Chinese Military,Political and Social Superthread

[CBH99]

Agreed FJAG,

Good and bad, we are ultimately blessed to be right next door to the world's major superpower.  We all have family and friends on both sides of the border, and enjoy relatively free travel between the two.

And that was my ultimate point -- if a majority of our exports to China is food/agriculture, I'm sure we could find someone else who would happily take their place.



The world's population is swelling, and people need to eat.  I mentioned India because as another country with a population of 1 Billion+ -- could we not replace most of our exports that we have with China, yet have substantially less hassle? 

If the west helped support low-cost manufacturing in literally ANY of those other countries mentioned, I feel like we'd all be better off in the long run.  Relying on an emerging enemy as our source of a majority of our goods isn't going to pan out well in the long run, I fear.    :2c:

 

[Weinie]

I mentioned India because as another country with a population of 1 Billion+ -- could we not replace most of our exports that we have with China, yet have substantially less hassle? 

Perhaps the Indian government isn't interested in any increased trade with Canada, given the fact that the PM's coterie invited a convicted Sikh extremist to a reception in New Delhi.
This is a long game, and you have to build up relations that are mutually beneficial to both countries. Not sure that India sees any value in looking the other way.
Then you have Chretien, Manley, and that whole former Liberal cabal who are joined at the hip with China. What is a poor PM supposed to do?  Go China. :trainwreck:

 

[Colin Parkinson]

India does not have the robust industrial base that China has nor the other infrastructure required. Quality control in India makes China look very good. India wants to get there, but has to cross a lot of bridges to get there and some of those are heavily cluttered with systemic corruption.

 

[MarkOttawa]

PRC continues to demonstrate it's almost no holds barred approach to matters--start of a post:

Indeed, Looks like Chicoms Working Brutally to Cleanse Xinjiang of Uyghurs

Further to this post,

Seems like Chicoms may be Working eventually to Cleanse Xinjiang of Uyghurs

   
we now have a major piece of reporting by the Associated Press:

China forces birth control on Muslim Uighurs to suppress population
4-year campaign in Xinjiang region is form of ‘demographic genocide,’ say some experts
...

https://mark3ds.wordpress.com/2020/06/29/indeed-looks-like-chicoms-working-brutally-to-cleanse-xinjiang-of-uyghurs/

Mark
Ottawa

 

[dapaterson]

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is reporting a the passage of a new Chinese national security law targeting Hong Kong.

China's parliament has passed national security legislation for Hong Kong, setting the stage for the most radical changes to the former British colony's way of life since it returned to Chinese rule almost 23 years ago.

Cable TV, citing an unidentified source, said the law was passed unanimously by the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress.

The legislation pushes Beijing further along a collision course with the United States, Britain and other Western governments, which have said it erodes the high degree of autonomy the global financial hub was granted at its July 1, 1997 handover.

A draft of the law has yet to be published. Beijing says the law, which comes in response to last year's pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, aims to tackle subversion, terrorism, separatism and collusion with foreign forces.

This month, China's official state agency Xinhua unveiled some of its provisions, including that it would supersede existing Hong Kong legislation and that the power of interpretation belongs to the Chinese parliament's top decision-making body, the National People's Congress Standing Committee.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-30/china-passes-new-national-security-law-for-hong-kong/12406178

 

[OldSolduer]

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is reporting a the passage of a new Chinese national security law targeting Hong Kong.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-30/china-passes-new-national-security-law-for-hong-kong/12406178

That's an interesting but predictable action.

 

[Edward Campbell]

India does not have the robust industrial base that China has nor the other infrastructure required. Quality control in India makes China look very good. India wants to get there, but has to cross a lot of bridges to get there and some of those are heavily cluttered with systemic corruption.

I agree with Colin P, but India has some advantages over China, too: mainly stronger institutions which many experts agree are the only guarantor of long term growth and prosperity.

India is corrupt, but so is China in an ever more systemic way, but reform is easier ~ institutions, again. India is also hard to govern, being a pretty solid democracy, but that, too, can be an advantage. 

 

[MarkOttawa]

PRC wants pieces out of lots of its neighbours--major article by a retired Indian Air Force air marshal at his site, "Air Power Asia), many maps:

China’s Serious Border Disputes With Most Neighbours – Unilateral Approach – India the Bulwark – Comprehensive Story
https://airpowerasia.com/2020/07/06/chinas-serious-border-disputes-with-most-neighbours-unilateral-approach-india-the-bulwark-comprehensive-story/

UPDATE: Two maps from the article:

Mark
Ottawa

 

[Kirkhill]

I was just looking at this yesterday and came up with my own map of "China's Flash Points"  I included all of the internal civil disorders I could find since 2000 - this turned out to include a large concentration in 2008 and 2011 which coincided with the Arab Spring and the Coloured Revolutions.  I also included India-Pakistan border disputes and the Japan-Russia island disputes as related flash points.

All things considered China doesn't look particularly stable internally, its hold on the west over non-Han territories looks particularly tenuous, and it doesn't seem to have been reading much Dale Carnegie these days. 

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard felt driven to publish this in the Telegraph

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/07/09/britain-should-not-quake-xi-jinping-china-has-already-peaked/

The ledger is brutally clear. Xi Jinping’s regime has no allies of global economic weight or credibility.

Some 53 countries backed China’s treatment of Hong Kong in the UN Human Rights Council, a body now under the thumb of Beijing. They make up just 4pc of the world’s GDP. Most are authoritarian states and statelets locked into the neo-colonial infrastructure nexus of the Belt & Road.

The only G20 member to have lined up on China’s side (and against Britain) was Mohammad bin Salman’s Saudi Arabia, a struggling middle income autocracy running out of places to sell its excess oil.

The list offers a revealing view of the strategic order emerging in the early 2020s. The rich Western and Asian democracies, which still control the international economic system, are coalescing into a united front. China is starting to pay the exorbitant price for its wolf warrior diplomacy.

China's Allies and Enemies

The supporting countries: China, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahrain, Belarus, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Comoros, Congo-Brazzaville, Cuba, Djibouti, Dominica, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Gabon, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Laos, Lebanon, Lesotho, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Papua New Guinea, Saudi Arabia,  Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Syria, Tajikistan, Togo, UAE, Venezuela, Yemen, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The opposing countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Belize, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Germany, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Marshall Islands, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Palau, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, and the U.K.

Pretty much China vs the OECD.

An invasion of China is never going to be a realistic prospect.  Just as invasions of Russia, Canada, the US and India aren't in the realm of reality.  But a containment strategy - economic and military blockade along the island perimeter of the China Seas and supporting India in its territorial disputes with China and Pakistan that does seem reasonable. It also presents opportunities to assist the Uighur and the Tibetans from India and Hong Kong and Guangdong from Taiwan and Vietnam.

Blockade was the answer to the USSR.  It was also the answer to Napoleon's Europe.  It also makes it easier for me to understand why the USMC might be putting a heavy bet on Coastal Artillery in support of allies (Japan, South Korea, Republic of China (which actually has a dormant claim to a Permanent Security Council seat having been usurped by communist insurgents), Phillipines, Indonesia, Borneo, Malaysia and Vietnam.

An awful lot of places to keep China busy and frustrated.


(Can't seem to attach the map).

 

[MarkOttawa]

PLA Navy's LHDs getting ever-honking bigger:

Chinese Type 075 Big Deck Amphib Preparing for Sea Trials

The Chinese Navy’s newest amphibious warfare asset, the Type 075 LHD (Landing Helicopter Dock) is setting sail for the first time, according to ship spotter reports.

The vessel, which was built in Shanghai, has been fitting out since it was floated on September 26, 2019. Candid photos surfacing on the Chinese language internet show it being fueled, and tugs readied.

The Type-075 represents a step-change in the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) amphibious warfare capabilities. It will enable better over-the-horizon landing capabilities and improve air cover. And there are already rumors of the follow-on Type-076 LHD which is expected to include EMALS (Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System) for unmanned combat aerial vehicles or crewed aircraft. At this stage, these rumors should be treated with caution. But they do give an indication of the direction PLAN amphibious capabilities are going [emphasis added].

In addition to the well-deck for Type 726 hovercraft (generally equivalent to the U.S. Navy’s Landing Craft Air Cushion), the LHD will have a large rotor-wing component. This will include the Z-8 transport helicopter which is based on the French SA 321 Super Frelon. More modern types seen aboard, in mock-up form, include the naval variant of the Harbin Z-20 — an apparent copy of the Sikorsky S-70 Black Hawk-Sea Hawk family.

There are also small rotor-wing UAVss including a Ka-27/28 HELIX anti-submarine warfare helicopter model aboard for deck tests.

Images in the public domain show a range of rotor-craft models aboard the Type 075. This is a common practice aboard Chinese warships and is a strong leading indicator of the operational air wing.

The ship suffered a fire on April 11, 2020. Although the fire was quickly put out and damage appeared minimal, smoke stains are still visible in the aft port-side near to the ramp.

The Hudong-Zhonghua yard in Shanghai where the lead Type 075 has been built has already launched a second ship. And analysis of commercial satellite imagery suggests that module for a third may be on its way. At the moment the yard is building the Type 054A frigate for the Pakistan Navy and, it appears, a Type 071 LPD for Thailand.

The PLAN began development of the Type 075 in 2011 as a helicopter carrier that would displace about 35,000 tons — smaller than the U.S. 45,000-ton Wasp and America-class big decks. The unnamed ship launched last year [emphasis added].

https://news.usni.org/2020/07/29/chinese-type-075-big-deck-amphib-preparing-for-sea-trials

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Meanwhile on the East China Sea front:

US pledges to help Japan with 'unprecedented' Chinese incursions
Top commander sees Beijing's expansion in East China Sea as part of global challenge

The U.S. is fully committed to help Tokyo handle China's repeated incursions into waters surrounding the Senkaku Islands, the commander of American forces in Japan said Wednesday.

"The United States is 100% absolutely steadfast in its commitment to help the government of Japan with the situation," Lt. Gen. Kevin Schneider, the highest-ranking U.S. military officer in Japan, said in an online news conference. "That's 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, seven days a week."

Chinese government vessels have sailed into the contiguous zone of the Japanese-administered Senkakus -- an East China Sea island chain that Beijing claims as the Diaoyu -- for more than 100 straight days. Schneider called the situation "unprecedented."

Chinese ships usually "would go in and out a couple of times a month, and now we are seeing them basically park and truly challenge Japan's administration," he said.

"The duration of the incursions is beyond anything that we've seen in a long, long time," he said.

Washington acknowledges that Japan administers the islands and has repeatedly said that the Senkaku Islands are covered by Article 5 of the U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security, which commits the U.S. to defend aggression against territories under Japanese administration [emphasis added, Canada has no Pacific security treaty obligations].

But the U.S. has also said that it is neutral on the question of sovereignty, and for the most part has stayed away from the daily tensions between Japan and China in the waters.

Schneider's expression of explicit U.S. support is rare, and comes ahead of the end of a Chinese seasonal fishing ban scheduled for mid-August. Four years ago as many as 230 Chinese ships gathered around the Senkakus -- both fishing ships and Chinese Coast Guard vessels -- with some entering Japanese territorial waters.

He said that the U.S. was offering Japan surveillance and reconnaissance assistance to assess the situation.

It comes a day after the U.S. and Australia pledged to forge a "network of nations" to check China, and also after the joint rejection by Washington and Canberra of Beijing's maritime claims in the South China Sea, where the People's Liberation Army is currently conducting live-fire drills [emphasis added--fine for Canada to give diplomatic support but CAF far too stretched to contribute anything of significance; though perhaps RCNavy/RCAF CP-140s could do exercises further west than RIMPAC].

In the South China Sea, the "nine-dash line" area claimed by Beijing overlaps the United Nations-mandated exclusive economic zones of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam.

Since the U.S. State Department formally rejected China's claims to the nine-dash line earlier this month, the U.S. Navy has upped the ante by conducting trilateral naval drills with Japan and Australia, as well as bilateral exercises with India. There are reports that the four countries-- all part of the informal Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad -- could formulate a formal joint military coalition soon [emphasis added, still a lot of uncertainty in India, despite Ladakh border flare-up with PRC]...
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/US-China-tensions/US-pledges-to-help-Japan-with-unprecedented-Chinese-incursions

Mark
Ottawa

 

[shawn5o]

The Containment of China
by Lawrence A. Franklin
August 4, 2020 at 5:00 am

After China's many transgressions over the past 50 years -- including the theft of $600 billion of U.S. intellectual property each year; Beijing's malignant cover-up of the Covid-19 virus; the Communist regime's attempts to blind US airmen with lasers; constructing military islands in the South China Sea, and last month sending a massive fleet of 250 Chinese fishing vessels near the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador, to name but a few -- the military containment of Chinese expansionism and Communist Party Chairman Xi Jinping's stated goal of world domination needs to be the highest foreign policy priority of the Free World.

The ultimate objective of this initiative would be to prevent Communist China's aggression against the independent states of the Indo-Pacific region and beyond.
China's walk-in-the-park takeover of Hong Kong -- an illegal appropriation -- undoubtedly served to whet China's expansionist appetite.

The first military containment of China could encompass a broad and multi-tiered defense perimeter in an arc extending from Japan's coastal waters, southeast to the continent of Australia, and northwest to the Himalayan borderlands between China and India, where China has already been attempting a land invasion. Although China's recent record of malign behavior has drawn the ire of many, China is encouragingly vulnerable. Fourteen states share sections of China's land borders, and the Chinese already have territorial disputes with 18 countries.

The leaders of China's Communist Party have been clear about China's territorial claims, particularly in the South China Sea. China's claim there, if realized, would include about 85% of the waters off China and most of the island archipelagos within the South China Sea. The United States needs to be unambiguously clear that it will physically block any Chinese effort to realize any baseless assertions of Chinese sovereignty. America's determination also needs be transparent so that Chinese leaders do not doubt U.S. resolve, in case China might be tempted to check it by staging a violent incident.

The firm tone of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's July 13 declaration that the U.S. rejects China's fake claims in the South China Sea as mostly illegal will probably be seen as "just words." The U.S. might need to convince Beijing that America and its allies have the political will to implement this containment. Pompeo also drew a line by asserting that the U.S. will defend the sovereignty of smaller South China Sea states -- a conflict with China's own often-stated claims.

For the U.S. to secure the endorsement of the Archipelago of Southeast Asian states, they first must be certain that the U.S. commitment to defend their sovereignty is unequivocal and permanent.

Many regional countries have been threatened by Chinese military assets and pushed to abandon their sovereign fishing and energy exploratory activities in waters claimed by China. In mid-June, for instance, a Chinese vessel rammed a Vietnamese fishing boat in disputed waters near the Paracel Islands, an archipelago chain claimed by both China and Vietnam. China in 2019-2020 continued to infuriate Indonesia by claiming sovereignty of waters inside Indonesia's 200-mile economic zone, an area that would give Beijing sovereignty over the Indonesian Natuna Islands. In mid-April of this year, Malaysia was apparently shocked into the reality of China's aggressive claims when a Chinese vessel, along with several Chinese Coast Guard vessels, boldly entered Malaysian waters clearly within Malaysia's internationally recognized 200 hundred mile economic zone.

It seems to have been, however, the June 9, 2019 ramming and subsequent sinking of a Philippine fishing boat off Reed Bank in the Philippine Sea that had geopolitical ramifications. The incident happened shortly after Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte reversed himself and decided to keep a military defense pact with the U.S. His turnabout permitted continued U.S. access to Philippine air and naval bases, thus preserving the decades-long defense treaty between the U.S. and the Philippines, an important link in any wall to contain China.

Given the many examples of China's aggressive behavior toward its neighbors, and with Taiwan now being openly threatened as well, another U.S. option, already undertaken, to lend substance to the military wall against China, was to send more U.S. military ships to the region.

A diplomatic plan might include a request that Australia -- which has not only been unbudgeable despite Chinese pressure, but also has friendly ties with all governments in the area -- host a summit of regional state political and military leaders. Representatives from the U.S., Japan, India, and Taiwan could attend, while permitting the host nation, Australia, to elicit the views and, one hopes, the commitment to contain the threat.
Subsequently, the U.S could dispatch policy and military teams to several regional states to discuss bilateral defense arrangements. These bilateral understandings could, in time, be linked up with already existing multinational defense organizations, such as "The Quad": Japan, Australia, India and the U.S. In September, for the first time, all four members of the Quad will probably participate together in the India-hosted Malabar military exercises. This multinational barrier for containment could be further concretized by continuous regional military exercises, arms sales, military training exchange programs, and operational planning, as well as ports, bases, and airport visitations. Countries could also be enjoined to cancel all commercial activity with China. Why fund one's enemy and make him stronger? This program functioned well in the Free World's "Cold War" with the Soviet Union.

For this multinational initiative to survive and evolve into a formidable edifice to frustrate any Chinese territorial aspirations, the U.S. must lead "from the front" by frequent "Freedom of Navigation" operations through contested straits and other sensitive waterways to reinforce the legitimacy of international law on the high seas. Some of these freedom of navigation operations could be conducted in the Formosa (Taiwan) Strait between Taiwan and China. Another exercise could be in the disputed waters of the Tokara and Miyako Straits near Japan and China.

Another U.S. move, in coordination of member states, would be to extend the existing program of the "Five Eyes" (the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) arrangement of intelligence sharing, when it pertains to China, to other allies, perhaps initially India and Japan. The U.S. and its allies should probably be prepared for an attempt by China to initiate provocative action against one or more of the states in the region. In response, they might dispatch combat vessels to confront aggressors or rescue those who might need rescuing.

If China should respond to allied containment activities in a more robust military fashion, the massive naval and air power of the U.S. 7th Fleet, based in Yokouska, Japan, should be sufficient to check any aggressive Chinese moves. The 7th Fleet could also be substantially reinforced by U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, headquartered in Hawaii. Any decision by the U.S. to adopt the military containment of China as a policy must assume that China might retaliate. China's leaders are surely hoping that the current U.S. administration's aversion to war will enable the Communists to pick off new territory with relative ease; the U.S. should not even let them think of such a possibility.

Spokespersons for member states should not hesitate to declare that it is the mandatory duty of free states to oppose the universal ambitions of the totalitarian Party-State of the People's Republic of China and its aim eclipsing the United States. This goal is made abundantly clear in their own publications, such as the May 19, 2019 Chinese Communist Party official organ, People's Daily and the Xinhua News Agency declaring "People's War" on America. The Party's narrative is that the U.S. administration is threatening all the people of China. One Chinese state CCTV anchor added that the "U.S. fights for greed and arrogance," but that "China will fight for a new world." It certainly will -- if we let it.

Dr. Lawrence A. Franklin was the Iran Desk Officer for Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. He also served on active duty with the U.S. Army and as a Colonel in the Air Force Reserve.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16300/china-containment

 

[mariomike]

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16300/china-containment

Regarding Gatestone Institute,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatestone_Institute#Inaccurate_reports

 

[shawn5o]

Regarding Gatestone Institute,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatestone_Institute#Inaccurate_reports

It's a biased site. Is the article wrong?

And speaking of controversial things, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNN_controversies

 

[FJAG]

Maybe this is why China is building it's fleet.

'They just pull up everything!' Chinese fleet raises fears for Galápagos sea life

A vast fishing armada off Ecuador’s biodiverse Pacific islands has stirred alarm over ‘indiscriminate’ fishing practices

Dan Collyns in Lima

Jonathan Green had been tracking a whale shark named Hope across the eastern Pacific for 280 days when the satellite transmissions from a GPS tag on her dorsal fin abruptly stopped.

It was not unusual for the GPS signal to go silent, even for weeks at a time, said Green, a scientist who has been studying the world’s largest fish for three decades in the unique marine ecosystem around the Galápagos Islands.

But then he looked at satellite images in the area where Hope was last tracked – more than a thousand nautical miles west of the islands – and noticed the ocean was being patrolled by hundreds of Chinese fishing boats.

“I began to look into it and found that at the very end of her track she began to speed up,” said Green, co-founder and director of the Galápagos Whale Shark Project.

“It went from one knot to six or seven knots for the last 32 minutes – which is, of course, the speed of a fishing boat,” he said.

The fishing vessels that Green saw on the satellite images are believed to belong to an enormous Chinese-flagged fleet which Ecuadorian authorities last week warned was just outside the Galápagos Islands’ territorial waters.

“I don’t have proof but my hypothesis is that she was caught by vessels from the same fleet which is now situated to the south of the islands,” Green told the Guardian. She is the third GPS-tracked whale shark to have gone missing in the last decade, he added.

The Chinese fleet, numbering more than 200 vessels, is in international waters just outside a maritime border around the Galápagos Islands and also Ecuador’s coastal waters, said Norman Wray, the islands’ governor.

Chinese fishing vessels come every year to the seas around the Galápagos, which were declared a Unesco world heritage site in 1978, but this year’s fleet is one of the largest seen in recent years. Of the 248 vessels, 243 are flagged to China including to companies with suspected records of illegal, unreported and unregulated, or IUU, fishing, according to research by C4ADS, a data analysis NGO.

The fleet includes fishing boats and refrigerated container – or reefer – ships to store enormous catches.

Transferring cargo between vessels is prohibited under international maritime law yet the Chinese flotilla has supply and storage ships along with longline and squid fishing boats.

“There are some fleets which don’t seem to abide by any regulations,” said Wray.

One captain of an Ecuadorian tuna boat saw the Chinese fishing boats up close in early July, before the end of the tuna season.

“They just pull up everything!” said the captain, who asked not to be named. “We are obliged to take a biologist aboard who checks our haul; if we catch a shark we have to put it back, but who controls them?”

He recalled navigating through the fleet at night, constantly changing course to avoid boats, as their lights illuminated the sea to attract squid to the surface.

“It was like looking at a city at night,” he said.

The longline fishing boats had up to 500 lines, each with thousands of fishhooks, he estimated, and claimed that some of the vessels would turn off their automatic tracking systems to avoid detection, particularly when operating in protected areas.

Chinese fishing practices first caught the attention of Ecuador in 2017 when its navy seized the Chinese reefer Fu Yuan Yu Leng 999 within the Galápagos marine reserve. Inside its containers were 6,000 frozen sharks – including the endangered hammerhead shark and whale shark.

“It was a slaughterhouse,” said Green, describing the images of the cargo hold. “This kind of slaughter is going on on a massive scale in international waters and nobody is witnessing it.”

The seizure prompted protests outside the Chinese embassy in Quito; Ecuador fined the vessel $6m and the 20 Chinese crew-members were later jailed for up to four years for illegal fishing.

The arrival of the latest fleet has also stirred public outrage and a formal complaint by Ecuador as its navy is on alert for any incursion into Ecuadorian waters.

The Chinese embassy in Quito said that China was a “responsible fishing nation” with a “zero-tolerance” attitude towards illegal fishing. It had confirmed with Ecuador’s navy that all the Chinese fishing vessels were operating legally “and don’t represent a threat to anyone”, it said in a statement last month. On Thursday China announced a three-month fishing ban in the high seas west of the marine reserve, but it will not come into force until September.

Roque Sevilla, a former mayor of Quito, who is leading a team in charge of designing a “protection strategy” for the islands, said the fleet practices “indiscriminate fishing – regardless of species or age – which is causing a serious deterioration of the quality of fauna that we will have in our seas”.

Ecuador would establish a corridor of marine reserves with Pacific-facing neighbours Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia to seal off important areas of marine diversity, Sevilla told the Guardian.

Protecting the Cocos Ridge, an underwater mountain range which connects the Galápagos Islands to mainland Costa Rica, and the Carnegie Ridge which links the archipelago to Ecuador and continental South America, could close off more than 200,000 sq nautical miles of ocean otherwise vulnerable to industrial fishing, he said.

He added Ecuador had called for a diplomatic meeting with Chile, Peru, Colombia and Panama to present a formal protest against China.

“When the Galápagos’s protected area was first created it was cutting edge,” said Matt Rand, director of the Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy, “but compared to other newer marine protected areas Galápagos is now potentially lacking in size to protect the biodiversity.”

Milton Castillo, the Galápagos Islands’ representative for Ecuador’s human rights ombudsman’s office, said he had asked the prosecutor’s office to inspect the cargo holds of the Chinese ships based on the legal principle of the universal and extraterritorial protection of endangered species.

China’s distant-water fishing fleet is the biggest in the world, with nearly 17,000 vessels – 1,000 of which use “flags of convenience” and are registered in other countries, according to research by the Overseas Development Institute.

Green said the “explosion of life” created by the confluence of cold and warm ocean currents around the Galápagos Islands is exactly why the Chinese armada is hovering around the archipelago’s waters.

“The Galápagos marine reserve is a place of very great productivity, high biomass but also biodiversity,” he said. The longline fishing technique used by the fleet catch big fish like tuna, but also sharks, rays, turtles and marine mammals like sea lions and dolphins, he added.

“This is not fishing any more, it is simply destroying the resources of our oceans,” Green said. “We should ask whether any nation on this planet has the right to destroy what is common ground.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/06/chinese-fleet-fishing-galapagos-islands-environment

:tsktsk:

 

[MarkOttawa]

Macdonald-Laurier Institute has been leading the charge to get real about PRC and start cracking back (further links at original):

Canada can no longer ignore foreign interference from China: Devin Tuttle, Marcus Kolga and Ai-Men Lau in the Province

It’s foolish to assume Canada is immune to the party’s foreign interference, as it’s already happening here, write Devin Tuttle, Marcus Kolga, and Ai-Men Lau.

By Devin Tuttle, Marcus Kolga, and Ai-Men Lau, August 18, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a spotlight on the foreign-interference tactics of Russia and China.

Since the beginning, both actively promoted disinformation and conspiracies about COVID-19’s origin and engaged in “mask diplomacy” to boost a favourable international profile.

There are allegations of Russian and Chinese hackers targeting organizations developing a COVID-19 vaccine. While Russia has made no secret of using hybrid warfare tactics against other countries, China has been much more clandestine in its operations.

Yet there are well-documented cases of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) foreign-interference strategies. A report from V-Dem at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg found that Taiwan is subjected to more foreign interference from China than anywhere else. The CCP’s interference aims to engineer unification with Taiwan through the dissemination of disinformation on social media platforms, investment into Taiwanese media outlets, as well as co-opting actors and legacy institutions to suppress policies unfavourable to China.

Chinese foreign interference is not restricted to Asian states. A recording of former Australian Senator Sam Dastyari’s remarks at a 2016 news conference to Chinese reporters was obtained by Australian media. On the recording, Dastyari can be heard saying that Australia should respect China’s position on the South China Sea, a view in stark contrast to his own party’s stance. The news conference was organized by Chinese property developer Huang Xiangmo, who had picked up the Dastyari’s legal tab after the senator was sued by an advertising firm.

The scandal, which led to Dastyari’s resignation in 2017, sparked media investigations into the links between Australian politicians and CCP-linked money. It was uncovered that the largest donors to the Labour and Liberal parties were China-linked businesses, donating a total of $5.5 million AUS between 2013 to 2015.

It would be foolish to assume Canada is immune to the CCP’s foreign interference. In March, a report published by the all-party National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians warned that both the Russian and Chinese governments “target ethnocultural communities, seek to corrupt the political process, manipulate the media” and pose “a significant risk to the rights and freedoms of Canadians and to the country’s sovereignty.”

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service reported that Canada is an attractive target for the Chinese regime, warning that the CCP has won support of influential Canadians through economic means such as sweetheart business deals or lucrative board positions in China. A lack of public attention to Beijing’s campaign also provides incentive for Chinese foreign interference.

These attacks against Canadian democracy are already well underway. The case of Rukiye Turdush, a Uighur-Canadian activist (the Uighurs are a Turkic-speaking, persecuted minority in China), reveals coordination between Chinese students and Chinese consular officials against speech critical of China on Canadian university campuses.

Major media outlets publish articles under the guise of journalism from paid lobbyists on behalf of the Canadian Chinese Political Affairs Committee. Recently, several prominent Canadians penned an open letter to the prime minister to end the Vancouver-based extradition proceedings of Meng Wanzhou, deputy board chair and chief financial officer of telecom giant Huawei.

It is critical for the federal government to revamp Canada’s current strategies, regulations and policies to counteract a potential influence campaign from foreign actors such as China’s Communist Party regime. This will require greater coordination between our security agencies alongside key departments tasked with national security, including public safety, democratic institutions, global affairs and national defence. Canada should establish a National Centre for Strategic Communications and Digital Democracy that could effectively subvert and engage with attacks against our democracy.

Collaborative efforts should also extend beyond our institutions to improve information sharing between Five Eyes members, as well as working with social media companies and search engines to integrate digital tools to identify disinformation and misinformation.

Beyond these efforts, Canada would be wise to adopt digital tools to identify and monitor foreign-interference campaigns and readily share pervasive occurrences with the public.

If Canada is to maintain integrity in our democratic system, we should heed the warning signs.

Devin Tuttle is a researcher at the University of Calgary in foreign policy and security studies; Marcus Kolga is a senior fellow; and Ai-Men Lau is a communications officer at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. [emphasis added]

Related posts:

    Canada’s plan to counter foreign interference is a good start, but the work’s not done: Marcus Kolga in the Globe and Mail Measures announced last week by the Liberal government to address threats of foreign interference and...

    Trolling Trudeau - Fears of Foreign Interference in Canada: Marcus Kolga for the Atlantic Council While the overall outcome of the 2019 Canadian federal election was not the result of...

    Defending against foreign interference in our elections: Marcus Kolga for Inside Policy Our political leaders, candidates, the media and voters should be aware of foreign threats to...

    Canada can learn from Taiwan on relations with China: Marcus Kolga in the Toronto Star The determination and clarity with which Taiwan has confronted the challenges to its fragile independence...

    Beijing’s Online Manipulation and Interference During the Election: Marcus Kolga in the Epoch Times Beijing possesses both the means and motives to tamper with important national debates and will...
https://www.macdonaldlaurier.ca/canada-cannot-ignore-foreign-interference-china/

Mark
Ottawa

 

[shawn5o]

What happens next is ??? and would it involve the west?


China and India Move Advanced Fighter Jets to Himalayan Border

https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/08/20/china-and-india-move-advanced-fighter-jets-to-himalayan-border/

GABRIELLE REYES - 20 Aug 2020

Both India and China have deployed their most advanced fighter jets to airbases near their disputed Himalayan border, according to recent satellite imagery and local reports.
Commercial satellite imagery shows two Chinese J-20 stealth fighters have recently appeared at the Hotan airbase in China’s far-western Xinjiang region, Forbes reported on August 17. “It’s not clear whether there are more J-20s out west [in Xinjiang] than just two that are visible in the satellite photo. The Chinese air force possesses only around 40 J-20s,” the report noted.

…

On July 29, India sent five new Dassault Rafale fighter jets to Ladakh. Last week, the Hindustan Times reported that the jets had recently been “practicing night flying in the mountainous terrain” of India’s nearby Himachal Pradesh state, which borders Ladakh to the south. The local Indian squadron ordered the fighter jets’ pilots to practice flying in adverse conditions so that they “will be ready if the situation deteriorates on the … Line of Actual Control (LAC, India’s official name for the India-China border) in the Ladakh sector,” the newspaper wrote, quoting “people familiar with the matter.”

More here

 

[shawn5o]

What is China’s long game?


China Is Pairing Attack Helicopters And Armed Drones (The Results Are Deadly)
PLA ground commanders are sending the message that integrated air-land operations will become the norm.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/china-pairing-attack-helicopters-and-armed-drones-results-are-deadly-167528

Here's What You Need To Remember: There are a few hurdles that must be overcome to make manned-unmanned teaming a reality. The human half of the team needs a control interface that will a lone human, such as a fighter or helicopter pilot, to easily control a swarm of drones with a few general commands. The machine half needs AI that can seamlessly coordinate the actions of hundreds of drones in response to a few simple instructions from a human operator.

The future of warfare is manned-unmanned teaming between manned platforms and robots (or at least until fully autonomous robots fight on their own).

With the United States and Russia vigorously pursuing that concept, it’s no surprise that China is testing attack helicopters operating alongside UAVs.

LINK

 

[GR66]

Janes is reporting that the Chinese PLA has conducted exercises using commercial ships as temporary flight decks. 

https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/exercise-demonstrates-pla-army-aviation-ability-to-use-commercial-ships-as-temporary-flight-decks

The exercise included refueling and re-arming of the attack helicopters.

I wonder if we'll see them also trying out the VTOL J-18 fighter on commercial ships.  Such a move could allow China to position fighters close to potential targets for a surprise attack if they can camouflage the flight deck to avoid detection.

 

[dapaterson]

Don't think a regular deck would hold up well to a VTOL aircraft; I suspect there would be a need to alter some materials / install some reinforcement.

But I'm not a maritime engineer (and, as I recall, Tom Clancy had the USSR do something similar in Red Storm Rising when they seized Iceland)...