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Thread: China's Emergence as a Superpower (till 2014)

  1. #401
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    China's South Sea Claims: Fact or Fiction?


    http://www.cpamedia.com/politics/chi...th_sea_claims/

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    I think it's probably a fact that the earliest existing historical records of the various shoals and islands in the SCS are Chinese. Whether or not that constitutes a valid claim of ownership, or whether it's more valid than, say, claims based on geographical proximity (based on UNCLOS recognition of exclusive economic zones, among other things), is a matter of opinion and to some extent of international law, not sure it's possible to say that's a question of fact or fiction.

    As a matter of historical precedent, such things have belonged to whoever can take and hold them.
    “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”

    H.L. Mencken

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    Lots of claims for South Atlantic and South Indian Ocean islands (Crozet, for example) would change owners if old claims of discoverers never given up in a treaty would be overruled by some convention that says proximity counts more.

    Not going to happen.

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    China when in an adverse situation states the treaties were unequal.

    But when it suits them, the maps and treaties are valid!

    Interesting is this Wiki summary

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unequal_treaty

    Tibet was also an 'unequal treaty'!

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    Interesting excerpts taken at random.

    A detailed paper worth reading.

    Peking Reaches Out: A Study of Chinese Expansionism

    It is common knowledge that in 1959 Mao Zedong said: “Our goal is the whole wide world . .. where we will create a mighty state" and that in 1965 he presented China with the task of “absolutely getting hold of Southeast Asia" in the near future. And today, far from disavowing these and similar statements, Peking uses them as a guide. Politics, propaganda and armed force combine to further Maoist foreign policy doctrines, in a range of ploys which extends from historical fabrications and the publication of maps showing the “lost Chinese lands" to armed provocation and outright aggression against neighbouring states......

    A maiden work of this order was Su Yen-tsung’s The General Tendency of the Modification of China’s Borders, [249•22 which was published shortly after the Hsinhai revolution. Coming after it, Hua Chi-yun’s China’s Borders [249•23 gained wide currency. Indeed, its author, possibly the Kuomintang’s leading authority in the field, completed his treatise in the spring of 1930, shortly after the Kuomintang provocations on the Chinese Eastern Railway, the raids on Soviet territory, and the rupture of SovietChinese relations. Hua Chi-yun’s conceptions, which reflected the official moods.

    Hua Chi-yun advocated the thesis of the need to “return” to China the lands it had “lost”. He claimed that “China’s old borders" had embraced vast territories extending from Kamchatka to Singapore and from Lake Balkhash to the Philippines. Korea, Burma, Vietnam, and Bhutan were seen as “conceded tributaries”, which had been within the “old borders”. Considerable tracts of Soviet Far Eastern territory along with the Island of Sakhalin, part of Kazakhstan and the Soviet Central Asian republics, sections of Afghan and Indian territory, and the Ryukyu Archipelago were also included among China’s “losses”. The Mongolian People’s Republic was generally ignored as a sovereign state and was designated as within China’s contemporary borders. Maritime boundaries stretched hundreds and thousands of miles away from the mainland, taking in the islands of the East China and South China Seas. The special map appended to the chapter, “Revision of Frontiers and Lost 250 Territories”, illustrated this projected programme of territorial aggrandisement.

    The book examined a set of political, economic, and cultural measures devised to bring about a rapid Sinification of non-Han inhabitants of border territories. Having roots deep in antiquity and the Middle Ages, China’s intercourse with Korea, Siberia, Central Asia,Afghanistan, India, and Vietnam was analysed with the author seeking to prove China’s “historical rights" to the lands beyond its borders. Hua Chi-yun challenged the validity of quite a number of border treaties and tried to justify Kuomintang’s claims to the USSR, Burma, and India.

    http://libweb.uoregon.edu/ec/e-asia/read/PRO.pdf

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ray View Post
    China when in an adverse situation states the treaties were unequal.

    But when it suits them, the maps and treaties are valid!

    Interesting is this Wiki summary

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unequal_treaty

    Tibet was also an 'unequal treaty'!
    Tibet was conquered.
    Armageddon would happen if we began reversing all unfairness based on previously lost wars.

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    Default To the Glory of the Hans

    The starting point for Chinese historical claims is the Han Dynasty.



    To that starting point, were added various other claims (maritime, such as "1421"; tributary and protectorate claims - note the Han Protectorates of the Western Trade Routes).

    The New Han Golden Age was declared by Mao, To the Glory of the Hans (1919).

    The great union of the Chinese people must be achieved, Gentlemen! We must all exert ourselves, we must all advance with the utmost strength. Our golden age, our age of brightness and splendour lies ahead!
    Regards

    Mike

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    This link somehow is not opening.

    http://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...6/mswv6_03.htm (To the Glory of the Han).

    Missing out possibly a Gem!

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    "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" Jesus of Nazareth

    "our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions." John O'Sullivan, 1845

    "Go west, young man" Horace Greely, 1851

    Etc, etc. Powerful nations (and influenctial informal leaders such as those listed above) have historically sought to achieve and sustain their largest possible spheres of territory, control and/or influence.

    It seems to me, that nations get into as much trouble when they seek to hold onto too much, than they do when they seek to take on more. I suspect that China realizes that expanding their economic reach and overall influence is far more productive than attempting to aggressively acquire some physical real estate and it immediately resistant populace. They have enough internal forces of resistance and revolution to contend with as is. In the future? That is different, but for us to obsess on the potentiality of this future game now is to risk losing out on the game that is actually currently in play.
    Robert C. Jones
    Intellectus Supra Scientia
    (Understanding is more important than Knowledge)

    "The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)

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    Are you guys seriously suggesting that the PRC seeks territorial claims in North America, or based on an article written by Mao in 1919?

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    t seems to me, that nations get into as much trouble when they seek to hold onto too much, than they do when they seek to take on more. I suspect that China realizes that expanding their economic reach and overall influence is far more productive than attempting to aggressively acquire some physical real estate and it immediately resistant populace. They have enough internal forces of resistance and revolution to contend with as is. In the future? That is different, but for us to obsess on the potentiality of this future game now is to risk losing out on the game that is actually currently in play.
    So why is China so keen to expand and on fictitious grounds want to expand their Empire?

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    Quote Originally Posted by tequila View Post
    Are you guys seriously suggesting that the PRC seeks territorial claims in North America, or based on an article written by Mao in 1919?
    Not today.

    They are in no position to do so.

    Who knows? Maybe at a later time frame when they can.

    SCS was no big deal till now.

    Now they developed 'muscle'.

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    Default The Glory of the Hans Redux

    The link just opened for me - so obviously we have a very clever Han block on Indian access to the article. Short article - a snip from a longer 1919 piece by Mao - .pdf attached.

    No, I'm not "suggesting" - seriously or otherwise - that this 1919 piece is a PRC claim to North America, or to the World for that matter. What I am seriously "asserting" is that to understand current Chinese foreign policy, one must look to the origins of that policy as asserted by its leaders.

    References back to the "The Glory of the Hans" are scarcely limited to Mao's 1919 snip; nor are Mao's references back limited to the Han period and its policies. One which is very relevant to current Chinese law and politics is Mao's 1912 piece on Chinese Legalism and Shang Yang (several centuries prior to the Han Dynasty), with some WFF links on Chinese Legalism ("Rule by Law").

    As an example of the Chinese historical approach to assertion of territorial claims, see Jianming Shen, China's Sovereignty over the South China Sea Islands: A Historical Perspective (2002), e.g. (Chinese characters omitted from quote):

    III.A. Discovery

    China was the first to have discovered the islands in the South China Sea. Chinese history books contain numerous references to the Chinese people's knowledge and actual use of the South China Sea throughout history.

    In "Yi Zhou Shu" (Scattered Books of the Zhou Dynasties) written in the early Qin Dynasty, it was recorded that "in the Xia Dynasty [21st century-16th century B.C.] the tributes from the South Sea [by the southern "barbarians" to the Xia rulers] were zhuji dabei [pearl carrying shellfish]," turtles and hawksbill turtles, and these tributes continued through the Shang Dynasty (16th century-11th century B.C.), the Zhou Dynasties (11th century-221 B.C.) (comprising the West Zhou (11th century-771 B.C.) and the East Zhou (770-221 B.C.)), and the Qin (221-206 B.C.) and Han (206 B.C-220 A.D.) Dynasties (see Exhibit I). ...
    JMM: 64 pages in all - a good brief from the PRC viewpoint.

    But see, Wade, The Zheng He Voyages: A Reassessment (2004), for another person's "non-1421" view from Singapore:

    Returning now to the three sets of Ming policies and practices detailed above, and in the light of the ideas and definitions of Armitage, Osterhammel and Emerson, it appears that there is quite some basis for classifying them as the actions of a colonial state.

    1. The eunuch-led voyages at the beginning of the 15th century constituted only a proto maritime colonialism as there was no real rule over a people or territory. There was rule over nodes and networks. The military constituted the force on which the Ming armadas depended and their role was the maintenance of the pax Ming, which provided the Ming state with a capacity to influence polities and, at least in some ways, to achieve some short-term economic advantage.

    2. The Ming invasion of Đại Việt is perhaps the most obvious example of a colonial adventure. There was invasion, occupation, the imposition of a military and civil administration, economic exploitation and domination by a court in the capital of the dominating power. The obvious decolonisation which occurred following the failure of this enterprise underlines its colonial nature.

    3. The Ming invasion and occupation of the Yun-nan Tai polities during the 15th century was the most successful of the colonial ventures examined, as many of the areas colonised during the Ming still form a part of the People’s Republic of China today. There can be little doubt that these actions by the Ming rulers were colonial in nature. They involved the use of huge military force to invade peoples who were ethnically different from the Chinese, to occupy their territory, to break that territory into smaller administrative units, to appoint pliant rulers and “advisers” and to economically exploit the regions so occupied. The Ming colonial armies, local and Chinese, provided the actual or threatened violence necessary to maintain the Ming colonial administration in the Tai areas of Yun-nan.

    Examination of the colonial experience in Southeast Asia has long remained limited to the period subsequent to the arrival of European forces in the region. The discussion above, even if not sufficient to sway all readers to all of its argument, should at least open an avenue for recognising that in investigating colonialism in Southeast Asia, we need to extend the existing temporal limits and include within our considerations the actions of the successive polities we know under the rubric “China”.
    And so on and so forth ...

    Regards

    Mike
    Attached Files Attached Files

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    Default Hey Bob Jones:

    You should like this quote from a scholar of the Han Dynasty (LINK):

    One of the first writers to articulate an explanation for the rapid decline of the Qin was the young genius Jia Yi (201-169 BCE).... The final sentence of Jia Yi’s essay is an effective summary of his argument: " . . . it failed to rule with humanity and righteousness and to realize that the power to attack and the power to retain what one has thereby won are not the same."
    From the U of Oregon, Chinese 305: Ancient Chinese Literature - From the Beginnings to the End of the Han.

    Regards

    Mike

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    I do like that. To find a new idea, read an old book.

    Human nature is like gravity. Just when you start to think you're something special... it brings you back down to earth.
    Last edited by Bob's World; 05-05-2012 at 10:23 PM.
    Robert C. Jones
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    (Understanding is more important than Knowledge)

    "The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ray View Post
    SCS was no big deal till now.

    Now they developed 'muscle'.
    Actually not true, the Chinese have been pushing SCS claims for decades, and there have been incidents for decades. Just because people just started paying attention recently doesn't mean it wasn't a big deal until recently.

    Forget about the West, does anyone here really think the Chinese are planning to invade and Conquer the Philippines or Vietnam?
    “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”

    H.L. Mencken

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    Posted by Dayuhan,

    Forget about the West, does anyone here really think the Chinese are planning to invade and Conquer the Philippines or Vietnam?
    It is rather annoying how you constantly exaggerate everyone's else's position in a feeble attempt to make your arguments appear more rational. Who on this thread, or any other thread even suggested that?

    No one? Um, then why do you make such outlandish claims?

    A nation doesn't have to invade another nation to be a threat to that nation's interests. China illegally enforcing it territorial claims to secure its access to energy can be quite detrimental to the affected nations, and they have every right to be concerned.

    China has never had the muslce it has now, and the way it is using that muscle is telling. Those in the know throughout SE Asia perceived the change and understand what it means.
    Last edited by Bill Moore; 05-06-2012 at 02:45 AM.

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    Default Nope, I don't think the PRC will invade ...

    Taiwan, the Philippines or Vietnam within, say, my lifetime - which may or may not be a short guarantee.

    As to planning, I'd expect that the PLA planning folks are war gaming all three scenarios. E.g., we might expect something similar to this 2009 RAND report, A Question of Balance: Political Context and Military Aspects of the China-Taiwan Dispute - 180+ pages of NOT a "slam dunk" for the US vs PRC.

    But, on the whole, I'm a gullible sort and accept that, like their peace-loving agrarian reformer ancestors of 1948, the present PRC folks are peace-loving cultural reformers in the mold of Zheng He.

    How do I know that to be true ? The People's Daily, Zheng He: Master explorer (April 6, 2011), tells me so:

    China's motives were not conquest but expanding influence and knowledge of its culture. China had been richer and more cosmopolitan than any country in Europe for thousands of years. Already in the 1400's China and India represented more than half of the world's GDP together. A paragon of fair trade practices with conflicts internal rather than international. Then, like now, China supported stability over change domestically and abroad.

    Zheng He's China wanted global prominence and respect matching its superiority. His mission: a charm offensive without historical precedent. He was the face of expansionist friendly China. People's Daily described him as an "Ambassador of Peace." For the most part he was, unless provoked to defend national interests for which he is credited with masterful genius. Not until World War I would the world see the naval might Zheng He mobilized for his journeys as he single-handedly revolutionized navigation.

    China was ahead of the world in most areas of development. He's fleet was larger than anything the world had known, with expeditions of up to 317 ships and around 28,000 men aboard — experts calculate 20,000 of them were military men. Crews with interpreters of many languages, astrologers, astronomers, doctors, pharmacists, entertainers, diplomatic and protocol experts to coordinate official receptions with dignitaries in the more than 35 countries visited.

    The intent of the voyages was to create a showcase of the splendor and strength of the Ming dynasty not trade, conquer or as a crusade to promote China's religions.

    "These were friendly diplomatic activities. During the overall course of the seven voyages to the Western Ocean, Zheng He did not occupy a single piece of land, establish any fortress or seize any wealth from other countries. In the commercial and trade activities, he adopted the practice of giving more than he received, and thus he was welcomed and lauded by the people of the various countries along his routes,"
    stated Xu Zu-yuan, PRC Vice Minister of Communications, on July 2004.

    A goal was to bring foreign VIPs to China's imperial court. It was a Noah's ark gathering of top diplomats to introduce them to its sphere of influence. It was not hard to convince key foreign figures to accompany Zheng He in an all-expense-paid trip to China's to meet the emperor.
    I'm sure the current PLAN would be happy to offer Ray and his fellow Indian flag officers a luxury trip to the nearest Chinese port.

    Besides, so long as its trade routes are open, why should China take the risks of a blockade and of a nuclear war easily mounted from US Micronesia ?

    US Blockade.jpg

    Of course, the PLA and the PLA Navy (the oddest thing, an army's navy) may miscalculate, etc.

    And, there is that troublesome Geoff Wade again, who just refuses to see Zheng He as an "Ambassador of Peace" - Power grew out of Zheng He's gunboats (Asia Times Online, Jan 26, 2012).

    BTW: The Singapore E-Press and the Asia Research Institute (Geoff Wade is POC) have assembled all of the references to Southeast Asia contained within the MSL (the Ming Shi-lu, aka Veritable Records of the Ming Dynasty) and provides them to readers in English-language translation. Each of the shi-lu comprises an account of one emperor's reign, for each of the emperors of Ming China (1368-1644). See, Wade, The Ming Shi-lu as a source for Southeast Asian History (2005).

    Regards

    Mike

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    Quote Originally Posted by jmm99 View Post
    No, I'm not "suggesting" - seriously or otherwise - that this 1919 piece is a PRC claim to North America, or to the World for that matter. What I am seriously "asserting" is that to understand current Chinese foreign policy, one must look to the origins of that policy as asserted by its leaders.
    That is a very good point.
    Last edited by carl; 05-06-2012 at 02:51 AM.
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