Generational Dynamics World View

[John J. Xenakis]

*** 22-Sep-18 World View -- China threatens multiple Western nations militarily over South China Sea

This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• China threatens multiple Western nations militarily over South China Sea
  
• China's claims to the South China Sea are amazingly vacuous
  

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**** China threatens multiple Western nations militarily over South China Sea
****


Radar towers, hangars and five-story buildings can be seen on Fiery Cross Reef from an onboard camera on a U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon reconnaissance plane. (NY Times)

Two weeks ago, the HMS Albion, a British Royal Navy flagship
amphibious assault ship, was traveling through the South China Sea, en
route from Tokyo to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) in Vietnam. On August
31, the ship exercised its "freedom of navigation" rights as it passed
near the Paracel Islands. The Paracel Islands have been ruled by the
courts to be in international waters, but China has used military
force to annex them, in clear violation of international law. China
immediately launched a military challenge in the form of a frigate and
two helicopters, although both sides remained calm.

However, the Albion's freedom of navigation operation continues to
trigger hysterical, irrational threats by the Chinese. In the
aftermath of the incident, China made the usual threats, and these
statements have been growing more hysterical and threatening as time
goes on.

China's embassy in London issued this statement:

<QUOTE>"The [Paracel Islands are] an inherent part of the
Chinese territory. In accordance with the Law of the People's
Republic of China on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone,
the Chinese government promulgated the baseline of the territorial
sea of the [Paracel Islands] in May, 1996. The relevant behavior
of the British warship violated Chinese law and relevant
international law and infringed upon China's sovereignty. China is
firmly opposed to this. We have lodged stern representations with
the British side and expressed our strong dissatisfaction.

The Chinese side strongly urges Britain to stop this kind of
provocation lest it should undermine the overall picture of
bilateral ties as well as regional peace and stability. China will
continue to take all necessary measures to safeguard its
sovereignty and security."<END QUOTE>

The claim that the Paracel Islands are an inherent part of
Chinese territory is really laughable, as I'll explain below.
China has NO sovereignty there.

China's Ambassador to Britain Liu Xiaoming has said that the freedom
of navigation in the South China Sea has never been a problem, warning
that no one should underestimate China's determination to uphold
"peace and stability" in the region:

<QUOTE>"Yet to everyone’s confusion, some big countries
outside the region did not seem to appreciate the peace and
tranquility in the South China Sea. They sent warships
and aircraft all the way to the South China Sea to create
trouble. ...

This was a serious infringement [of China's sovereignty]. It
threatened China's security and put regional peace and stability
in jeopardy.

"Freedom of navigation is not a license to do whatever one wishes.
...

"Such 'freedom' must be stopped. Otherwise the South China Sea
will never be tranquil."<END QUOTE>

This is a military threat. The ambassador claims that it's about
warships making trouble, but it's also about fishing boats and oil.
China has repeatedly used military force to prevent Vietnam and the
Philippines from fishing in international waters, and as we recently reported,
China threatened war
with the Philippines if the latter drills for oil in its own
territorial waters.

In the last five years, islands near the Philippines have
turned into Chinese military bases, bristling with radar domes,
shelters for missiles, and warplane runways.

In 2015, Xi stood in the Rose Garden at the White House and promised,
"there is no intention to militarize" the South China Sea, which is
exactly what happened. Xi's lie is standard Chinese policy, as
advised by 1980s Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping: "Observe calmly; secure
our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide
our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim
leadership."

But since 2015, China has completely abandoned Deng's advice, and is
now openly militaristic and threatening, and preparing to launch a
war.

According to a Pentagon assessment, China's military bases in the
Spratly Islands will be completed by the end of the year, and
presumably ready for full-scale war. The only question is what will
China do next -- take immediate military action, or else start
building military bases in Scarborough, in Philippines territorial
waters, an act of war in itself.

In May, U.S. Indo-Pacific commander Adm. Philip Davidson said, "In
short, China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all
scenarios short of war with the United States."

China does not recognize international law except when it favors
China. China believes that its own law supersedes international law.
China has been pursuing the Nazi Lebensraum objective,
at least since the time of Chiang Kai-shek
after World War II. The Chinese Communist Party view of Han Racial
Superiority is no different than the Nazi view of the Aryan Master
Race.

The "freedom of navigation operations" (FONOPs) are being conducted by
the US, Britain, Australian, and Japan. There's a temptation just to
abandon them, and just let China have its way. But then China would
just declare victory, and make further demands, prohibiting any other
country's vessels of any kind to pass through the South China Sea
without explicit permission of the Chinese.

So the Chinese make their hysterical statements and military threats
to "prove" their claims. The FONOPs are necessary to refute China's
hysterical statements and military threats. This is exactly the kind
of tit-for-tat escalation that leads to war during a generational
Crisis era.

The same thing is happening with trade policy between the US and
China. Neither the Trump administration nor Xi Jinping is going to
back down. Perhaps some intermediary can work for a truce of some
kind, but it's more likely that the tit-for-tat trade escalations will
also continue.

As I've written in the past, Generational Dynamics predicts that we're
headed for full-scale war with China with 100% certainty, and Donald
Trump is well aware of this. Many of his policies, which are totally
inscrutable and incomprehensible to the media, make perfect sense when
you realize that they're intended to try to prevent a world war.
Preventing a world war is impossible, but I'm not going to criticize
Trump for trying. Chinese Embassy in UK and Xinhua
and NY Times and South China Morning Post

****
**** China's claims to the South China Sea are amazingly vacuous
****

As we all know, in 2016 the Philippines won a historic case in the
United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague thoroughly
humiliating China by ruling that all of China's activities in the
South China Sea are illegal and in violation of international law.

The Chinese ambassador's statement quoted above says that "the British
warship violated Chinese law and relevant international law and
infringed upon China's sovereignty." China has no sovereignty in the
South China Sea. China's use of the phrase "relevant international
law" is laughable, since China believes itself superiod to
international law.

In recent weeks, I've been doing my own research on China's claims
to the South China Sea.

First, let's address the name, "South China Sea." This does not mean
that China owns it, any more than India owns the Indian Ocean. The
name South China Sea was invented by Westerners, around 1900. Prior
to that, different countries used various names, including Cham sea,
Luzon sea, Clove sea, South sea, East sea, and West Philippine sea.
According to historian Philip Bowring:

<QUOTE>"Do not imagine that the term “South China Sea” ever
implied Chinese ownership. It is a Western construction that dates
to about 1900. Previously, European maps referred to it as the
China Sea, and before that as part of the Indian Sea. When the
Portuguese arrived there in the early sixteenth century they
called it the Cham Sea, after the maritime kingdom of coastal
Vietnam. Other names at various times include Luzon Sea and (by
early Arab traders) the Clove Sea. To China it has long been the
South Sea and to Vietnamese the East Sea. The Philippines now
refers to it as the West Philippine Sea.

“Malay seas” is another term that has been applied to it and its
immediate neighbors, the Java, Sulu, and Banda seas. The South
China Sea itself is predominantly a Malay sea, as defined by the
culture and language group of the majority of people living along
its shores. Until European imperialism from the sixteenth century
onward gradually snuffed out these trade-based kingdoms and
sultanates, they were the region’s principal
traders."<END QUOTE>

The Chinese claim sovereignty going all the way to the Han Dynasty in
the 2nd century BC. Once again, this is laughable.

Starting from the beginning of the first millennium BC, there were
Malay-Polynesian people settling in all the Pacific islands from
Madagascar to Taiwan, conducting trade. This continued through most
of the 1st and 2nd millennium AD.

Ironically, China had no interest in these islands throughout this
period, and in fact discouraged its own traders from venturing out,
preferring to wait for foreign traders to come to China.

China was busy looking westward, conquering Central Asian lands,
including the Tibetans and the Uighur Turks. Today, these ethnic
groups the ones that China is treating as violently as possible. It's
even now emerging that China has locked up a million Uighurs in
reeducation camps, and has separated Uighur children from their
parents and locked them up in indoctrination camps.

This is standard Chinese practice. During Mao's Great Leap Forward,
500 million peasants were taken out of their homes and put into
communes, with children, wives and husbands all living separately.
Husbands and wives were allowed to be alone only at certain times of
the month and only for brief periods. All workers took part in
ideological training sessions. The purpose was to turn the population
into a giant machine, proving that Communism was better than anything
else. It was a disaster, resulting in tens of millions of deaths.
Now the Chinese are using the same techniques on the Uighurs, though
with different objectives, but just as likely to end in disaster.

Significantly, China's historical conquests were all to the west, but
never to the east. China tried to conquer Korea, but failed. China
apparently made no attempt to conquer the Philippines the way they
conquered the Uighurs. If they had, then the Chinese claim to the
South China Sea might actually have some validity.

So the historical evidence indicates that China wanted absolutely
nothing to do with the South China Sea until recently. It was only
after WW II that they decided that they had gotten enough Lebensraum
to the west, and now wanted Lebensraum to the east. They backed up
their claims by dredging up old maps and documents that were
supposedly created centuries ago, but those are meaningless. If
having a map of something means you own it, then the British
Geological Survey owns the whole world. National Geographic (18-Jun-2014) and New York Review of Books (13-Sep-2017) and Ancient History Encyclopedia

Related Articles

• Britain 'provokes' China by sending warship into South China Sea (07-Sep-2018)
  
  
• Tensions grow in Philippines as Duterte turns against China in South China Sea (11-Sep-2018)
  
  
• Philippines humiliates China in harsh Hague Tribunal ruling over South China Sea (13-Jul-2016)
  
  
• China's media 'accidentally' claims Philippines as part of China (10-May-2012)
  

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, China, South China Sea,
Britain, HMS Albion, Paracel Islands,
Liu Xiaoming, Philippines, Deng Xiaoping, Xi Jinping,
Philip Davidson, Chiang Kai-shek, Australia, Japan,
United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague,
Scarborough Shoal, India, Indian Ocean,
Cham sea, Luzon sea, Clove sea, South sea,
East sea, West Philippine sea, Malay seas,
Malay-Polynesian, Madascar, Taiwan,
Uighurs, Tibetans, Nazis, Lebensraum,
British Geological Survey

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John J. Xenakis
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