A dramatic change is have place in the South China Sea where , since the beginning of this yr , Beijing has create at least five new islands by dredging tilt and sand and pumping it into reefs to shape novel earth . By doing so , the Chinese are sending a blunt substance to its neighbor and the U.S. : Keep out .
As a BBC News limited reportnotes , China ’s island construction is aimed at address what it reckon as a serious strategical deficit :
There are many vie claims to territory in the South China Sea , but only China and Taiwan claim to own it all .
Beijing ’s claim….is marked out on its own maps by the infamous “ nine - dash line ” , which comprehend a huge tongue - shaped surface area stretching right up to the coasts of the Philippines and Vietnam and even Borneo .
For ten China has done little to impose its vague and wholesale title . Now that is changing .
In 2012 the Communist Party reclassified the South China Sea as a “ core home sake ” , placing it alongside such sensitive progeny as Taiwan and Tibet . It means China is prepared to fight to defend it .
This is corroborate by Prof Yan Xuetong of Beijing ’s Tsinghua University — a pro - government academic well live for presenting the Communist Party ’s opinion to the outside Earth .
China will crusade , he says , if it feel its sovereignty in the South China Sea is under scourge .
China ’s land grab at ocean is primarily directed at its main strategic challenger , the United States . As the U.S. Pacific Fleet continues to sail on a regular basis through the South Chinese Sea , the Chinese Navy has become more assertive . Last December , it dispatched its new aircraft carrier , the Liaoning , to shade off the U.S. Navy police cruiser , USS Cowpens . A Chinese amphibious assault ship approached and set up it to leave the country . The commander of the Cowpens refused , state he was voyage in “ international waters . ”
At that point the U.S. Navy says the Chinese ship short swing across the Cowpens ’ bow , just 1,600 foundation onward , storm the prowl car to take evasive action .
According to the BBC , China seems to be preparing to ramp up an airbase based on one of these new islands — Johnson South Reef ( photo above ) — with a concrete runway long enough for fighter jet to take off and land :
In 1823 , US President James Monroe adumbrate what was subsequently to become fuck as the “ Monroe Doctrine . ”
It identified the westerly hemisphere as America ’s backyard , and nowhere more so than the Caribbean Sea . Old European colonial powers were say to keep out .
Today China is doing something very like in the East and South China sea .
Everything inside the so - called “ first island chain ” — which extend north in a curving melody from the seashore of Borneo , past Taiwan to southerly Japan — is , in Beijing ’s opinion , China ’s backyard . Beijing ’s ambition is to overtop this ocean - space and , at last , to abnegate access to the only other naval superpower in the earthly concern that can prevent China from doing so .
Meanwhile , the Philippines , which also has claims in the South China Sea and is rather alarm by Beijing ’s actions , is taking the character to the United Nations . It wants a opinion based on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea , which typically gives coastal states an exclusive economical geographical zone up to 200 marine miles from their coastline . But China has already announced that it will not be stick by any UN rulings .
Chinamilitary
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