There’s two different principles at work. Not between China and the United States but between the United States and United Kingdom.
You can obtain ownership of territory by occupation. This is when territory is unowned and uninhabited and you establish settlements on it. This is the method used by the United States to claim Wake Island and which China is using to claim the South China Sea islands.
You can also obtain ownership by cession. This when territory is already owned by another recognized sovereign entity and that entity transfers ownership to you. This how Britain originally acquired ownership to Diego Garcia; France gave it to them in 1814. (France had originally acquired ownership by occupation. The island was uninhabited when France claimed it and began settling people there.)
The British purchase of Diego Garcia in 1965 was somewhat anomalous. Mauritius was a British colony in 1965 when Britain purchased Diego Garcia from Mauritius. (Mauritius became independent in 1968.) So Britain was basically buying Diego Garcia from itself. But either way this was still transfer by cession.
Thats very neat and tidy except for the approx 1500 people that lived there and were forcibly deported. Quote:
“No current agreement exists on how many of the evacuees met the criteria to be an Ilois, and thus be an indigenous person at the time of their removal, but the UK and Mauritian governments agreed in 1972 that 426 families,[41] numbering 1,151 individuals,[24] were due compensation payments as exiled Ilois. The total number of people certified as Ilois by the Mauritian Government’s Ilois Trust Fund Board in 1982 was 1,579.[42] Five and Ten years after the last deportations, the Chahgossians received a small amount of compensation from the British, totaling $6,000 per person; some Chagossians received nothing. This relocation decision remains in litigation as of 2010.[43][44] Today, Chagossians remain highly impoverished and are living as “marginalized” outsiders on the island of Mauritius and the Seychelles.”
Powerful countries claim areas far outside their territory, that’s true for western powers as well and claiming that it’s ok for the US, UK and France to do it but not China is just Tribalism. Simply thinking because my tribe does it, its ok.
[QUOTE=Gorilla]
Since you evidently have personal access to this man, feel free to invite him to this thread and I shall gladly oblige. As for you, I’m quite confident that you’ll be able to use those active fingers of yours to do a quick googoo search for the relevant information. If googoo proves to be too hard, try bebo instead.
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So, having realized you were quoting me you spewed out all of this nonsense in an attempt to cover your fuckup and blahblahblah, John Feffer googoo bebo? Gotcha. Apology accepted. As with most of your post, it’s just meaningless babble that has really nothing to do with the subject at hand, and frankly I think I’ve reached my limit with this sort of stuff with the King o’ Clad.
What the US government did or didn’t do in Guantanamo Bay has zero to do with what China is doing. You are right, it’s not even a weak analogy. And you’ve provided nothing in this post to show that you are engaging in the debate, let alone have clue about anything concerning the subject. Thanks for playing…I’d say we have some lovely parting gifts for you (I normally give out the SDM board game and a fine ceramic dog, but I really just can’t see your participation worth even those things to be honest…sorry).
Just watch this amazing video that will explain it all!! Yeah, no thanks. If you can’t be bothered to write out whatever rebuttal you have or demonstrate even a cursory knowledge of what’s under discussion I don’t think I’m going to bother watching a(nother) amazing video that will explain everything to me. Feel free to summarize Mr. Mearsheimer’s points, whatever they may be. Or don’t…I really, honestly and from the bottom of my top don’t care. But, and I only say this because I really care, many decaffeinated beverages are just as tasty as the real thing these days…and I mean that sincerely.
Oh, so tempting. So, I think you are clueless on this subject, but to prove that I’m worthy of some sort of coherent response from you I need to take a quiz on questions that don’t seem to have much to do with the subject at hand? Again, no thanks…you’ll have to take your satisfaction and your points, whatever they are and go play elsewhere. Or, you could make them to the other participants in this thread and perhaps engage in the actual discussion (I’d recommend READING what they write and following closely enough to determine that someone in the thread is making a comment and not quoting someone else). As you choose, chief. Whatever floats thy boat and drums thy fish.
[QUOTE=Throatwarbler Mangrove]
If you only read the narrative being put forward by XT, you would be under the impression that the current Chinese government just woke up last month and decided to seize a bunch of islands out of the blue, and that without an immediate US military response (to the Chinese constructing infrastructure on what they have long considered to be Chinese territory), Chinese tanks will be rolling through the streets of Manilla and Hanoi.
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You would only be under that impression if you didn’t actually read my posts, however. I never said that China just woke up yesterday and started seizing islands…in fact, this has been going on for literally decades, and China isn’t seizing any islands…they are building islands using local materials and then occupying and militarizing them in an attempt to display a presences and set a precedence which they hope will translate, at some future date, into arbitration by some international body into the area being ceded to them as sovereign territory. This is not even a good strawman of my position, nor is the strawman cartoonesque outcome anything like what I’ve been saying. As I told the King of Clad, you do know that folks can scroll up and actually look at what’s been written, yes? Because I don’t think anyone who ACTUALLY read what I wrote would buy this bullshit.
When I was a kid, soldiers who had stolen Western US states from native Americans still walked the earth. So there’s no need to stress Wake Island. The US moral claim to most of its territory is just as weak, and a lot weaker than China’s to most of it’s territory. The US also is historically more warlike than China. For example:
Having said all that, it’s of little relevance to whether China’s effort to dominate the South China Sea is a problem. If China is successful, this will lead the smaller countries in the area, including Japan, to take an even stronger anti-China position. It also will embolden militaristic elements in the United States.
Plus, China would then be in a better position to achieve its territorial aims on Taiwan. Now, since we have a son living in Taiwan, I do have a personal interest in deterring Chinese irredentism. But, putting that aside, from the perspective of a peace-loving American liberal, the last thing we want is a who-lost-Taiwan moral panic.
Yes and they got shafted big time. But that had nothing to do with sovereignty. Britain didn’t take the island away from them. Those people have been British subjects all along. It was the legal equivalent of Britain deciding to kick everyone off the Isle of Wight.
That’s not the argument people are making. People are arguing that it was wrong for the United States to do it so it’s okay for China to do it. Which makes no sense. If it was wrong for the United States to do it, then it’s wrong for China to do it.
The Marshall Islanders. They called it Enen-kio and used to visit it for ritual purposes from time to time.
Thats still being decided. The Chagossians are trying to take it to the EU court. It may be found that the Chagossians had sovereignty and so the UK purchase was illegal.
So what? Lots of people used to visit the island from time to time. The point is that nobody was living there. So the Americans had just as much (or as little) right to claim the island as the Marshall Islanders did.
The Chagossians might win some damages for being forcibly relocated. But they’re virtually certain to lose any attempt to claim they had sovereignty over Diego Garcia.
Diego Garcia is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory. Before that it was part of the British Crown Colony of Mauritius. British ownership of the island goes back to 1814 (actually 1810 if you go by de facto ownership).
The British took the island from the French. And the French didn’t take it from anybody. Diego Garcia was uninhabited when France claimed ownership. The French were the ones who forcibly relocated the Chagossians to Diego Garcia. So the Chagossians can’t claim that they were an indigenous native people prior to European colonization.
What does this even mean? Are you saying the US is ignoring the issue today??? And why did you link to a Wiki that was cited earlier in this thread (in a post that actually quoted stuff from there to demonstrate one of those point thingies that you don’t seem to have)? What does your drive by link supposedly say that backs up whatever the hell your one line drive by is saying??
It means exactly that: ignoring the issue has been the default for more than a decade and the U.S. is addressing it only now. Can we determine what will happen next given that, not to mention other factors, such as interpretation of the MDT between the U.S. and the Philippines:
Also, how about trading statuses between China and the U.S., as well as between China and the other countries in the region? Joint military exercises between the U.S., Japan, and the Philippines, between China and Singapore, etc?
Most China watchers and those savvy with respect to geopolitics pertaining to that region of the world will tell you the same thing: The U.S., indeed the West, have put China’s expansion plans in the ‘too hard’ basket for years now. Partly due to the economic benefits a placated China brings and probably mostly because, frankly, it’s just too hard a stymied situation for ‘foreigners’ to solve and too dangerous to force the issue on.
It’s only now that the Chinese economy is slowing somewhat and, as is the communist consuetude, the nationalist rhetoric is ratcheting up to divert peoples’ attention away from the what may taper to a 2 or even 1% growth in the coming years, that mainstream media have thought it new-worthy (have been given license to report?) and begun covering it. Thus the politics has followed.
The horse has almost bolted on this one, methinks. Something should have been done long before China blooded their first carrier, knocked-off the JSF blueprints, near monopolised the Rear Earth Elements market and made science-for-trade deals with the Russians (…to say nothing of their all-reaching economic tentacles). No sanctions could be applied to China without literal world wide solidarity - not going to happen - and they sure cannot be ‘threatened’ back behind their Great Wall/s. All that’s left is for China to slowly metastasise their way across the resource rich area they’ve arbitrarily designated as theirs and for the U.S. to harrumph under their breaths as they wait to see where China moves leave them in the eyes of its allies and with respect to the balance of power in the world.
Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia will all have to bite their tongues; the Philippines, return to trading bananas with forced smiles on their faces; and Japan must continue to spoil its citizens in preparation for the likely more ‘coflagrant’ Senkaku / Daioyu showdown, if in fact China decide those rocks belong to them also. (…With Kimmy Jong up the sleeve as the wildcard, of course).
as well as major partnerships between China and other countries in the region. From what I remember, something like 70 pct of China’s trade involves these countries.
Given that, one can argue that China will engage in conflict only because it is in economic distress. But that happens when a global economic crisis takes place.
