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>will not treat their fishing vessels in the same way. Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, South/North Korea have all seized Chinese fish

>will not treat their fishing vessels in the same way. Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, South/North Korea have all seized Chinese fishing vessels before. Some recently. These countries also regularly seize each other's illegal fishing boats, the entire region is an overlapping web maritime disputes. The difference is China is a juggernaut, larger in population and economy than all other claimants combined. 14 Trillion GDP = capabilities to vastly out muscle everyone else. Same story with SCS islands, where China was _responding_ to other claimants reclamation and weaponization efforts. But Chinese reclaiming at Chinese scale will crush everyone else. The fishing parallel is growing Chinese coast guard and structuring of maritime militia means Chinese fishing vessels get better support and more lenient treatment from other coat guards as Chinese force balance grows. Recent Chinese SCS skirmishes are relatively peaceful compared to others, whose mutual clashes frequently escalate to bloodshed because small peer countries can escalate and be brutal to each other. Obviously such reports rarely gets attention in western reporting, nor that per capita China underfishes, or fishing fleets from other wealthier per capita countries is sustained through foreign slave labour, whereas China's is just... cheap Chinese labour. China SCS Monroe doctrine is balancing from this perspective. Philippines finally agreed to "cooperate" with China on SCS oil exploration, setting up frameworks for other members. RCEP this week without US or India. Short of war with USN, it's just a matter of time before China tames the SCS. For context, this is newly projected growth of PLA Navy 14th five-year plan for 2025. Only surface combatants. https://preview.redd.it/yxsbgotn6kz51.jpg?width=1024&auto=webp&s=d77865794cc0d78516de0113a58d556b48990101 https://preview.redd.it/yxsbgotn6kz51.jpg?width=1024&auto=we... In the next 5 years, China will build approximately entire Japanese Navy in tonnage. It will do so with ~2% of GDP in defense spending, basically what Trump wants NATO members to comit. And as Australia, Japan, Korea are setting record high defense budget growth, China will be increasing national defense by 6.6% this year, lowest in decades. This is the fundamental reality of disportionate Chinese scale and industrial capability, even modest spending means the kind of acquisitions that will make neighbours shit bricks and US worry over hegemony. The alternative is... China not spending money a reasonable amount on defense and modernization, not enforcing her claims, which is a ridiculous expectation.

yorwba 6y ago
> Chinese reclaiming at Chinese scale will crush everyone else. I wouldn't be so sure about that. The whole reason they have to resort to land reclamation to create artificial islands for their military bases is that they were late to the party and all the good spots on existing islands were already taken, mostly by Vietnamese bases: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Spratly_with_flags.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Spratly_... Now holding those islands doesn't help Vietnamese fishermen much when they encounter other countries' coast guards out in the open sea, but the bases still provide a convenient place to shelter if they happen to be close by.
- dirtyid 6y ago
  Vietnam has the most features, but no ability to engineer them to match Chinese capabilities. The islands themselves are marginal, good for small landing strip and some basic installations, most need an inordinate amount of work and investment to become useful. Vietnam is simply incapable of producing a dredging company as large as Chinese CCCC, a byproduct of serving a country with 1.4B people. I think Mischief Reef alone reclaimed 1400 acres, about 10x than all Vietnamese dredging efforts. It's a massive undertaking but relative to goals. Vietnam's goal is just to claim stakes, which they can do with something as rudimentary as brick buildings, a dirt landing strip for supplies and DK1 rigs. Also see Philippines' Sierra Madre on Thomas Shoal, literally a beached ship to base a handful marines out of. China's goal is to push back USN, which requires a legit base, full runway for modern fighters, reinforced hangars and all associated support infrastructure. There's also work on geoengineering fresh water and agriculture to strengthen claims - turn feature into proper island for EEZ rights. If properly weaponized, it could make every USN asset in SCS vulnerable. During a shooting war, it would get wiped, but there's enough hardened infrastructure that US would expend substantial munitions. It's just another scale of construction and capabilities.
mschuster91 6y ago
> It will do so with ~2% of GDP in defense spending, basically what Trump wants NATO members to comit. This "2%" figure is a top contender for "the biggest load of bullshit in politics" award, I (as a German, if it's relevant) hate it with a passion. The reason is simple - all this target does is incentivize waste and disincentivize control and oversight. After all, if the only thing that's compared is how much money was spent... what's to keep states from blowing the money on bullshit and hoping that the US will save their butt once again? What would be way better is to define goals on capability targets. Like... France being responsible for having one combat ready aircraft carrier, Germany 200 tanks, UK 7 nuclear submarines. That way governments would be incentivized to keep the vendors accountable to deliver safe and working products at reasonable cost, instead of basically letting them do whatever the f..k they want and milking the taxpayers for shit like marine helicopters that aren't certified for flight over sea (German NH90 scandal).

yorwba 6y ago

> Chinese reclaiming at Chinese scale will crush everyone else. I wouldn't be so sure about that. The whole reason they have to resort to land reclamation to create artificial islands for their military bases is that they were late to the party and all the good spots on existing islands were already taken, mostly by Vietnamese bases: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Spratly_with_flags.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Spratly_... Now holding those islands doesn't help Vietnamese fishermen much when they encounter other countries' coast guards out in the open sea, but the bases still provide a convenient place to shelter if they happen to be close by.

dirtyid 6y ago
Vietnam has the most features, but no ability to engineer them to match Chinese capabilities. The islands themselves are marginal, good for small landing strip and some basic installations, most need an inordinate amount of work and investment to become useful. Vietnam is simply incapable of producing a dredging company as large as Chinese CCCC, a byproduct of serving a country with 1.4B people. I think Mischief Reef alone reclaimed 1400 acres, about 10x than all Vietnamese dredging efforts. It's a massive undertaking but relative to goals. Vietnam's goal is just to claim stakes, which they can do with something as rudimentary as brick buildings, a dirt landing strip for supplies and DK1 rigs. Also see Philippines' Sierra Madre on Thomas Shoal, literally a beached ship to base a handful marines out of. China's goal is to push back USN, which requires a legit base, full runway for modern fighters, reinforced hangars and all associated support infrastructure. There's also work on geoengineering fresh water and agriculture to strengthen claims - turn feature into proper island for EEZ rights. If properly weaponized, it could make every USN asset in SCS vulnerable. During a shooting war, it would get wiped, but there's enough hardened infrastructure that US would expend substantial munitions. It's just another scale of construction and capabilities.

mschuster91 6y ago

> It will do so with ~2% of GDP in defense spending, basically what Trump wants NATO members to comit. This "2%" figure is a top contender for "the biggest load of bullshit in politics" award, I (as a German, if it's relevant) hate it with a passion. The reason is simple - all this target does is incentivize waste and disincentivize control and oversight. After all, if the only thing that's compared is how much money was spent... what's to keep states from blowing the money on bullshit and hoping that the US will save their butt once again? What would be way better is to define goals on capability targets. Like... France being responsible for having one combat ready aircraft carrier, Germany 200 tanks, UK 7 nuclear submarines. That way governments would be incentivized to keep the vendors accountable to deliver safe and working products at reasonable cost, instead of basically letting them do whatever the f..k they want and milking the taxpayers for shit like marine helicopters that aren't certified for flight over sea (German NH90 scandal).