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South Korea’s deployment of THAAD upsets China, seen as espionage tool
- tomohawk 9y agoChina has only themselves to blame. They've let their little client state (North Korea) get out of control to the point where they have nukes and have made threats of using them. If they didn't want a nuclear arms race amongst their neighbors, they should have taken appropriate action years ago.
- plandis 9y agoI really think you're oversimplifying the situation from the Chinese perspective.
- dba7dba 9y agoWhat is the Chinese perspective?
- venture_lol 9y agoIt's just a bomb, rather a bit larger than other bombs. What's the fuss? :)
- freerobots 9y agoThat the US is taking advantage of the NK situation to "ring China". I consider NK to be a serious threat to the US and her allies but I think the Chinese do not consider NK to be a serious threat to the Chinese. Imagine if Cuba decided to start allowing Chinese anti-missile defense systems at the US' doorstep because we weren't willing to deal with our ally Mexico regarding a conflict that didn't threat us.
- mikeash 9y agoI have a hard time seeing why we in the US should care in the least about a missile defense system in Cuba.
- freerobots 9y agoI would prefer that China plays a more active role in resolving the situation so I sort of hate to play devil's advocate here but... The missile defense systems we deployed in SK could be used to track Chinese missiles. My point was imagine the outcry from the US if we perceived that the Chinese were tracking our missiles under the guise of tracking Mexico's.
- azernik 9y agoTheir problem isn't with the interceptors; it's with the tracking radars. They could theoretically help counteract Chinese missiles and aircraft that are supposed to deny access to Chinese coastal waters in the case of war with the US.
- vtange 9y agoThis assumes we let Mexico develop nuclear weapons and delivery systems while threatening China and Cuba with nuclear attack... for at least a decade. It only makes sense for threatened parties to develop defense if not retaliatory measures. Imagine if the USSR never developed nuclear weapons while the USA threatened them with nuclear attack?
- arrosenberg 9y agoYou don't have to imagine. Go look at the US foreign policy from 1945-1948. There were several instances where the threat was made.
- Kocrachon 9y agoHow is it over-simplified? China is letting this happen because of a lot of the profits they make, and russia make, off of the dictatorship that there is. http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/15/world/asia/north-korean-labor-camps-in-siberia/ http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/15/world/asia/north-korean-labor-... Russia gets slaves from them, thats why Russia protects them. China both profits from them, but also doesn't want to deal with Refugees. So they make the selfish act of letting the child run crazy.
- hackuser 9y ago> China is letting this happen because of a lot of the profits they make ... How do you know the Chinese leadership's strategic thinking about NK? Also, that hypothesis doesn't explain the massive resources, including blood, they spent defending NK. I don't think NK's 25 million citizen labor pool, likely operating at extremely low-productivity levels and less than 1/40th of China's, makes much economic impact. Nor does China want competition from cheap labor.
- Dagwoodie 9y agoNK Has strategic value to China more than anything I believe. Although, maybe China just doesn't know what to do with North Korea and therefore just tries to get along with them as best they can, or they are actually happy to have NK on a leash and remain friendly enough to keep NK from biting them.
- tomohawk 9y agoHow so? China is their largest trading partner and NK is building the missiles using Chinese parts. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/kim-jong-uns-rockets-are-getting-an-important-boost--from-china/2017/04/12/4893b0be-1a43-11e7-bcc2-7d1a0973e7b2_story.html?utm_term=.4bebc8d3a675 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/kim-j...
- wyager 9y agoNK shares a border with China and obviously can't trade with SK. It'd be miraculous if China wasn't their largest trading partner. I suspect almost all countries that don't get military hardware from the US or Russia build their missiles with Chinese parts.
- Kocrachon 9y agoYeah it's hard to feel sorry for them. They let this situation happen. This is an anti ballistic missile system, used to stop the very ballistic missiles NK is trying to launch. What did China honestly expect to happen? SK just leave itself open to attack?
- macmacaka 9y agoNK doesn't need ballistic missiles to attack SK. Artillery itself is enough to level Seoul to the ground.
- Para2016 9y agoDPRK artillery destroying Seoul with lightning speed is practically a meme at this point. I've been hearing it for decades and I find it hard to believe South Korea and the US with 10s of thousands of troops have no contingency plan and no rapid response for DPRK artillery fire on Seoul.
- paradite 9y agoYou make it sound like it is perfectly ethical and reasonable to interfere with another sovereign state's defense systems unilaterally. Edit: I think I have read much into the parent comment and made a strawman fallacy here.
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoWell, NK has been at times dependent on aid from China, so it doesn't seem too unreasonable to ask China to try to restrain NK's aggressiveness. On the other hand, your point would apply pretty well to China's response to South Korea's defense systems. (It's not just that China's calling it espionage; the article mentions serious hacking attacks.)
- paradite 9y agoYes, you have a point. But I would argue that while intelligence operations are commonplace practices of states, direct military actions require more thoughts and it is not something Chinese government would carry out without proper justification. Basically on this matter, the Chinese government has taken a similar approach as the previous US administration, which is to not take actions. On hindsight of course it is easy to say China (Obama) should have done this or that. But it was quite hard to justify actions against NK until pretty recently. And indeed actions were taken in the form of economic sanctions in light of recent events.
- fra 9y agoNo, the chinese government is not adopting the same stance as previous US admins. The US have an embargo against North Korea, whereas the chinese are selling them materials to build their missiles with. They could start by putting political pressure on them, levying trade sanctions and publicly denouncing their nuclear program.
- paradite 9y agoWhich they exactly did: North Korea’s Hydrogen Bomb Claim Strains Ties With China JAN. 6, 2016 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/world/asia/north-korea-china-hydrogen-test.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/world/asia/north-korea-ch... China announces sanctions against North Korea 5 April 2016 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-announces-sanctions-against-north-korea-a6969256.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-announces...
- disconnected 9y agoThe last time the USA tried to build a ballistic missile defence system, Ukraine got invaded and split into two (if not officially, at least practically). Turns out that when big powerful countries start feeling a bit squeezed, they create buffer zones. By invading a neighbour. Not trying to make up excuses for any of the parties involved here. Just pointing out that China likely won't sit on its ass as this happens. The only silver lining I see is that maybe this will provide China with the incentive to just throw Kim under the bus (literally under a bus... or a tank) and put some less belligerent puppet in his place.
- germinalphrase 9y agoIt is speculated that this is why his step-brother, Kim Jong-Nam, was recently assassinated. It helps solidify Kim Jong Un's leadership in NK. Without a ready replacement, this probably escalates the situation further.
- hackuser 9y ago> Just pointing out that China likely won't sit on its ass as this happens China already is behaving aggressively, expanding territory under its control (e.g., in the S. China Sea) and threatening to do so elsewhere (e.g, in the Senkaku islands). They may try to justify their next aggression by blaming someone, but that isn't meaningful. The same applies to Russia, which already had annexed part of Georgia and clearly had designs on the southern Ukrainian province of Crimea (which did nothing to protect them against missiles). They justify their behavior, like all bad actors throughout history. Look at the Nazi's list of excuses as they snatched territory in the run-up to WWII. The U.S. and others can't be intimidated into inaction while aggressors like Russia and China keep moving forward, for fear of 'upsetting' their tender feelings.
- mtanski 9y agoThe NYTimes The Daily podcast this week had an interesting explanation of this situation. N. Korea is not really a a proxy state, the best you can call it is a rogue proxy state. It's not like it doesn't extort China too. It knows China doesn't want instability on it's border. Funnily enough the rest of the world thinks China can snap it's fingers and get the situation fixed up. The rest of the world is perplexed why it's not happening. The analogy they made is to Israel. The whole world thinks that Israel is a proxy of the US. The rest of the world doesn't understand why the U.S just can't get Israel to stop building settlements. In fact when the U.S makes a public stink about it, Israel builds new settlements out of spite. So the term is ... rogue proxy. I believe this is the episode: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/17/podcasts/the-daily/north-korea-sabotage-and-diplomacy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/17/podcasts/the-daily/north-... . Not a 100% sure about it, since I listened to it in my podcast feed and just did a search for it.
- dba7dba 9y agoThe funny thing is China deployed long range radar system that can monitor the sky of S. Korea AND Japan like 10 years ago...
- imglorp 9y agoWhat a disaster in that region last few weeks... Let's review: SK impeached its president; NK tested more missiles; US bungled the messaging of the armada, reversed position on China's currency manipulation, then "realized it's not so easy"; then China spins PR against SK for deploying a defense, then they add on some passive aggressive internet hacking. Maybe things aren't so bad elsewhere.
- dba7dba 9y agoActually I don't think it's that bad for South Korea, despite what some media says. 1. impeachment: Ultimate example of democracy at work. And no general stepped forward to declare he must rescue the nation from the chaos or did the society collapse. All institutions are working as they should. Unlikely to see such calm transition of power when a president is impeached in non-developed nations. 2. NK is NK, always firing missiles, even before all this. 3. S Korean govt is at least able to respond and/or have US willing to put in the weight to respond. Remember Ukraine? No seriously, S Korea cannot be compared with other places with bad things happening now.
- walshemj 9y agotheatre defence is seen as espionage lol its not like both China and the USA haven't got massive elint/sigint operations
- brilliantcode 9y agoChina has no one but Xi is to blame. He gets an F for foreign policy. By delaying action on North Korea at the beginning of their nuclear ambition, they've increased tensions in the region with very little benefit to China and a ton of win for US, S. Korea & Japan by having powerful THAAD radars. It is the radars that is the bigger issue because it diminishes China's nuclear projection in the region.
- kahrkunne 9y agoGood, let them fight each other instead of us and our allies.