A Punchy Essay on South China Sea

choi

Andrew Browne, Tiny Reef Poses a Big Hazard for US. Wall Street Journal, May 20, 2015.
www.wsj.com/articles/stuck-on-a- ... founders-1432017372

Quote:

"On old British Admiralty sailing charts, the Spratly Islands were marked 'Dangerous Ground'—to be avoided. Several reefs in that part of the South China Sea area are named after sailing ships dashed to pieces on the sharp coral. The leaders of the US and China ignore those warnings at their peril.

"the Spratlys have become a test of wills between US President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. The US fear is that China is building fortresses to pursue its territorial claims through military means

"After he took power in 2012, Mr Xi began running a committee called the Central Leading Small Group on the Protection of Maritime Interests, according to a report by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group that drew on interviews with leading Chinese foreign-policy analysts * * * The report quotes one unnamed Chinese analyst as saying that when it comes to territorial issues, Mr Xi 'wants to go big and go fast.' That’s been the hallmark of the island-building project.

"China views the minuscule geographic features it controls in the Spratlys as embarrassing leftovers: The Philippines, Vietnam and other claimants all helped themselves to the largest islands in the decades after World War II when China was too poor and distracted to notice.

"The Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan and Malaysia all have outposts big enough for airstrips—and have built them. One of Vietnam’s has a Buddhist temple with monks. As for China, a few of its eight reefs boast a couple of bare rocks that jut out of the waves. That’s it. This is an intolerable situation for Mr Xi

"US can’t afford to let this go unchallenged. With its feverish island-building, China gives the impression that it wants to turn the South China Sea, the world’s busiest shipping thoroughfare, into its own lake.

"Japan operated a submarine base there [at the Spratlys during WW II].

My comment: This essay is worth reading. But the quotation above is the novel part.