stem from efforts to downplay the threat and thereby disincline U.S. and regional powers from developing effective countermeasures, the reverse could also be true. It is worth exploring the possibility that the DF-21D is an asymmetrical weapon whose utility is unrelated to whether the system has reached “initial operational capability.” In other words, the ASBM doesn’t have to be fully operational to meet China’s strategy of anti-access and area-denial within its sphere of influence. As long as there is enough uncertainty, and as long as experts worldwide vaunt the missile’s threat to carrier battle groups and other surface vessels within the region, the DF-21D will remain the ultimate deterrent. As far as we know, the PLA has yet to conduct a test of the ASBM with a moving target in the middle of the ocean — a huge challenge for even the most technologically advanced military. To date, the only alleged test has involved “sinking” an immobile carrier mockup in the Gobi desert, which, even if successful, hardly replicated actual combat conditions. And yet, despite never having conducted proper tests, we are told that the PLA has deployed the DF-21D, and many accept that at face value. The value of such deception is hard to overstate. The Chinese government may not have gone as far as to claim that it is producing DF-21Ds “like sausages,” as the former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev once famously said of his country’s nuclear missile production, but its decision not to correct misrepresentations in the media nevertheless encourage paranoia. This certainly reflects Sun Tzu’s saying that the acme of skill is one’s ability to subdue the enemy without fighting. This also has echoes of Myamoto Musashi, who famously said in The Book of Fire Rings that: “In battle, if you make your opponent flinch, you have already won.” What if our intelligence missed some crucial information, and China’s ASBM capabilities are far more advanced than we expected? Such questioning alone can be sufficient to deter intervention in second-tier (that is, of no existential value to the U.S.) conflicts where decision makers in Washington might not want to gamble an aircraft carrier over, say, Taiwan, or disputed islets in the South China Sea. Ironically, it also provides convenient ammunition to voices in the U.S. that have increasingly called on Washington to “abandon” Taiwan, which is far more important to China than it is to the U.S. One of China’s top mid-term objectives is to push U.S. naval forces out of what it regards as its backyard. It will use every means at its disposal — diplomacy, sweeteners, threats — to achieve this goal. It would be a terrible mistake to ignore deception as another tool in China’s box.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Nov 10, 2014 22:42:24 GMT
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held an ice-breaking meeting Monday on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific conference in Beijing, following more than two years of deep tensions over an island dispute. The spat between China and Japan over uninhabited East China Sea islands raised concerns of a military confrontation between Asia's two largest economics. China also has been angry over what it sees as effort by Japan to play down its brutal 20th century invasion and occupation of China. The meeting between Xi and Abe ahead of Tuesday's summit of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum gives rise to hopes the countries can dial down the tensions. Abe told reporters after the talks that the countries made a "first step" toward reconciliation. "I believe that not only our Asian neighbors but many other countries have long hoped that Japan and China hold talks," Abe said. "We finally lived up to their expectations and made a first step to improve our ties." China's state Xinhua News Agency said that Xi urged Japan to "do more things that help enhance the mutual trust between Japan and its neighboring countries, and play a constructive role in safeguarding the region's peace and stability." The two sides issued a joint statement on Friday agreeing to gradually resume political, diplomatic and security dialogues. In that statement, Japan said it acknowledged differing views over the status of the islands, called Diaoyu in Chinese and Senkaku in Japan. China has long demanded that Tokyo acknowledge that the islands' sovereignty is in dispute, something Japan has refused to do. China and Japan have had poor relations for decades, rooted in Japan's fears of China's economic and political rise and Beijing's sense of victimhood. Japan's nationalization of the islands in September 2012 infuriated Beijing, raising regional security fears as Chinese patrol ships repeatedly penetrated the surrounding waters to confront Japanese coast guard vessels. Tensions remained strained after the late 2012 election of Abe, a conservative nationalist who infuriated China when in 2013 he visited a Tokyo Shinto shrine honoring Japan's war dead, including executed war criminals — an act Beijing says shows Abe's insensitivity to China's suffering during the war. His government's reinterpretation of Japan's pacifist constitution to allow a greater role for its military has also raised alarms in Beijing.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Nov 11, 2014 22:42:28 GMT
An apparently innocuous gesture from Vladimir Putin, who put a shawl around the shoulders of China’s First Lady Peng Liyuan during a fireworks display, has attracted accusations of being Russia’s “Don-Juan-in-Chief” from Western media. The Russian president followed his country’s cold-weather etiquette, when he offered what appeared to be a shawl or blanket to Chinese Premier Xi Jinping’s wife during a chilly outdoor fireworks display at the APEC summit in Beijing. The camera caught the former renowned folk singer courteously accepting the offer, before exchanging the shawl for a coat handed to her by an assistant. Meanwhile, Xi sat a few meters away, talking animatedly to Barack Obama. Monday’s momentary humanizing episode might have passed without mention, but the image proved a boon for journalists possibly bored with the intricacies of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. “'Putin' On the Moves: Vlad Cozies Up to China's First Lady,” screamed NBC. “Putin Hits on China's First Lady,” asserted US magazine Foreign Policy. “Russia’s Don Juan-in-chief just got a little too friendly with Xi Jinping's wife.” “The first unspoken rule of diplomacy might be "Don't hit on the president's wife," but Russia's newly single president Vladimir Putin seems to have missed the memo,” it continued.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Feb 25, 2015 22:21:22 GMT
Recent satellite photos of an island off the coast of China confirm Beijing’s buildup of military forces within attack range of Japan’s Senkaku islands. Construction of a helicopter base on Nanji Island was observed by a commercial spy satellite in October. The island is off the coast of Zhejiang province—some 186 miles northwest of the Senkakus, a group of resource-rich islets China calls the Diaoyu Islands. The imagery, obtained from the Airbus Defense and Space-owned Pleaides satellite, reveals China is constructing an airfield with 10 landing pads for helicopters on Nanji Island. Military analysts said the new military base appears to be preparation by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army for an attack or seizure of the Senkakus. “China’s new heli-base on Nanji Island demonstrates that the PLA is preparing for an offensive military operation against the Senkaku/Daiyoutai Islands,” said Rick Fisher, a senior fellow with the International Assessment and Strategy Center. “If you want to rate the level of tension, this is the PLA reaching for its holster. When forces start deploying to Nanji Island, that means the hammer is cocked.” However, the satellite photos, reported last week by IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly, a trade publication, did not indicate construction of an airstrip, only helicopter landing pads. The helicopter pads are an indication that China plans to use the base for transporting troops and forces by helicopter and not for longer-range air transports or fighter jets. China has been engaged in a tense confrontation with Japan over the Senkakus since 2012, when Tokyo, in a bid to clarify the status of the uninhabited islands, purchased three of the islands from private owners in a bid to prevent Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara from buying them. Since then, Chinese ships and warplanes, as well as unmanned surveillance drones, have been flying close to the islands, prompting numerous Japanese maritime and aerial intercepts. Jane’s reported the helicopter base construction is new. The construction is not visible in photos taken earlier than October 2013. China’s Defense Ministry did not dispute the military buildup on Nanji. PLA Sr. Col. Yang Yujun told reporters in Beijing Dec. 25 that Japanese news reports of the construction were “irresponsible.” “There is no doubt that China has the right to conduct activities and construction on its own territory,” he said. “Some media in Japan make irresponsible speculations on China’s legitimate activities and construction and play up tensions in the region. It is pure media hype.” Questions were raised during the discussion with Yang as to whether the buildup is part of China’s declaration of an air defense identification zone over the East China Sea that covers the Senkakus.
|
|