Okinotorishima-ization: South China Sea arbitration case enters middle game

Asia Times ^ | Peter Lee

[Lorianne]

Two disputed geographic features in the South China Sea that are the focus of island-building by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Fiery Cross and South Johnson Reef, were both originally endowed with natural pre-existing rocks protruding above the waterline at high tide. That’s big news.

This state of affairs was pointed out by Bill Hayton, author of the highly-regarded The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia on his Twitter feed.

What’s even bigger news is that the Philippines has already admitted the fact, in its “Notification and Statement of Claim in the West Philippine Sea” delivered to the Chinese embassy in January 2013.

And the Philippine government might be kicking itself for making so generous an admission in its filing with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) Arbitration Commission seeking a ruling to invalidate the PRC’s notorious Nine-Dash-Line.

By conventional UNCLOS interpretation, an uninhabitable rock only gets a 12 mile territorial limit, not a 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone.

[Lorianne]

[Gay State Conservative]

The Butchers of Beijing have clearly been promised “flexibility” by Obola.Translation...the Philippines,Vietnam and Thailand are fresh out of luck if they had fantasies of controlling any of the billions of barrels of oil in the South China Sea.

[gaijin]

People don’t understand something:

If China takes one of all of the Senkaku Islands, that means there would still be totally uncontested Japanese islands nearby with long airfields —something militarily bad for retaining taken land.

Look up the Miyako Islands —there are almost 40,000 Japanese people living there, with airports totally capable of fielding the biggest PRC transports.

Many experts believe if China takes the Senkakus then they would ALSO have to take the Miyako Islands.

Some even say they’d have to take freaking OKINAWA.

You know what THAT means...

[gaijin]

Everyone knows Okinawa, but few understand that legally that "state" extends considerably more south, to the Miyako Islands, almost all the way to TAIWAN:

See Yonaguni? That's maybe 20 miles from Taiwan, and it's 100% Japanese. It's uncontested.

If China made a play for ANYTHING, it's very, very likely there and other islands would HAVE to come under attack.

[Ben Ficklin]

The key passage in the article is:

"With the United States not even a member of UNCLOS"

Both Bush and Obama tried and failed to get the senate to ratify UNCLOS.

[SES1066]

China deeply desires the ability exercised by the US & Great Britain, a true “Blue Water” Navy. Like the Soviet Union and its successor Russia, it is geographically stymied by choke points controlled by potential hostile nations. Japan controls from just below the Kamchatka Peninsula to Taiwan. Then you have the Philippine Islands leading to Indonesia, a literal ring around the China coastline.

Knowing the frustration of the Chinese leaders and their People Liberation Army Navy helps explain their desire to strike while Obama waffles! The South China Sea is a large basin with several CONSTRICTED exits but still an area with resources that China deeply desires to control! So making islands out of barely visible rocks and declaring 200 mile control radius is a good policy to the China Government.