The mid-air crash in 2001 between an American EP3 spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet that left the Chinese pilot dead and 24 American crew members in detention after an emergency landing in China.
China seized an American underwater drone in the South China Sea in 2016. The U.S. sent radio messages requesting that the drone be returned, but the Chinese ship merely acknowledged the messages and ignored the request. The US subsequently demanded the drone’s return.
The Republic of Palau has asked the Pentagon to build ports, bases and airfields on the island nation.The request came during a visit in September 2020 by Defense Secretary Mark Esper, the first-ever trip by a U.S. Pentagon chief to the tiny republic, which is made up of hundreds of islands in the Philippine Sea and is closely aligned diplomatically with Taiwan. Mr. Esper traveled to Palau as part of a U.S. effort to realign its military footprint in the region, adhering to the 2018 National Defense Strategy, which calls for enhanced steps to meet security challenges posed by China…
In September 2020, Mr. Remengesau, the President of Palau, handed Mr. Esper a letter requesting that the U.S. enter into a broader, longer-term relationship with the island nation, where the U.S. has had a small but permanent presence for decades. The Palauans said they think the republic has been underused by the U.S. military for years. “Palau’s request to the U.S. military remains simple—build joint-use facilities, then come and use them regularly,” according to a copy of the letter reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The letter, while not spelling out details, indicated that the Palauans were willing to allow the U.S. to host bases, construct port facilities, build airfields and host more troops.
Excerpts from Gordon Lubold, U.S. Military Is Offered New Bases in the Pacific, WSJ, Sept. 8, 2020
China launched its military build-up in the mid-1990s with a top priority: keep the United States at bay in any conflict by making the waters off the Chinese coast a death trap. Now, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is preparing to challenge American power further afield.
China’s shipyards have launched the PLA Navy’s first two Type 075 amphibious assault ships, which will form the spearhead of an expeditionary force to play a role similar to that of the U.S. Marine Corps. And like the Marines, the new force will be self-contained – able to deploy solo with all its supporting weapons to fight in distant conflicts or demonstrate Chinese military power.
The 40,000-tonne Type 075 ships are a kind of small aircraft carrier with accommodation for up to 900 troops and space for heavy equipment and landing craft, according to Western military experts who have studied satellite images and photographs of the new vessels. They will carry up to 30 helicopters at first; later they could carry fighter jets, if China can build short take off and vertical landing aircraft like the U.S. F-35B…Chinese military commentators say China’s shipyards are now building and launching amphibious ships so rapidly it is like “dropping dumplings” into water.
As shipyards churn out amphibious vessels, China is expanding its force of marines under the command of the PLA Navy. These troops are being trained and equipped to make landings and fight their way ashore. China now has between 25,000 and 35,000 marines, according to U.S. and Japanese military estimates. That’s a sharp increase from about 10,000 in 2017…“Without an amphibious force, any military force is greatly constrained in where and how it can conduct operations,” said Grant Newsham, a retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel… “Jets can drop bombs and ships can fire missiles at the shore – but you might need infantry to go ashore and kill the enemy and occupy the ground.” In China, the state-controlled media regularly reports on the gruelling training and military skills of the Jiaolong, or Sea Dragon commandos – a unit from the marines special forces brigade based on Hainan Island off southern China.
“We are currently only seeing the tip of the iceberg,” said Ian Easton, the senior director of the Project 2049 Institute, an Arlington, Virginia-based security research group. “Ten years from now, China is almost certainly going to have marine units deployed at locations all over the world. The Chinese Communist Party’s ambitions are global. Its interests are global. It plans to send military units wherever its global strategic interests require.”…
[China has learnt lessons from the U.S.]——U.S. expeditionary flotillas, packed with marines, all their heavy equipment and air support, are a potent reminder of American power. A raw demonstration came in the tense period in 1999 when an Australian-led United Nations peacekeeping force intervened to stop violence in what was then Indonesian-controlled East Timor. American forces didn’t become heavily involved on the ground. But the presence of the USS Belleau Wood, a 40,000-tonne amphibious assault ship carrying 900 marines and heavy lift and attack helicopters, served as formidable back-up as the UN troops restored order without any significant resistance from Indonesia.
Excerpts from DAVID LAGUE, China expands its amphibious forces in challenge to U.S. supremacy beyond Asia, Reuters, July 20, 202
China will start building its first floating nuclear power plant in 2019. A floating nuclear power plant is a marine platform carrying a scaled-down or minuscule nuclear reactor to power islets and offshore drilling platforms that may otherwise have little or no access to the onshore grid supply. Analysts have associated these novel marine nuclear power stations with Beijing’s initiatives to militarize and “colonize” the South China Sea and turn its vast waters into a Chinese lake…
Mobile nuclear reactors could power the many man-made islands being created in the South China Sea, while transmitting electricity from the mainland would be expensive and conventional diesel generators could not meet the demand amid an expanding population of soldiers, constructors and residents….Observers say that as many as 20 floating nuclear stations could be needed across the South China Sea for new chunks of land created on reefs and shoals, especially in the Paracel and Spratly archipelagos that are subject to conflicting territorial claims by China and Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Taiwan. These reactors can also sail and power the many Chinese drilling platforms in the ocean to expedite the exploitation of oil, natural gas as well as “combustible ice,” a frozen mixture of water and concentrated natural gas found on the sea floor.
Exerpts from Ocean-going nuclear plants for South China Sea, Asia Times, Mar. 2019
Giant clams are one of Buddhism’s “seven treasures”, along with gold and lapis lazuli. China’s new rich prize their shells as showy ornaments. Each can fetch as much as $3,000, so each haul was worth a fortune to the fishermen of Tanmen, a little fishing port on the island province of Hainan in Southern China. But Chinese government banned the clam fishing…
The ban is surely welcome. [S]ome of the most biodiverse coral reefs on Earth have been destroyed in the South China Sea thanks to giant-clam poachers. In the shallow waters of the reefs, crews use the propellers of small boats launched from each mother-ship to smash the surrounding coral and thus free the clams anchored fast to the reef. Though the practice has received little attention, it is ecological hooliganism, and most of it has been perpetrated by boats from Tanmen.
The fishermen have not been the reefs’ only adversaries. China’s huge and (to its neighbours) controversial programme since late 2013 of building artificial islands around disputed rocks and reefs in the South China Sea has paved over another 22 square miles of coral. When the two activities are taken together, Mr McManus says, about 10% of the reefs in the vast Spratly archipelago to the south of Hainan, and 8% of those in the Paracel islands, between Hainan and Vietnam, have been destroyed. Given that Asia’s Coral Triangle, of which the South China Sea forms the apex, is a single, interconnected ecosystem, the repercussions of these activities, environmentalists say, will be huge…
But still..A few streets back from the waterfront in Tanmen, elegant boutiques sell jewellery and curios fashioned from the giant clams—and clam shells are still stacked outside. And the provincial money that is so clearly being lavished on Tanmen sits oddly with the illegality of its townsfolk’s way of life. .. [I] n 2013 President Xi Jinping himself showed up in Tanmen. Boarding one of the trawlers he declared to the crew, according to state media, “You guys do a great job!” The media did not report that a year earlier the trawler in question had been caught in the territorial waters of Palau, and in the confrontation with local police that followed one of the crew members had been shot dead. In Chinese propaganda, Tanmen’s fishermen are patriots and model workers.
Over the years Tanmen’s fishermen have become part of China’s power projection in the South China Sea, an unofficial but vital adjunct to the Chinese navy and coastguard. The biggest trawlers are organised into a maritime militia ready to fight a “people’s war” at sea. Though generally unarmed, they undergo training and take orders from the navy.
They are facts on the water, and have been involved in China’s growing aggression in the South China Sea. In 2012 boats from Tanmen were part of a navy-led operation to wrest control of Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines, chasing Philippine fishing vessels away. In 2014 they escorted a Chinese oil rig that was being towed provocatively into Vietnamese waters. On land, Vietnamese expressed their rage by ransacking factories they thought were Chinese-owned. At sea, boats from Tanmen rammed and sank one of the rickety Vietnamese vessels coming out to protest.
Mysteriously, though, the giant trawlers of the Tanmen militia are now rafted up, their crews sent home. Perhaps China is keen to lower tensions in the region….A policy introduced in January aims to cut the catch from China’s fishing fleet, the world’s largest, by a sixth, in the name of sustainability. That will hit Tanmen’s fishermen hard, making them less willing to defend China’s claims. Francis Drake would have understood: pirates are patriotic, but usually only when it pays.
Excerpts from Clamshell Phoneys, Economist, Mar. 25, 2017
China provides military aid to Cambodia: uniforms, vehicles, loans to buy helicopters and a training facility in southern Cambodia. Between 2011 and 2015 Chinese firms funnelled nearly $5bn in loans and investment to Cambodia, accounting for around 70% of the total industrial investment in the country. Chinese firms run garment and food-processing factories and are also heavily involved in construction, mining, infrastructure and hydropower. Others hold at least 369,000 hectares of land concessions on which they grow sugar, rubber, paper and other crops.
The government is often willing to bend the rules for Chinese firms. One is developing a luxury resort inside a national park on the edges of Sihanoukville, the country’s main port. Another has won development rights over some 20% of Cambodia’s coastline. Human-rights groups allege that fishermen who had lived in the area for generations were summarily evicted, taken inland and told that they were now farmers.
Each side gets something out of the relationship. For Cambodia, the most obvious benefit is economic: it is poor and aid-dependent; Chinese money lets it buy and build things it could not otherwise afford. Phay Siphan, a government spokesman, said last year: “Without Chinese aid, we go nowhere.” But there are also two strategic benefits. First, Cambodia uses China as a counterweight to Vietnam. Among ordinary Cambodians, anti-Vietnamese sentiment runs deep. Cambodia also uses China as a hedge against the West. Chinese money comes with no strings attached, unlike most Western donations, which are often linked to the government’s conduct….
As for China, it gets a proxy within the ten-country Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). Cambodia has repeatedly blocked ASEAN from making statements that criticise China’s expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea, even though they conflict with those of several other ASEAN members. In 2016, less than a week after Cambodia endorsed China’s stance that competing maritime claims should be solved bilaterally, China gave Cambodia an aid package worth around $600m.
China also seems to be eroding America’s clout in the region. ASEAN’s long-standing complaint, that Chinese influence on Cambodia hinders regional unity, is growing moot: over the South China Sea, at least, that unity appears to have disintegrated anyway. The Philippines, which took China to an international tribunal over its maritime claims, has reversed course. Its new president, Rodrigo Duterte, expresses contempt for America and affection for China. Vietnam, China’s other main adversary in the sea, recently pledged to resolve its maritime dispute bilaterally. Nobody yet knows what America’s policy on the South China Sea will be under Donald Trump, but increasingly it looks as if Cambodia has picked the winning side.
Excerpts, Chinese Influence in South-East Asia: The Giant’s Client, Economist, Jan. 21, 2017
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