Posted on 08/20/2012 9:20:15 AM PDT by mojito
...On June 21, China's State Council approved the establishment of a new national prefecture which it named Sansha, with its headquarters on Woody Island in the Paracel Islands....
The Paracels are more than 200 miles southeast of Hainan, mainland China's southernmost territory, and due east of Vietnam's central coast. Vietnam adamantly claims sovereignty over the island group, the site of a battle in 1974 when China attacked the Paracels in order to oust soldiers of the former South Vietnamese regime.
[....]
These political acts have been matched by military and economic expansion. On July 22, China's Central Military Commission announced that it would deploy a garrison of soldiers to guard the islands in the area. On July 31, it announced a new policy of "regular combat-readiness patrols" in the South China Sea. And China has now begun offering oil exploration rights in locations recognized by the international community as within Vietnam's exclusive economic zone.
For all practical purposes China has unilaterally decided to annex an area that extends eastward from the East Asian mainland as far as the Philippines, and nearly as far south as the Strait of Malacca. China's new "prefecture" is nearly twice as large as the combined land masses of Vietnam, South Korea, Japan and the Philippines....
American reaction has been muted.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
The Muslim Brotherhood has seized Egypt.
China has seized the South China Sea.
US reaction has been "muted."
China may be the next Japan.
Sadly,all I can say to those countries is "good luck with that".
Ping.
“we don’t want to be the worlds only superpower” —MadelIne Albright
Since it’s been the rule of deposits everywhere to create international incidents to maintain domestic control, is it unreasonable to suspect that the rise in Chinese territorial assertions may betray a causal rise in domestic instability?
China believes—Might makes right. they want to get back their investment in a blue water navy. With America out of the picture due to the loans they have given us— they can do what they want—this is a trial balloon for future operations against Taiwan, and Vietnam. Only power that might counter them is India. Japan is weak, broken by the earthquake, and now limited in what they can do without the USA. China will run wild in the Pacific and if a war is fought it will be at sea—and if we lose—we could lose Hawaii, Guam, and Samoa.
The Paracels (now of Hainan Province) are shown on Chinese travel agency sites. China has also taken the Spratly Islands.
The Spratly Islands are further out to sea, to the south, closer to Malaysia and the Philippines.
If people start getting flu like symptoms after attending trade shows then maybe the rag heads have been reading Tom Clancy’s “Executive Order”.
Unfortunately the Muslim Manchurian candidate would not be able/willing to handle this.
Ping.
LOL Curse you Autocorrect! You mean despots, not deposits.
I forgot to mention earlier about the enormous amounts of oil under the Spratly Islands...omitted something very important there.
China has been rapidly building up its Navy, both in terms of quantity and quality for all that time and has ammassed a very strong fleet to cover the entire area inside the second island chain.
This is a huge statement by them...a shot across the bows.
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