9 ms·

China attacks fishing boats in conquest of South China Sea

132 points by throwawaysea 6y ago

throwaway69123 6y ago
It is hard to feel sorry for two communist countries having a border dispute.
- hvdfhbj 6y ago
  Yes, but legitimate governments such as the be Philippines and Malaysia are also the subject of the CCP's imperial claims.
  - DarthGhandi 6y ago
    The Malaysian government is very far from legitimate. It's run by the party who got dramatically voted out at the last election. Even their supporters call it a "backdoor" government. The former PM who stole billions and was found guilty of all charges was sentenced to 12 years in prison yet still sits in Parliament while getting friendly media interviews, he gave a speech on the budget just the other day representing all of the backbench. I always find the South China Sea discussions interesting because I'd love to hear who people actually think deserves ownership of it? The Philippines is run by a proud mass murdering nutjob, Vietnam is China-lite, Brunei just tried to roll out the death penalty for gay people. Malaysia is steadily gaining more extreme Islamists in power who bizarrely blame the Jews for everything that goes wrong like it's a country run by 4chan. Who exactly deserves all that oil and fish? It's none of the above in my opinion.
    - teleforce 6y ago
      Not sure why you are attacking and trolling all the claimants to the SCS by ad hominem most of the governments involved except China? Go and critically read history books/articles/etc my friend, not only by the colonial regimes namely Spain, British, Dutch and France that have plundered the countries that you have just mentioned, and what names these areas are collectively called (yes they have their names) few centuries back before the dark colonial era started. After that you probably know to whom the oil and fish belongs since these people have been fishing there for centuries. Truth and facts really matter but not your random opinions.
      - throwaway69123 6y ago
        Claims of ownership are often settled by strength and not by history. Alternatives present no real long term viability and are blind optimism.
bArray 6y ago
The reason they continue to do this is because they know without doubt other Countries will not treat their fishing vessels in the same way. There is zero consequences for their actions and they have zero reason to change their policy. You might say "the consequence is that they look bad", but they don't, at least not to the people they care about - mainlanders. They own and/or control the news media in mainland China. To produce an anti-CCP news piece in China is suicide for these companies. External "free" media have their own interests and biases, meaning they may or may not publish articles depending on whether they coincide with their goals. If a bad China news piece makes the current President they support look bad, do you really think it makes headline news? Honestly, I'm not really sure what to suggest here. Some HN users will post some ideas no doubt, but ultimately the most concerning thing is that none seem to have naturally emerged dominant so far.
- jruthers 6y ago
  Good analysis. Realistically, no entity, government or otherwise is taking any concrete steps to say no to China in the south China Sea. Doing "drive bys" is hardly actual action, like say dismantling a Chinese base made in international waters. THAT would be concrete action, and I bet they would get all upset but ultimately do nothing (unless it's too Australia, in which case they'll find some other product to ban). If nobody is going to stand up to them, it's all over already. In a generation, people will just say "oh isn't that all China's territory?"
  - hvdfhbj 6y ago
    One very simple action that we should be doing is changing the name of the "South China Sea" to something else.
    - platinumrad 6y ago
      Who is "we" here?
      - hvdfhbj 6y ago
nradov 6y ago
It turns out that many of China's territorial claims in the South China Sea are simply the result of errors in translations and cartography. They have no legitimate basis in law or history. http://cimsec.org/chinas-claim-spratly-islands-just-mistake/36474 http://cimsec.org/chinas-claim-spratly-islands-just-mistake/...
- verroq 6y ago
  No country has any “legitimate” claims to any land either.
  - zaptrem 6y ago
    Just like you have no “legitimate” “claim” to your smartphone, hand it over. Conquest isn’t the only way countries gain territory by a long shot, and whataboutism can’t justify what China’s doing today either.
    - hvdfhbj 6y ago
      A better point would be that the current CCP regime in Beijing has no legitimate claim to be any kind of government with any legal claim over any territory whatsoever. An unelected government is not a government, it's just a group of thugs who happen to have control over a capital city. If China has any sort of legitimate government at all it's the one in Taiwan which was at least elected by somebody. But really, mainland China has no government, and the CCP should not be talked to or negotiated with as if they are a government.
      - zksjejwbs 6y ago
        Your knowledge of history is so little that for you Washington is the guy who prints green notes. Jokes aside if the legitimate government are only the elected one lets wipe 2/3 of the world's government lol. Taiwan is a dispute territory because the kuomintang after they lost the civil war in China they moved to Taiwan and claimed the territory. Taiwan was not even a democracy after that but rather a military dictatorship with the martial law being applied till 1987 (from 1949, year in which they lost the civil war in China) Only after that Taiwan started to open their system and allow general election in the 1990s (in some form in 1991, 1992 and presidential election only in 1996) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Taiwan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Taiwan
throwawaysea 6y ago
This article spans a few different concerns with China's increasing aggression in foreign policy as it concerns the South China Sea: First, the Chinese fishing fleets increasingly are venturing far away from their own shores, just as fleets from other nearby countries are also venturing further from their own shores. This is because shore fishing is drying up, due to unsustainable overfishing and ecological collapse. China's distant fishing fleets are thought to have caused the deaths of impoverished North Koreans, by taking over catches from their waters (https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/china-illegal-fishing-fleet/ https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/china-illegal-fishing-fleet...). They are also taking over West African and Antarctic waters (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/beijing-fishing-fleet-subsidies-north-korea.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/beijing-fishing-...). They even have tried to fish off the Galapagos using giant factory fishing ships that allegedly turned off their AIS maritime tracking signals to avoid detection (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/21/china-squid-fleet-peru-coastguard-fishing https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/21/china-sq...). China operates the world's largest fishing fleet, with the largest volume of catch, and their scale of operation threatens environments and fishing economies worldwide. Secondly, the Chinese fishing fleet is highly aggressive and often violent. The NBC article I linked above details an incident where a large number of Chinese fishing vessels took shelter in a South Korean bay to ride out a storm, and also destroyed the environment during their short stay, illegally dumping oil, dragging anchors, and more. The LA times article I linked here also details how bigger Chinese fishing vessels (often with steel hulls subsidized by the Chinese government) will ram smaller fishing vessels from countries like Vietnam or the Philippines. They often steal equipment off those vessels, and even their entire catch, and leave the ship adrift and in need of repairs. And as the LA Times article noted, there are barbaric incidents where crew will hurl hammers or cement blocks at foreign crews of smaller vessels, or even beat them. Thirdly, encroachment in South China Sea waters is enabled by the increasing aggression of the Chinese naval fleet. Despite naval exercises by the US to assert rights of navigation, China has continued to expand a web of artificial islands that host barely-hidden naval installations with airstrips, missiles, and more. Although the US has made public statements asserting that China's claims to the South China Sea are unlawful (https://www.state.gov/u-s-position-on-maritime-claims-in-the-south-china-sea/ https://www.state.gov/u-s-position-on-maritime-claims-in-the...), that has not changed much on the ground for smaller nations who are victims of China's bullying on the high seas. In fact, in 2020 China's operations in the South China Sea are more aggressive than ever, with COVID serving as a convenient distraction for increased naval imperialism (https://asiatimes.com/2020/04/chinas-covid-19-imperialism-spreads-in-south-china-sea/ https://asiatimes.com/2020/04/chinas-covid-19-imperialism-sp...). With increasingly frequent incidents where one country detains another country's fishing vessels and crew, the situation is becoming charged and tense (https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/12/asia/malaysia-china-japan-sea-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/12/asia/malaysia-china-japan-sea...). China is accordingly stepping up its military activities, with naval exercises (https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/china/2020/china-201116-globaltimes05.htm https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/china/2020/c...) and testing of anti-ship ballistic missiles (https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/37662/chinese-long-range-ballistic-missiles-struck-moving-ship-in-south-china-sea-report https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/37662/chinese-long-ran...). Taking all this together, I can't help but view it as a complete failure of other Asian countries to cooperate against a mutual aggressor, and a failure of the liberal West to manage and contain China to the interest of many nations. Empty diplomatic statements, political posturing, and ineffective performative naval exercises are not the answer to a violent and aggressive actor. But no one is stepping up to answer the calls for help from poorer countries like Vietnam.
politelemon 6y ago
Is there any hope that the recent RCEP agreements would help the situation, or was this simply ignored during negotiations?
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  RCEP is mostly about tariffs and does not discuss concerns like environmental protection or border disputes. Ironically RCEP includes virtually all the nations that are at odds with China over naval and fishing aggression: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Comprehensive_Economic_Partnership#Membership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Comprehensive_Economi...
- dragonelite 6y ago
  Now with RCEP behind them ASEAN nations and China can now focus on the "Code of Conduct" in the south china sea.
trhway 6y ago
just go to youtube and search for "<country1> fires at <country2> fishing boats". That is international law at work - ie. the law of sheer force where stronger one is the right one - who has the [bigger] gun and/or closer to home fires at the one with no (or smaller) gun who is farther from home. That reminds about a friend who served in USSR coast guard and was telling stories back then how they were harassing Japanese fishermen who were illegally fishing in USSR waters - instead of shooting though, they would usually shake down the fishermen for various goodies.
roenxi 6y ago
We don't really know what the slow-rolling effects of shutting down a double-digit percentage of the world's economy is. War is a distinct possibility; we know from WWI that everything seems fine until everyone mobilises all at once. I hope the LA times are taking their responsibilities seriously and not reporting things in an incendiary way. I'd rather see an unfair peace in Asia than a big war in my lifetime. The US is an underdog against China here, China is bigger, has more ability to exert power and has much at stake.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
chaostheory 6y ago
With continually declining US, its presence to keep the peace is waning. Asia is looking more and more like Europe right before WWI. The main difference is the presence of global ballistic missiles. Hopefully, that will help keep the peace in a post US empire world
- thursday0987 6y ago
  hopefully, but given 30,000+ years of human history, they won't. the flash point will probably be when Xi Xinping dies of old age and the different chinese subfactions fight over who gets to be next president for life.
  - chaostheory 6y ago
    imo If you were right, we would have had WWIII in the 20th century already. The cost of war with nuclear weapons is just so high with MAAD that it has kept the peace. Of course, I could be wrong. It just takes one insane person...
BostonJiao 6y ago
At the end of the day, one has to have gunships to backup one’s claim.
chuckSu 6y ago
China will do whatever China wants to do because there will be no consequences. Just western governments “criticising” them but still consuming their goods which is fine with China. They don’t seem to care what anyone thinks of their policies because they know the world will continue doing business with them regardless of what they think of China

132 points by throwawaysea 6y ago

throwaway69123 6y ago

It is hard to feel sorry for two communist countries having a border dispute.

hvdfhbj 6y ago
Yes, but legitimate governments such as the be Philippines and Malaysia are also the subject of the CCP's imperial claims.
- DarthGhandi 6y ago
  The Malaysian government is very far from legitimate. It's run by the party who got dramatically voted out at the last election. Even their supporters call it a "backdoor" government. The former PM who stole billions and was found guilty of all charges was sentenced to 12 years in prison yet still sits in Parliament while getting friendly media interviews, he gave a speech on the budget just the other day representing all of the backbench. I always find the South China Sea discussions interesting because I'd love to hear who people actually think deserves ownership of it? The Philippines is run by a proud mass murdering nutjob, Vietnam is China-lite, Brunei just tried to roll out the death penalty for gay people. Malaysia is steadily gaining more extreme Islamists in power who bizarrely blame the Jews for everything that goes wrong like it's a country run by 4chan. Who exactly deserves all that oil and fish? It's none of the above in my opinion.
  - teleforce 6y ago
    Not sure why you are attacking and trolling all the claimants to the SCS by ad hominem most of the governments involved except China? Go and critically read history books/articles/etc my friend, not only by the colonial regimes namely Spain, British, Dutch and France that have plundered the countries that you have just mentioned, and what names these areas are collectively called (yes they have their names) few centuries back before the dark colonial era started. After that you probably know to whom the oil and fish belongs since these people have been fishing there for centuries. Truth and facts really matter but not your random opinions.
    - throwaway69123 6y ago
      Claims of ownership are often settled by strength and not by history. Alternatives present no real long term viability and are blind optimism.

bArray 6y ago

The reason they continue to do this is because they know without doubt other Countries will not treat their fishing vessels in the same way. There is zero consequences for their actions and they have zero reason to change their policy. You might say "the consequence is that they look bad", but they don't, at least not to the people they care about - mainlanders. They own and/or control the news media in mainland China. To produce an anti-CCP news piece in China is suicide for these companies. External "free" media have their own interests and biases, meaning they may or may not publish articles depending on whether they coincide with their goals. If a bad China news piece makes the current President they support look bad, do you really think it makes headline news? Honestly, I'm not really sure what to suggest here. Some HN users will post some ideas no doubt, but ultimately the most concerning thing is that none seem to have naturally emerged dominant so far.

jruthers 6y ago
Good analysis. Realistically, no entity, government or otherwise is taking any concrete steps to say no to China in the south China Sea. Doing "drive bys" is hardly actual action, like say dismantling a Chinese base made in international waters. THAT would be concrete action, and I bet they would get all upset but ultimately do nothing (unless it's too Australia, in which case they'll find some other product to ban). If nobody is going to stand up to them, it's all over already. In a generation, people will just say "oh isn't that all China's territory?"
- hvdfhbj 6y ago
  One very simple action that we should be doing is changing the name of the "South China Sea" to something else.
  - platinumrad 6y ago
    Who is "we" here?
    - hvdfhbj 6y ago

nradov 6y ago

It turns out that many of China's territorial claims in the South China Sea are simply the result of errors in translations and cartography. They have no legitimate basis in law or history. http://cimsec.org/chinas-claim-spratly-islands-just-mistake/36474 http://cimsec.org/chinas-claim-spratly-islands-just-mistake/...

verroq 6y ago
No country has any “legitimate” claims to any land either.
- zaptrem 6y ago
  Just like you have no “legitimate” “claim” to your smartphone, hand it over. Conquest isn’t the only way countries gain territory by a long shot, and whataboutism can’t justify what China’s doing today either.
  - hvdfhbj 6y ago
    A better point would be that the current CCP regime in Beijing has no legitimate claim to be any kind of government with any legal claim over any territory whatsoever. An unelected government is not a government, it's just a group of thugs who happen to have control over a capital city. If China has any sort of legitimate government at all it's the one in Taiwan which was at least elected by somebody. But really, mainland China has no government, and the CCP should not be talked to or negotiated with as if they are a government.
    - zksjejwbs 6y ago
      Your knowledge of history is so little that for you Washington is the guy who prints green notes. Jokes aside if the legitimate government are only the elected one lets wipe 2/3 of the world's government lol. Taiwan is a dispute territory because the kuomintang after they lost the civil war in China they moved to Taiwan and claimed the territory. Taiwan was not even a democracy after that but rather a military dictatorship with the martial law being applied till 1987 (from 1949, year in which they lost the civil war in China) Only after that Taiwan started to open their system and allow general election in the 1990s (in some form in 1991, 1992 and presidential election only in 1996) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Taiwan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Taiwan

throwawaysea 6y ago

This article spans a few different concerns with China's increasing aggression in foreign policy as it concerns the South China Sea: First, the Chinese fishing fleets increasingly are venturing far away from their own shores, just as fleets from other nearby countries are also venturing further from their own shores. This is because shore fishing is drying up, due to unsustainable overfishing and ecological collapse. China's distant fishing fleets are thought to have caused the deaths of impoverished North Koreans, by taking over catches from their waters (https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/china-illegal-fishing-fleet/ https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/china-illegal-fishing-fleet...). They are also taking over West African and Antarctic waters (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/beijing-fishing-fleet-subsidies-north-korea.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/beijing-fishing-...). They even have tried to fish off the Galapagos using giant factory fishing ships that allegedly turned off their AIS maritime tracking signals to avoid detection (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/21/china-squid-fleet-peru-coastguard-fishing https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/21/china-sq...). China operates the world's largest fishing fleet, with the largest volume of catch, and their scale of operation threatens environments and fishing economies worldwide. Secondly, the Chinese fishing fleet is highly aggressive and often violent. The NBC article I linked above details an incident where a large number of Chinese fishing vessels took shelter in a South Korean bay to ride out a storm, and also destroyed the environment during their short stay, illegally dumping oil, dragging anchors, and more. The LA times article I linked here also details how bigger Chinese fishing vessels (often with steel hulls subsidized by the Chinese government) will ram smaller fishing vessels from countries like Vietnam or the Philippines. They often steal equipment off those vessels, and even their entire catch, and leave the ship adrift and in need of repairs. And as the LA Times article noted, there are barbaric incidents where crew will hurl hammers or cement blocks at foreign crews of smaller vessels, or even beat them. Thirdly, encroachment in South China Sea waters is enabled by the increasing aggression of the Chinese naval fleet. Despite naval exercises by the US to assert rights of navigation, China has continued to expand a web of artificial islands that host barely-hidden naval installations with airstrips, missiles, and more. Although the US has made public statements asserting that China's claims to the South China Sea are unlawful (https://www.state.gov/u-s-position-on-maritime-claims-in-the-south-china-sea/ https://www.state.gov/u-s-position-on-maritime-claims-in-the...), that has not changed much on the ground for smaller nations who are victims of China's bullying on the high seas. In fact, in 2020 China's operations in the South China Sea are more aggressive than ever, with COVID serving as a convenient distraction for increased naval imperialism (https://asiatimes.com/2020/04/chinas-covid-19-imperialism-spreads-in-south-china-sea/ https://asiatimes.com/2020/04/chinas-covid-19-imperialism-sp...). With increasingly frequent incidents where one country detains another country's fishing vessels and crew, the situation is becoming charged and tense (https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/12/asia/malaysia-china-japan-sea-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/12/asia/malaysia-china-japan-sea...). China is accordingly stepping up its military activities, with naval exercises (https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/china/2020/china-201116-globaltimes05.htm https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/china/2020/c...) and testing of anti-ship ballistic missiles (https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/37662/chinese-long-range-ballistic-missiles-struck-moving-ship-in-south-china-sea-report https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/37662/chinese-long-ran...). Taking all this together, I can't help but view it as a complete failure of other Asian countries to cooperate against a mutual aggressor, and a failure of the liberal West to manage and contain China to the interest of many nations. Empty diplomatic statements, political posturing, and ineffective performative naval exercises are not the answer to a violent and aggressive actor. But no one is stepping up to answer the calls for help from poorer countries like Vietnam.

politelemon 6y ago

Is there any hope that the recent RCEP agreements would help the situation, or was this simply ignored during negotiations?

throwawaysea 6y ago
RCEP is mostly about tariffs and does not discuss concerns like environmental protection or border disputes. Ironically RCEP includes virtually all the nations that are at odds with China over naval and fishing aggression: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Comprehensive_Economic_Partnership#Membership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Comprehensive_Economi...
dragonelite 6y ago
Now with RCEP behind them ASEAN nations and China can now focus on the "Code of Conduct" in the south china sea.

trhway 6y ago

just go to youtube and search for "<country1> fires at <country2> fishing boats". That is international law at work - ie. the law of sheer force where stronger one is the right one - who has the [bigger] gun and/or closer to home fires at the one with no (or smaller) gun who is farther from home. That reminds about a friend who served in USSR coast guard and was telling stories back then how they were harassing Japanese fishermen who were illegally fishing in USSR waters - instead of shooting though, they would usually shake down the fishermen for various goodies.

roenxi 6y ago

We don't really know what the slow-rolling effects of shutting down a double-digit percentage of the world's economy is. War is a distinct possibility; we know from WWI that everything seems fine until everyone mobilises all at once. I hope the LA times are taking their responsibilities seriously and not reporting things in an incendiary way. I'd rather see an unfair peace in Asia than a big war in my lifetime. The US is an underdog against China here, China is bigger, has more ability to exert power and has much at stake.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

chaostheory 6y ago

With continually declining US, its presence to keep the peace is waning. Asia is looking more and more like Europe right before WWI. The main difference is the presence of global ballistic missiles. Hopefully, that will help keep the peace in a post US empire world

thursday0987 6y ago
hopefully, but given 30,000+ years of human history, they won't. the flash point will probably be when Xi Xinping dies of old age and the different chinese subfactions fight over who gets to be next president for life.
- chaostheory 6y ago
  imo If you were right, we would have had WWIII in the 20th century already. The cost of war with nuclear weapons is just so high with MAAD that it has kept the peace. Of course, I could be wrong. It just takes one insane person...

BostonJiao 6y ago

At the end of the day, one has to have gunships to backup one’s claim.

chuckSu 6y ago

China will do whatever China wants to do because there will be no consequences. Just western governments “criticising” them but still consuming their goods which is fine with China. They don’t seem to care what anyone thinks of their policies because they know the world will continue doing business with them regardless of what they think of China