Posted on 07/11/2026 2:03:52 PM PDT by EnderWiggin1970
On July 4, Beijing announced it had launched a new sea patrol to replace a group of ships that, in June, were an integral part of China’s effort to control waters far from its shoreline. In an extraordinary move last month, Beijing claimed part of the Pacific Ocean as sovereign Chinese water.
On June 6, China’s Ministry of Transport launched “a special maritime law enforcement operation in the waters east of Taiwan Island.” Vessels from the Fujian and Guangdong Maritime Safety Administrations, the East China Sea Navigation Support Center and the East China Sea Rescue Bureau took part, sailing eastward through the Bashi Channel, which separates Taiwan from the Philippines.
According to Beijing, the operation lasted five days and Chinese ships inspected 198 vessels. All the Chinese ships taking part in the operation were civilian, which emphasized the point that Beijing was enforcing its laws over waters it considered part of the People’s Republic of China.
These waters were east of the main island of Taiwan and beyond 12 nautical miles from its shores. Coastal states can claim everything within 12 nautical miles of its shoreline as territorial or sovereign water. This means China, by its actions, was claiming as sovereign a portion of the Pacific recognized by the rest of the world, pursuant to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and customary international law, as part of the global commons.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
We need to build a bunch of AI controlled cheap little ships, whose sole purpose is to get in the way of and bump into Chinese naval vessels whenever they annoy us.
The unmanned component would always give us plausible deniability..... The Chinese annoy me a lot.
part of the Pacific Ocean as sovereign Chinese water.
= = =
OK, check the polution level of that water.
If it is really, really bad, it may just be Chinese water.
Anyplace with Chinese garbage belongs to China
Thank goodness that Congress, some thirty years ago, recognized the emerging Chinese threat and initiated restoration of a US Navy more than sufficient to deal with the CCP.
Just kidding.
We do not adequately despise Congress.
A narrow Pacific waterway is at the heart of U.S. plans to choke China’s vast navy
Reuters.com ^ | October 31, 20253:52 AM CDT | Karen Lema, David Lague and Lisa Marie David
Posted on 10/31/2025, 7:38:57 PM by E. Pluribus Unum
The U.S. has deployed troops and anti-ship missiles into the northern Philippines as part of almost continuous, joint war drills throughout the country. One goal is to block the Bashi Channel and deny Chinese warships access to the Pacific Ocean if Beijing launches an attack on Taiwan. As a former Philippine military chief told Reuters: You can’t invade Taiwan if you don’t control the northern Philippines.
BATANES, Philippines - Marilyn Hubalde still remembers the first time she heard the thunderous chop of military helicopters swooping over this northernmost outpost of the Philippines, less than 90 miles from Taiwan. It was April 2023, when Filipino and American troops descended on the cluster of 10 emerald green islands of Batanes province for amphibious warfare drills.
“We were terrified,” the 65-year-old Hubalde recalled. “We thought China might attack when they learned there were military exercises in Batanes.” Hubalde’s helper, who was in the fields when the troops arrived, panicked and hid in the woods until nightfall. “She thought the war had already started,” said Hubalde, who owns a variety store in the provincial capital, Basco.
Since then, Batanes’ 20,000 residents have become accustomed to high-tempo war games in these islands of tightly packed towns and villages wedged between rugged slopes and stony beaches. Among them: a series of joint exercises from April to June this year in which U.S. forces twice airlifted anti-ship missile launchers here.
Until recently, locals say, this smallest and least populous province of the Philippines was a peaceful backwater. But geography dictates that it is now on the frontline of the great power competition between the United States and China for dominance in the Asia-Pacific region. The islands sit on the southern edge of the Bashi Channel, a major shipping lane between the Philippines and Taiwan that connects the South...
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
I'm looking at a map, and I'm pretty sure you bloody well can try. Interdiction from the northern Philippines might be helpful in trying to defend Taiwan, but the notion that China can't invade a much closer island if we control one a good ways further away seems awfully farfetched.
The ChiComs are really good at finding dusty old maps that show China actually owns darn near the entire western Pacific.
Hey. If an old map shows it, it must be true.
This!!!
China is pushing things to the limit!
But is it sacred Han ancestor space protected by the Sea Dragons Foo and Fee?
Territorial Sea (12 NM): Extends up to 12 nautical miles from the baseline. The coastal state exercises sovereignty over the airspace, water column, seabed, and subsoil, though foreign vessels have the right of “innocent
passage.”
Contiguous Zone (24 NM): Extends up to 24 nautical miles from the baseline. States can enforce customs, fiscal, immigration, and sanitary laws here.
Exclusive Economic Zone - EEZ (200 NM): Extends up to 200 nautical miles from the baseline. The state has sovereign rights to explore, exploit, conserve, and manage natural resources (fishing, mining, energy) within this zone, but lacks territorial sovereignty.
Taiwan needs to be nuclear. The have the skills and technology and the plutonium. Give them designs to our best weapons. They could do it quickly. In a nuclear conflict between China and Taiwan, Taiwan would lose. If Taiwan had just 100 nukes and only half or less got to target, China would no longer be a functioning society.
Can China defeat Taiwan? Yes. Can Taiwan make the cost to high? Yes.
It is just like the bully on the school yard. Get two good guys to kick his ass or one bad ass good guy and the problem goes away.
China is saying that this area of the sea, though far from the mainland, belongs to them because they believe Taiwan belongs to them.
Historically both the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC) agreed there is only one China under the framework known as the 1992 Consensus. Under this consensus, both governments agreed that there is only one sovereign state encompassing both mainland China and Taiwan, but they disagree on which government is the legitimate representative of that state.
The Empire of China claimed everything that Zhang Hua sailed to in the 1300s. That would include the US West Coast, S.E Asia, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, and East Africa.
The PRC has picked up those claims
Since they assume that Taiwan is one of their states, why wouldn’t they think the water is theirs.
Taiwan is a province of China there is one China including Taiwan is what Jimmy Carter said to open up China economically in the first place back in the 1970’s.
Just a trick to get China to be used for cheap labor for US businesses now time for China to be enemy.
It’s above my paygrade but it’s what is going on.
“China is saying that this area of the sea, though far from the mainland, belongs to them because they believe Taiwan belongs to them.”
Any they can make a valid case for that . Even the US acknowledges their claim with the One China policy .
“Taiwan is a province of China there is one China including Taiwan is what Jimmy Carter said to open up China economically in the first place back in the 1970’s.
Just a trick to get China to be used for cheap labor for US businesses now time for China to be enemy.
It’s above my paygrade but it’s what is going on.”
You nailed it ! I’m with you !
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