My comment:
(a) there is no need to read the rest, which is speculative.
(b) China has said it is hemmed in by the first island china. So I was surprised that China's fleet passes through Tsushima Strait. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsushima_Strait
(is the eastern channel of the Korea Strait; about 65 kilometres wide at its narrowest; a depth of about 90 metres)
Peter A Dutton, International Law and the November 2004 'Han Incident.' in Andrew S Erickson and Lyle J Goldstein, William S Murray and Andrew R Wilson (eds), China's Future Nuclear Submarine Force. Joint publication of China Maritime Studies and Naval Institute Press (2012), at pp 162-167. http://books.google.com/books?id ... tcover&dq=China
Quote: "In the five international straits clearly affected by even the restrictive approach--the Tsushima Strait (in the waters between the Southern Island of Kyushu and the Korean Peninsula, depicted in Chart 2), the Osumi Strait (between Kyushu and smaller islands off the coast), the La Perouse or Soya Strait (the northernmost strait between Hokkaido and Russia's Sakhalin peninsula), the Tsugaru Strait (between Hokkaido and Honshu)--Japan limited its territorial sea claims to LESS THAN twelve nautical miles in order to leave a band of international waters with high sea freedoms sufficient for ships to pass through without having to rely on a right of transit passage" (emphasis added) p 167
In the satellite photo, look for Vladivostok as well as Golden Horn Bay or
Zolotoy Rog Bay http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zolotoy_Rog
(In 1859, Count Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky gave the harbour its present name, which means "Golden Horn" in Russian, alluding to a similarly shaped harbour in Constantinople)