Weekend Update 19/12/2015 – China v Japan/USA

“I've read hundreds of books about China over the decades. I know the Chinese. I've made a lot of money with the Chinese. I understand the Chinese mind.”

Donald J. Trump

Not content with a botched coup in Kiev that has to all intents and purposes wrecked the Ukraine, in a vain attempt  to bring down President Putin and slice and dice up Russia, the American War Party seems to have designs on China.  America seems to want to bottle up China’s Navy in the seas inside  a line stretching from Japan via Taiwan down to the Philippines. If they can draw in Vietnam, China in the South China Sea is virtually contained in the east.

But China considers Taiwan part of China, while both China and Taiwan consider the Diaoyu Islands party of their territory under the Cairo Declaration 1943, the Potsdam Agreement 1945, and the San Francisco Treaty of 1951. China is not likely to go meekly into the night over this. Who gains from this new phase of confrontation? Why now?

Exclusive: Japan's far-flung island defense plan seeks to turn tables on China

Thu Dec 17, 2015 11:01pm EST

Japan is fortifying its far-flung island chain in the East China Sea under an evolving strategy that aims to turn the tables on China's navy and keep it from ever dominating the Western Pacific Ocean, Japanese military and government sources said.

The United States, believing its Asian allies - and Japan in particular - must help contain growing Chinese military power, has pushed Japan to abandon its decades-old bare-bones home island defense in favor of exerting its military power in Asia.

Tokyo is responding by stringing a line of anti-ship, anti-aircraft missile batteries along 200 islands in the East China Sea stretching 1,400 km (870 miles) from the country's mainland toward Taiwan.

Interviews with a dozen military planners and government policymakers reveal that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's broader goal to beef up the military has evolved to include a strategy to dominate the sea and air surrounding the remote islands.

While the installations are not secret, it is the first time such officials have spelled out that the deployment will help keep China at bay in the Western Pacific and amounts to a Japanese version of the "anti-access/area denial" doctrine, known as "A2/AD" in military jargon, that China is using to try to push the United States and its allies out of the region.

Chinese ships sailing from their eastern seaboard must pass through this seamless barrier of Japanese missile batteries to reach the Western Pacific, access to which is vital to Beijing both as a supply line to the rest of the world's oceans and for the projection of its naval power.

    China's President Xi Jinping has set great store in developing an ocean-going "blue water" navy capable of defending the country's growing global interests.

    To be sure, there is nothing to stop Chinese warships from sailing through under international law, but they will have to do so in within the crosshairs of Japanese missiles, the officials told Reuters.

As Beijing asserts more control across the nearby South China Sea with almost completed island bases, the string of islands stretching through Japan's East China Sea territory and south through the Philippines may come to define a boundary between U.S. and Chinese spheres of influence. Military planners dub this the line the "first island chain".

"In the next five or six years the first island chain will be crucial in the military balance between China and the U.S.- Japan," said Satoshi Morimoto, a Takushoku University professor who was defense minister in 2012 and advises the current defense chief, Gen Nakatani.

A U.S. warship in late October challenged territorial limits that China is asserting around its new man-made island bases in the Spratly archipelago.

But Beijing may already have established "facts on the ground" in securing military control of the South China Sea, some officials and experts say.

    "We may delay the inevitable, but that train left the station some time ago," a senior U.S. military source familiar with Asia told Reuters, on condition he was not identified because he was not authorized to talk to the media.     

    China's "ultimate objective is hegemony over the South China Sea, hegemony over the East China Sea", said Kevin Maher, who headed the U.S. State Department's Office of Japan Affairs for two years until 2011. 

"To try and appease the Chinese would just encourage the Chinese to be more provocative," said Maher, now a consultant at NMV Consulting in Washington.

Japan's counter to China in the East China Sea began in 2010, two years before Abe took power.

The predecessor Democratic Party of Japan government pivoted away from protecting the northern island of Hokkaido against a Soviet invasion that never came to defending the southwest island chain.

"The growing influence of China and the relative decline of the U.S. was a factor," said Akihisa Nagashima, a DPJ lawmaker who as vice minister of defense helped craft that change. "We wanted to do what we could and help ensure the sustainability of the U.S. forward deployment."

China is investing in precision missiles as it seeks to deter the technologically superior U.S. Navy from plying waters or flying near Taiwan or in the South China Sea.

Beijing in September gave friends and potential foes a peek at that growing firepower in its biggest ever military parade, which commemorated Japan's World War Two defeat. Making its debut was the Dongfeng-21D, a still untested anti-ship ballistic missile that could potentially destroy a $5 billion U.S. aircraft carrier..

    It joins an arsenal the U.S. Congress estimates at 1,200 short-range missiles and intermediate missiles that can strike anywhere along the first island chain. China is also developing submarine- and land-launched radar-evading cruise missiles.

    "Rather than A2/AD, we use the phrase 'maritime supremacy and air superiority'," said Yosuke Isozaki, Abe's first security adviser until September and a key author of a national defense strategy published in 2013 that included this phrase for the first time.

    "Our thinking was that we wanted to be able to ensure maritime supremacy and air superiority that fit with the U.S. military," he added.

Toshi Yoshihara, a U.S. Naval War College professor, said Tokyo could play an important role in limiting China's room for maneuver through the East China Sea to the Western Pacific, enhancing U.S. freedom of movement and buying time for the alliance to respond in the event of war with China.

    "You could say Japan is turning the tables on China," Yoshihara said.

----Bigger defense outlays are adding potency. Japan's military is seeking spending in the next fiscal year's budget that would top 5 trillion yen ($40 billion) for the first time, including money for longer-range anti-ship missiles, sub-hunting aircraft, early-warning planes, Global Hawk drones, Osprey tiltrotor aircraft and a new heavy-lift, long-range transport jet.

In some areas, however, Japan's military is making do. Anti-ship missiles designed 30 years ago to destroy Soviet landing craft heading for Hokkaido are being deployed to draw the defensive curtain along the southwest island chain.

Able to lob a 225-kg (500-lb) warhead 180 km, they have enough range to cover the gaps between the islands along the chain, said Noboru Yamaguchi, a Sasakawa Peace Foundation adviser and former general who procured them three decades ago.

more

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-military-china-exclusive-idUSKBN0U107220151218

China carries out war games in South China Sea this week

Thu Dec 17, 2015 10:55pm EST

China's military carried out war games in the disputed South China Sea this week, with warships, submarines and fighter jets simulating cruise missile strikes on ships, the official People's Liberation Army Daily said on Friday.

China claims almost all of the energy-rich waters of the South China Sea, through which more than $5 trillion of maritime trade passes each year. The Philippines, Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan have overlapping claims.

The U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander on Monday warned of a possible arms race in the disputed South China Sea which could engulf the region, as nations become increasingly tempted to use military force to settle territorial spats.

In a front page story, the newspaper said the drill was carried out on Wednesday across "several thousand square kilometers" of waters somewhere in the South China Sea.

The forces were split into two teams, red and blue, as military commanders threw various scenarios at them, including an accidental missile strike on a commercial ship operated by a third party, the paper said.

The warships also simulated deflecting anti-ship missile attacks, and operating in concert with submarines, early warning aircraft and fighter jets, the report added.

China periodically announces such exercises in the South China Sea, as it tries to demonstrate it is being transparent about its military deployments.

On Sunday, the Defense Ministry said the navy had recently carried out drills in the South China Sea. It was not clear if the exercises referred to by the newspaper and these drills were the same.

China has been at odds with the United States of late over the strategic waterway.

Washington has criticized Beijing's building of artificial islands in the South China Sea's disputed Spratly archipelago, and has conducted sea and air patrols near them.

Last month, U.S. B-52 bombers flew near some of China's artificial islands and at the end of October a U.S. guided-missile destroyer sailed within 12 nautical miles of one of them.

China expressed concern last week about an agreement between the United States and Singapore to deploy a U.S. P8 Poseidon spy plane to the city state, saying the move was aimed at militarizing the region.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-southchinasea-china-idUSKBN0U109K20151218

Beijing's Reaction to Taiwan Arms Sale Could Herald New Era of Sanctions: Analysts

2015-12-18
The United States' announcement Wednesday that it will sell U.S.$1.83 billion of arms to Taiwan has prompted an immediate protest and threat of sanctions from Beijing, which sees the island as a breakaway province awaiting reunification.

Washington has said the deal, the first in more than four years, is based solely on Taiwan’s defense needs.

Taiwan has been governed separately from mainland China throughout the Japanese occupation (1895-1945) and since the KMT nationalist regime fled to the island in 1949.

Many of the democratic island's 23 million residents identify as Taiwanese rather than Chinese, and there is broad political support for de facto self-rule, as well as concern over Beijing's ongoing threat to use military force, should Taiwan seek formal statehood.

If the sale goes through, Beijing officials say they will retaliate with economic sanctions following a formal diplomatic protest.

"China resolutely opposes the sale of weapons to Taiwan by the U.S.," vice foreign minister Zheng Zeguang was quoted as saying in a meeting with a U.S. diplomat in Beijing.

"In order to safeguard the nation’s interests, the Chinese side has decided to take necessary measures, including the imposition of sanctions against companies participating in the arms sale to Taiwan," Zheng said in comments quoted on his ministry's official website.

The proposed arms deal includes two decommissioned U.S. Navy frigates, anti-tank missiles, amphibious assault vehicles, and Stinger surface-to-air missiles, according to the Associated Press.

Also included are equipment to support intelligence collection, surveillance, and reconnaissance and a weapons system to defend against anti-ship missiles, it said.

A chilling effect

While the threat of sanctions may do little to deter the U.S. and EU defense industries, which are both barred from selling to China, it could herald a new era of assertive sanctions from Beijing with repercussions for many of its economic partners in the Asia Pacific region, analysts said.

More

http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/reaction-12182015105736.html

“Be content with what you have;
rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.”

 Lao Tzu