Sunny Sichuan, in a small industrial city. And you?
Guilin now. Previously Baotou, Luoyang and Chongqing.
I was talking purely militarily (I don’t think they are about invade anywhere any time soon). Just looking at the map in the OP, it seems a bit of a tall order. The Philippine mainland is basically between China and the Spratly islands. Most of the journey there looks well within range of the Philipine airforce.
Note the red line on the map. That’s the Chinese territorial claim.
That’s the insanity you’re dealing with.
More to the point, that’s the insanity the Chinese have given themselves to deal with given they’ve tried, and succeeded to some degree, in making it a very emotive issue with 1.3 billion people.
They’ve shot themselves in the foot here. If they don’t make the right noises, their own nationals - whom they themselves have done their best to work into a fervour - would hold them to account for not doing so.
They’ve made a mess for themselves.
The last administration, wisely, made far less noise about it all and made the right grunts and groans at necessary moments. This administration is making the mistake of being proactive in its proclamations and is making things worse all round, including for themselves.
Like I said - not the brightest buttons in the box.
The Filipino Navy, like the rest of their military, is very weak.
They also have almost no functioning air force.
I don’t necessarily think this means anything regarding Chinese intentions, but it might, and it’s an important fact.
I honestly doubt that there could be anything more than minor clashes between China and the Philippines. Any war between the two countries would obviously be quite one-sided. And the US would be pretty stupid to intervene in any minor fight. Haven’t they ever heard of a proxy war? They could always just supply weapons as they did in Afghanistan against the Soviets, although that eventually turned out badly.
China has never “lost” a war since 1949 and all wars (Korean, Sino-Indian, Sino-Vietnamese Wars) ended in a mostly status quo situation territorial-wise. In the Sino-Vietnamese War, a minor conflict was pretty effective in devastating Northern Vietnam for the next few decades and showing that Soviet promises to protect Vietnam were worthless.
If the reputed oil under the sea is really a major factor in claiming the islands, it could end up like the Chaco War - where there was no oil.
All the Chinese managed to do in the Sino-Vietnamese war was capture a couple of small northern cities - or, rather, towns - claim on the back of that they could push on to Hanoi if they wanted to… and then left again.
They brought railway and engineering units in with them, hardly necessary in conflict for the border towns.
They suffered considerable casualties before their withdrawal and, in withdrawing, took a ‘scorched earth’ approach. Yes, the combination of heavy fighting and that did indeed devastate an insignificant part of the far north of Vietnam.
Their intention was to get Vietnam out of Cambodia. Vietnam stayed in Cambodia for another seven years until they withdrew of their own accord.
But yes, it’s true, the Chinese did indeed claim the offensive to have been a victory.
The main objective was to “punish” Vietnam for signing a pact with the Soviets. A brief offensive managed to show that the protection clause contained therein was useless. The Sino-Indian War was also a brief offensive that managed to capture parts of Indian territory, yet they still withdrew and only retained a small portion of claimed land.
Casualties for China aren’t really the most important consideration. They also lost several hundred thousand in the Korean War, but the fact that they were able to push the UN back from the Yalu to the DMZ can be considered a victory.
That ostensible motive was the Chinese re-writing history in the wake of their loss of the war. The reality is that they massed troops for a push on Hanoi, their activities in the north were intended to draw the Vietnamese troops out and at that point they’d push on south. The Soviets tipped off the Vietnamese as to troop movements and the Vietnamese massed in Hanoi instead. Even then, the Chinese suffered extreme casualties that demonstrated their goal was unrealistic in the first place.
As I said before, you don’t send in railway corps and engineers for a local border skirmish.
What you’re saying is that an invasion which resulted in no gains, either territorial or political, which saw as many - if not more - of the invading troops killed as the defenders, and then the invaders withdraw, can somehow be deemed a ‘victory’ or a ‘stalemate’. I think in most analyses, such an invasion is considered a loss.
I’m not sure we can go with the idea that the Chinese are so careless about loss of life that every Vietnamese killed was a ‘punishment’ while every Chinese killed somehow didn’t count. Trust me, such an idea plays no better with the Chinese populace or their military than with any other nation’s populace or military.
I would add here that every unsuccessful invasion leaves a mess behind it. By this logic, every unsuccessful invasion in human history may be deemed ‘victorious’ insofar as it managed to do that and ‘punish’ the people upon whose territory the incursion took place.
That means the Americans didn’t just win the war they had with Vietnam, they absolutely trounced the Vietnamese. They left one hell of a mess behind them, after all.
Seems the Filipino minnows aren’t going to take a backwards step on these fisheries / ‘trenches of gold’, irrespective of the overpopulated, highly economically influential and manipulative opposition:
Philippines to defy China fishing rule: defence chief
Wasn’t it some Sino axiom - at least, before they became predominantly rich and “bourgeois” from moulding the world’s plastic spoons and began to actually care about their lives beyond the automaton menial toil - that the one thing China was rich in was people? I mean, I’m sure I’ve heard it paraphrased more than once, in Chinese films and the like…
Also, what communist regime ever gave a hoot about its wartime casualties when their seat on the throne was at stake? If it wasn’t for the ‘predatory satiation’ level of teeming Russian minions in WWII, today, Hitler’s portrait might adorn a lot more than just 4chan image boards and white supermacist barn walls. Moreover, the more sacrifices the “comrades” make fighting the “capitalist scum”, the bigger the numbers future tyrants are able to bloat and then gloat about. Sacrifice one million, educate a billion… and all that jazz.
What’s Mao Zedong’s kill count again? 70,000,000…? Eat that, Adolf! 
The Philippines can hardly back down. Nor Vietnam, nor any of the other nations bordering the South China Sea. That boundary the Chinese have drawn up for themselves is a nonsense, and the issue of fishing rights underlines that.
What the Chinese have done in their folly is draw that line so they could claim all mineral resources. The islands - and even some submerged rocks - may be the ostensible ‘territory’ that’s in dispute, but that’s a nonsense. Were that the case, then they’d draw nice little lines around them and say ‘Ours!’ What they have right now is as ridiculous as if the UK were to claim the Atlantic Ocean given its ownership of the Falklands.
So there you are with the silly posture, and an inevitable question arises. What about the fish? What about rights of transit?
These have been ignored because they underline how preposterous the Chinese claim is, and so they’ve been doing this silly little dance whereby, when it comes to mineral exploitation or physical rock possession, it’s theirs. When it comes to the day-to-day of normal activity, they forget all about it.
Beijing rather relies upon its officials to work that out for themselves and not to highlight the silliness of it all by saying “Those bastards are taking our fish!” Trouble is, Chinese officials aren’t drawn from the best and the brightest, and this idiot in Hainan has made the contradiction very public indeed, so now Beijing is faced with either supporting him - which would be outrageous - or denying him - which underlines the hollowness of their claim in the first place.
And Manila, of course, is making great play of the impasse that Beijing finds itself in as a consequence.
The Sino-Vietnamese war consisted of Beijing having its eye on Hanoi, barging into the far north, getting bogged down, suffering heavy casualties and withdrawing again without any concessions, political or territorial, being made to them.
It doesn’t matter how you slice it, how you dice it, in anyone’s analysis of warfare, that’s a defeat.
The fact that they claimed it to be a victory was inevitable.
Going into rhetorical flights about how the death toll doesn’t matter because the Chinese see their citizenry as expendable may lend some dubious support to the claim if you really want to push it that way, but I think all anyone sees outside Beijing’s political ‘never back down!’ rhetoric is failure.
If that was ‘success’, I don’t know why the world is worried by them. If they ever go to war with anyone, those they oppose will doubtless wish them many more such victories.
Well, with China’s GDP dropping to the lowest since 1999 and analysts predicting the decline to deepen, rather than recover, as the nation belatedly transitions to a consumer-based economy, it’s little surprise the communist nationalism machine is being cranked up a few gears in order to divert attention away from economic issues.
China’s GDP dropping to '99 levels would require an epic disaster, like a tsunami taking out the whole east coast or something. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say you’re confusing a slowing in the rate of growth with a decline.
I believe the figures just published show an annual growth rate of 7.7%. 7.5% was predicted.
Most of the figures for the past ten years have been above 8.0, so it’s right to identify a slowdown… and certainly the problems China faces right now are not reflected in a 7.7% rate of growth insofar as endemic problems are ‘coming home to roost’ big time.
So though I could have disputed Lemming’s using that particular stat of all stats, I left it given that China does, indeed, have problems right now and no apparent means of escaping them.
More important, perhaps, is the rise in the number of millionaires here either leaving the country or planning on doing so. My personal theory for years now has been that, when we see that happening, it means the end for the current robber-baron period is nigh. When that closes, there’ll be a period of upheaval and then, hopefully, the changes finally put into place such that China’s sustained growth remains sustainable. They’re hitting the wall as far as ‘cheap manufacturer to the world’ goes. Even Walmart is pulling out in some of its peripheral manufactury.
I was merely paraphrasing a financial report I heard recently. And, for the record, the growth rate was quoted as 7.6%.
But, I think the emphasis should be placed more on the prognostication, not what’s happening right now. The consensus seems to be that things will get worse before they improve. Now, “7%” looks spiffing compared to most of the rest of the planet. However, consideration needs to be given to the fact that China’s economy is still wholly reliant on exports and the transition to the nation’s bourgeois’s consumption being the primary driver of growth is a ways off. And this also operates under the assumption that the rich chinois will want Chinese manufactured goods. I’m likely preaching to the choir, here (Laowai ), but it’s fact that the Chinese prefer Western goods and lifestyle over their dubiously reputed locally produced equivalents. Moreover, China’s flattering imitation of Western tropes is manifesting more and more by the day; with the likes of European styled (read: copied, brick for brick) enclaves for the rich popping up left right and centre. And that’s to say nothing of the literal cities comprising of only Western universities which house hundreds of thousands of students. I’ve also heard anecdotally that food in China is looked upon with a very incredulous eye, with respect to its integrity – egg yoke filled / supplanted with water to increase weight at point of sale; chickens dealt with in a similar suspect manner; contaminated infant formulae…
If these societal trends are to be used as a barometer, the likelihood of the Chinese (if afforded the choice) opting for their locally produced commodities en mass is no sure thing.
This is very pertinent point, too. I’ve spoken with Chinese ex-pats in the past and they often poke fun at how easy it is for those with money over there to buy their residency overseas with a ‘paltry’ $5 million dollar investment (AU), if they so choose. Moreover, I’ve heard it quoted that some 80% of Chinese who can afford it have some kind of foreign passport, which while itself is no indication of a willingness to relinquish their citizenship, does indicate their designs on greener ‘quality of life’ pastures. And I don’t just mean as a fail safe against the “China bubble” bursting, but simply from the point of view of a better lifestyle – to be in an environment where they feel a part of a community where they can influence the environment they inhabit. …and where they can breathe fresh air! Perks that don’t seem to be at the forefront of the CCP’s ‘civil appeasement’ policy agenda.
Largely agreed - and, indeed, at times you rather understate than overstate the issues.
China’s economy is - as a benchmark figure - based around two-thirds exports where developed economies tend to be about a third. This is not unusual for a country following the developmental path China is following; indeed, it is inevitable. Cheap sweatshop for richer nations. Trouble is, that’s growth that is sustained, but unsustainable, (to use the oft-stated phrase). By very definition you can’t bring yourself up to the level of your neighbours when your entire economic plan is predicated upon the idea that you are worse off than they are, the reason that China is able to serve as a sweatshop in the first place.
In my teens, in the '70s, I was big on music as most teens are, and there was a constant debate on the best stereo equipment available. At the time, ‘Made in Japan’ meant precisely what ‘Made in China’ means now. Then word started getting out - spoken with some embarrassment - that Japanese amps, (if I recall correctly), were reasonably-priced but out-performing their fellows in terms of function and overall quality both. That was the harbinger of the Japan we know today. The point is, the Chinese are following the Japanese model, but with no follow-up plan. The question has to be ‘Why?’
The answer, I think, lies in the way that wealth has become distributed. China is one of the most difficult nations in the world to set up an SME. The regulations are prohibitive, as are the legal startup costs. (I mean for the locals. For foreigners it’s next to, if not actually impossible to start a wholly-owned company here). However, given the right guanxi, (connections), all regulatory stipulations may be waived, (up to and including such things as regulations in place for pollution control which, believe it or not, are no less tight here than anywhere else).
The result of this unfair competition - which can be made still more unfair if some official feels his toes are being trodden upon by an competitor - is some ludicrous figure for the percentage of successful enterprises belonging to the relatives and close friends of officials. I can’t remember the figure unfortunately, but it’s a near monopoly.
In the absence of competition - not to mention the notorious ineptitude of high officials and their families - these tend to be very badly run and, of course, corruption and dishonesty underlies the entire ethos of their very existence, let alone their operation. (My joke here is that if it takes a businessman an hour to get RMB1,000 out of you honestly, two hours to get RMB500 dishonestly, he’ll go for the latter option given he doesn’t feel he’s won if he’s not ripping you off. It’s certainly not true across the board, but it’s alarmingly prevalent).
The whole thing, of course, requires strict social management - the media under control so scandals aren’t reported, a corrupt judiciary and police force, the army generals included in the loop so they’re there as a last resort, the encouragement of the nationalist sentiment that all woes are down to them damned foreigners and so on - but that’s fine given the robber-barons are the government, and so the machinery of the former system may be perverted to that use rather than abolished.
So here’s the real economic plan.
Churn out as much as possible as quickly as possible. Get as rich as you can as quickly as you can. When it all implodes as it must - the economic end-point and social instability - take your millions, your billions, get the hell out fast, and if the country goes to hell in your wake, no problem, you can barely hear the echoes in London or New York which will welcome you, for all your ills, for all the money you bring with you. That’s why I’ve always said that the real barometer of change to come here is the exodus of the rich and, more particularly, the super-rich.
It may be difficult to recover from this. Remember, the entire nation has been perverted in all its aspects to make this all possible and that includes, crucially, the education system.
There are some great photo spreads out there of things Chinese peasants have designed and built for themselves to extend their possibilities, make their work easier or just for the fun of it. These go up to and include personal submarines(!) But note - the peasantry. Those not gifted with much of an education. The sad and sorry truth is that the best and brightest here with the best access to those levers that may be pulled to implement change have had the creativity knocked out of them by their education. Another wee joke of mine. If there’s a Chinese Einstein - and let’s face it, there must be one out there somewhere - he’s knee-deep in mud in a rice paddy. The education system here is notorious for its rote learning and political indoctrination which has students passing their exams by being compliant, being overworked, never asking any questions, never deviating one inch from things precisely as they are presented to them and all the rest of it. The longer you stay in the education system here, the more knowledge you acquire, the less able to utilise that knowledge in any useful manner you get.
You don’t turn that around in a year or two. You change the education system then you kick your heels for two generations. Yes, human nature will out even in opposition to having your brain mashed in this fashion, but those who keep their wits about them will be few and far between compared with nations that have had their youth educated in a more productive environment.
A couple of disagreements with some of the things up there.
As you can imagine, western universities only get a look-in here if they follow the Chinese curriculum and approach.
Water in eggs is the least of the problems here, with contaminated foods thanks to pollution and the overuse of chemicals being a far, far bigger problem than eggs injected with water, (something I’d not heard before, but comparing favourably with the British tendency to do that with bacon anyway, a scandal which, when discovered, led the government to curtail the amount of water that could be injected rather than banning the practice outright.
Contaminated infant formulae was a biggie here, not standard practice. The fact that this scandal and the resultant infant mortality has resurfaced three times(!) here is problematic. Worse by far is the use of pharmaceutical products, something worth a post on its own, not only for contamination, but also for the corrupt use of antibiotics with potential risks - very, very grave risks - to human health internationally arising out of that. Some of the bigger scandals are rather more complex and tend not to be reported as much in the western media, (let alone in China), given ‘contaminated formula = dead baby’ is more readily consumed.
The Chinese have been claiming the Spratleys for decades. But so has a number of other nations.
Historically, I think the Philippines have the strongest claims in that although no one lives there, Filippino fishermen have been fishing those waters for a long time.
You also have to remember that there are 6 countries claiming the islands.
China and Taiwan are really different but same as “The Republic of China” on Taiwan is the exiled Kuo Min Tang. If taiwan were ever to drop the insistance on being part of China and became the Republic of Taiwan, I’d venture to guess they would likely drop the claim to the Spratlies. Apart from China, Taiwan and the Philippines, claims to parts if not all of the islands are also made by Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei. Although the last three have not sent military into the area.
I doubt very much that a war would break out over these islands. Not in the near future.