Forget About The Middle East. This Looks Like The Next Possible Big Conflict

[FaninAma]

http://news.yahoo.com/china-behaviour-jeopardising-peacetime-japan-023745844.html

Seems like the 1930's all over again.

[KantoSooner]

You are correct that this is a potential flashpoint. Actually, 4 or 5:

In no particular order:

1. Japan and Korea are perennially bitching at each other over a series of little islands that, if they have anything at all, it's maybe guano. But they do push your exclusive economic zone a bit, so there's that...
2. Korea and North Korea are doing the same thing over a couple of little islets in the Yellow Sea. They seem to launch artillery at each other every year or two and call it a day, but it could boil over.
3. Quemoy and Matsu. Little Taiwanese held islands right off the coast of China. Pretty quiet now, but you never can tell. Big deal in the 1950's and '60's.
4. Islands and economic rights in the South China Sea argued over by Vietnam (who, never forget, has scoreboard on China. In the late 1970's the Chinese attempted to bring the Vietnamese to heel and found out what fighting a battle hardened army was about when all you have are ill-trained infantry conscripts) and China and the Philippines and Malaysia. The area has, supposedly, big time oil reserves which could motivate all the local players quite a bit. The Chinese and Flips have traded aerial bombing runs on each other's 'research facilities' though, to date, each has waited for 'crew change' times when no one was present, so damage was limited to material. (the facilities resemble houses on stilts built on reefs that barely break the waterline.)
5. Then you've got the 'Northern Islands' thing between Japan and Russia. Russia moved in during the final week (literally) of WWII and seized a series of islands off Hokkaido's northern coast. They hold them to this day. The Japanese are permanently pissed, but aren't going to do anything about it, at least for now.
6. And the China/Japan dealio in the article.

Whereever China is involved you run up against the most fundamental facet of Chinese governmental philosophy and the one that unites every political faction in the greater Chinese world. It is a feeling that they have forever been beset by 'foreigners' seeking to 'steal' 'their' land. I use the '...' carefully here because there's history and definitional depth behind each of these. For example: are/were the Mongols 'foreigners'? How can the Vietnamese be 'stealing' the Southern province of Annam (the old name for Vietnam)? Just exactly where does 'their' land end? The Tibetans seem to have a very different view of the proper borders...as do the Russians, the Indians, the Pakistanis, etc, etc.) Whether the Chinese position is righteous or amorally self serving, ignore it at your peril. It is a very real feeling and you can stir emotions among Chinese like nothing else when you suggest giving as much as an inch on these issues.
So, I think the inter-Korean stuff is handle-able, as is the stuff between China and Taiwan. In the end, the islands in question are still under the same roof, so to speak. The Japanese aren't going to get into it with the Russians. And the Japanese and Koreans will manage to not go to war. Japan is not going to go to war with China over the article's island...and the Chinese, for now, are not going to risk Japan's (and the US's) wrath by simply taking the things. It's in the South China Sea, though, where the real risk lies. You've got potentially critical national interests for all the parties there running up against a Chinese feeling of utter entitlement.
And that is one reason we are shifting naval focus to that precise area. ...and why the locals are so quiet in what would typically be a contentious stationing of US military in the region. The Chinese are not ready for a major naval commitment and won't be for another 20 years. Not even if they were just getting into it with the locals. They certainly aren't ready to deal with the USN.
We, (the US) have been involved since the late 1980's in a full court press through the regional economic talk shops (ASEAN, Asia Regional Forum, etc), military exchanges, basing privileges, etc to try and keep everybody in their own corner and to suggest a multi-lateral solution (like maybe co-development of oil fields so that, if no one wins, at least no one loses.)

Throw in the bubbling presence of a communist insurgency AND a muslim one in the Southern Philippines, the typical economic dips and peaks, increased affluence and thus involvement in the world of national/internaitonal politics of the populations of the regional players and you've got a nice stew.

Not as much of a 'boiling over' as you have in the Arab/Muslim world at the moment, but in this one, you've got a rising super-power who considers its fundamental national interest to be at stake. Long term, this is going to be a place where the US spends a lot of time/money trying to keep the lid on.

Oh, and if we want to go all speculative, we can discuss the fact that the Chinese have never really accepted the permanence of the 'Russian' Far East. Lots of land and resources West of the Ural mountains...

[TheHumanAlphabet]

China is all about getting territory for energy purposes. I would be very scared of China for that aspect. They need oil and gas and will bully and fight for it...

[KantoSooner]

While you're utterly correct on that point, there's more at play when we're in areas they consider to be historically 'theirs'...like the South China Sea. The threat level there is far higher, for instance than to the 'stan's in central Asia...even though the petro resources there are proven and developed.

[FaninAma]

Kanto, very nice synopsis. It will be interesting to see how far the other nations involved in the South China Sea conflicts will allow themselves to be bullied by China. It does seem that China and Japan have flipped roles from the conflicts of the early 20th century.

[KantoSooner]

China in the last century was recovering from a long period of lax Imperial control. The same nation that produced Cheng He and made voyages of discovery that made Columbus' trip look like a crappie fishing expedition on a local stock pond decided to close its doors to the world and unilaterally disarm...just as The West revved up. It's only now recovering its position in the world.

And it's astounding that they did so pretty much on the basis of advice and decisions made by a relatively small group of crazed Taoist eunuchs who went around with their shrivelled gonads in little bags around their necks. Not good personnel selection.

China will be the dominant partner in the area, but the other countries are not insignificant:

China Population: 1,360 million

Indonesia: 237
Japan: 127
Philippines: 99
Vietnam: 89
Thailand: 66
Burma: 53
S. Korea: 50
Malaysia: 30
Cambodia: 15
Laos: 6.5
Singapore: 5.5

SE Asia Total: 778 million

plus another 70 million or so in Taiwan and N. Korea who aren't going to tag team up with SE Asia but won't necessarily be friendly to China's interests, either. And that doesn't start to account for captive Tibet, India or Pakistan who also share borders with China.

China is the 800 lb gorilla in that area, make no mistake, but the others are not without some heft of their own...

[FaninAma]

China in the last century was recovering from a long period of lax Imperial control. The same nation that produced Cheng He and made voyages of discovery that made Columbus' trip look like a crappie fishing expedition on a local stock pond decided to close its doors to the world and unilaterally disarm...just as The West revved up. It's only now recovering its position in the world.

And it's astounding that they did so pretty much on the basis of advice and decisions made by a relatively small group of crazed Taoist eunuchs who went around with their shrivelled gonads in little bags around their necks. Not good personnel selection.

China will be the dominant partner in the area, but the other countries are not insignificant:

China Population: 1,360 million

Indonesia: 237
Japan: 127
Philippines: 99
Vietnam: 89
Thailand: 66
Burma: 53
S. Korea: 50
Malaysia: 30
Cambodia: 15
Laos: 6.5
Singapore: 5.5

SE Asia Total: 778 million

plus another 70 million or so in Taiwan and N. Korea who aren't going to tag team up with SE Asia but won't necessarily be friendly to China's interests, either. And that doesn't start to account for captive Tibet, India or Pakistan who also share borders with China.

China is the 800 lb gorilla in that area, make no mistake, but the others are not without some heft of their own...

It will be an interesting saga to watch as all of these nations jockey for economic advantage in this region.

BTW, are you the guy on the Dos Equis comercials? Your posts, for the most part, are very worth the time to read and ponder.

[KantoSooner]

LOL, No. I had a decent education directed at international affairs, then worked for a Japanese trading company, one of those years in their 'President's Office' (where they do the famous 85 billion year business plans) and then did the Asian Ops job for an American manufacturing company with no resources.
So now I'm enjoying life working the family company here in Oklahoma. A change to say the least, but a welcome one.

[TheHumanAlphabet]

While you're utterly correct on that point, there's more at play when we're in areas they consider to be historically 'theirs'...like the South China Sea. The threat level there is far higher, for instance than to the 'stan's in central Asia...even though the petro resources there are proven and developed.

The South China Sea is the hot spot... Vietnam, Phillipines, Brunei, and maybe Indonesia (Japan may as well with those islands) all have resource interests that seem to coincide with China's claim to the territory...

[cleller]

These two countries need to drop their eastern machismo and get into the 21st Century.

Reality TV. High stakes poker. Some type of drawn out tournament. Winner takes island. Get Dennis Rodman to host the shows. Residents compensated or re-established elsewhere by the TV revenue.

I imagine we nuked bigger, better islands in the 50s just for practice.

[8timechamps]

While you're utterly correct on that point, there's more at play when we're in areas they consider to be historically 'theirs'...like the South China Sea. The threat level there is far higher, for instance than to the 'stan's in central Asia...even though the petro resources there are proven and developed.

THIS.

China puts far more emphasis on "their" perceived territory than they do thinking about taking land for energy reasons.

[TheHumanAlphabet]

You may be right, but they are out there buying up resources faster than hell and they have the Chinese treasury as their bank... Blame them next time we have a gas price spike...

[cleller]

In our lifetimes: ChinAfrica.

Africa seems they'd rather have someone come and pay to take their stuff than to teach them how to develop it.

[badger]

I read somewhere that the Chinese population demographics are also ideal for a wartime situation --- surplus men with no chances at brides due to not having a dowry.

As for Chinese territory, it seems the biggest confict with the world is not its land space, but air space and water space control. Where can the rest of the world fly or travel by boat? China seems to be pointing everywhere near it and saying that its theirs, whether its in the sky or in the ocean.

Dangerous situation, definitely.

[KantoSooner]

The western use of 'Middle Kingdom' for 'China' is accurate but doesn't capture the full flavor of the Chinese 'Chung Kuo'. 'Chung' can mean 'middle' but can also be translated as 'central' or, in a stretch, 'original'. In it's two character use, it has a meaning much closer to 'Nexus of the World' or even 'federal government' than simply 'one kingdom, among many, that happens to be located in the middle of all these kingdoms'.
The Chinese see China as the logical center of human activity on the planet. And it's not hard to see how this view developed. If you go back to 1500 or so and look at the world from a Chinese perspective, there really wasn't much else out there to learn anything from. Hell, they had natural gas piped into homes in parts of China at that time as well as crude, but operational, cruise missiles on 350 foot long warships. By contrast Magellan and Columbus made their voyages on vessels that measured what? 50 feet, max? They used toilet paper while were availing ourselves of tree leaves.

So they gave up on the rest of the world, turned inwards and ended up getting exposed a couple of hundred years later. Major humiliation that they feel they are only now recovering from.

So, yeah, there's significant risk. But diplomacy is working pretty well to convince them to play by the rules and we definitely want them part of the game rather than running around as butt-hurt outsiders.

As far as the demographics? Lots is going to flow out of the 'one child policy', including a sharp increase in gay culture in China (anathema to the old boys there), lots of foreign women being brought in (prepare yourself for a well to do Chinese son-in-law), lots of Chinese emigration and an increasing wave of hatred of those who have managed to game the system to have more than one kid (anti-corruption riots have been the traditional harbinger of a government's loss of the 'Mandate of Heaven' and its collapse - and that pattern goes back close to 3,000 years).

Bottom line: China is a part of our lives now and forever going forward...but is not a juggernaut and has plenty of its own problems.