Monday, April 25, 2016

South China Sea: The fight China will take to the brink of war Date April 26, 2016 - 12:00AM 1308 reading nowComments 32Read later Peter Hartcher Peter Hartcher Sydney Morning Herald

South China Sea: The fight China will take to the brink of war

Date: April 26, 2016 - 12:00AM

1308 reading now
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Peter Hartcher

Sydney Morning Herald political and international editor

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Malcolm Turnbull raises South China Sea dispute

Malcolm Turnbull urges the Chinese leadership to settle territorial claims peacefully and lawfully. Courtesy ABC News 24.

The world's two greatest powers are competing for military dominance of the western Pacific Ocean and the contest is about to intensify. The US and China are each jockeying for advantage as they anticipate a quickening in a struggle that "has the potential to escalate into one of the deadliest conflicts of our time, if not history", according to Malaysia's Defence Minister, Hishammuddin Hussein.

An important ruling from the International Court of Justice in the Hague is expected in the weeks ahead. It will rule on a claim by a US ally, the Philippines, to sovereignty over reefs that are also claimed by China. Most experts expect the ruling, due by the end of June, will favour the Philippines. Beijing has warned it will not recognise the court's jurisdiction.

The South China Morning Post reported on Monday that, if the court ruled against it, Beijing would accelerate plans to build an artificial island around one of the reefs at the heart of the dispute, Scarborough Shoal. The shoal is 230kilometres from the Philippines coast and 1020kilometres from China's.

Illustration: Simon Letch

China recently put fighter jets and surface-to-air missiles on another island a few hundred kilometres away, Woody Island. The President of China Xi Jinping is reported to be planning to travel there soon.

The US Defence Secretary Ash Carter cancelled a visit to China, but two weeks ago went to India and the Philippines to conclude base-sharing and other agreements to strengthen co-operation out of shared worry over China.

The US position is the same as Australia's: it takes no sides over the disputed territories but urges the claimants to settle the argument through negotiation, not force.

In the same week, the top Chinese military officer, General Fan Changlong, made a visit to the Spratly Islands, also subject to rival claims by China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines. China has built artificial islands, runways, lighthouses and ports there, despite the objections of all the other claimants.

Then, last week, in another unmistakeable sign of hardening Chinese determination, Xi made his first public appearance in military uniform and formally claimed the title of commander in chief of China's war-fighting headquarters.

What is Xi doing? What does China hope to achieve? And where is this dispute heading? An eminent Chinese expert, Dr Shi Yinghong, provides answers.

Xi has declared the pursuit of "China's Dream", a national resurgence after centuries of foreign domination. Shi, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing, says there are three international implications. First, Xi wants China to be acknowledged as a superpower equal to the US. Second, he wants China to become the co-manager of global affairs with the US, a Group of Two for world governance. Third, "China must be the preponderant power in the Western Pacific and have some advantage over the US", he told me. Shi's definition of Chinese aims supports that of the commander of the US Pacific Fleet, Admiral Harry Harris, who says China seeks "hegemony in East Asia".

Shi, who has been an adviser to the State Council, China's cabinet, for the past five years, says this will be "based on an arms build up and the strategic ability to go tit-for-tat with the US and to force the US finally to recognise Chinese preponderance" in China's claimed sphere.

"China," Shi explains, "must be number one in diplomatic influence and economic clout and maybe in [military] force. It wants to prevent the US military's freedom of navigation eventually, and gradually squeeze Vietnam, the Philippines and all the others out of the South China Sea." This is precisely what the region's governments fear.

Xi is a decisive leader, says Shi, who "shows that he has guts – he's not afraid of confrontation".

"He wants the support of the people and the support of the military and he wants to win glory. He believes in China's historical greatness." In this, Shi says, the president is at one with the Chinese public: "Xi is China. Chinese citizens are more nationalistic and triumphalist than ever before. In this sense, Xi represents the people."

China's claim to about 90 per cent of the South China Sea is based on "land left by our ancestors – it is sovereign and sacred and Xi's policy is not to concede even one inch".

Harvard's Ross Terrill describes today's China as an empire that "appropriates an imperial idea of China, reinventing a 2500-year-old autocracy to control its population and hector non-Chinese neighbouring peoples".

Yet Shi says there is an important qualification to Xi's ambition. Xi wants regional preponderance "without a major war".

The truth of this is illustrated by China's decision to halt advances on territory claimed by Japan in their recent territorial clash. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reinterpreted Japan's constitution, rearmed its military, reaffirmed its US alliance and prepared for full-scale war to stop China. Faced with imminent, major war, Beijing relented.

But in the South China Sea, there is no such resistance, not yet, at least. Shi describes Barack Obama's responses so far as "minimalist". The risk that the US faces is "it will lose, step by step".

China's risk? "It will make substantial gains and finally may mobilise US society and other middle powers to say 'enough is enough'," particularly if there is a more assertive US president after November.

In the past few centuries, no new great power has managed to arise without going to war with an existing one over clashing spheres of influence. We will see if humanity has learnt anything.

Peter Hartcher is international editor.

Solar-plane pilots say trip was also test of human endurance. By OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ - Associated Press - Monday, April 25, 2016

The Solar Impulse 2 solar plane flies into the sunrise out of Kalaeloa Airport, Thursday, April 21, 2016, in Kapolei, Hawaii. The solar plane will fly a two-and-a-half day journey to Northern California. (AP Photo/Marco Garcia) more >

By OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ - Associated Press - Monday, April 25, 2016

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) - The two Swiss pilots taking turns to fly a solar-powered airplane around the world said Sunday the endeavor is not only a demonstration of the importance of renewable energy but also of the many challenges the human body can endure.

Pilot Bertrand Piccard completed a risky, three-day flight across a great expanse of the Pacific Ocean while sleeping only 20 minutes at a time inside the plane’s tiny cockpit with no heat or air conditioning and while having to keep constant contact with the Europe-based control center.

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“You have interviews, navigation control, communications with the control center in Monaco. You have health checks, a lot of health checks,” Piccard said. “It’s very active, there are a lot of things to do, but you can nevertheless enjoy it.”

Piccard said he uses self-hypnosis to keep his energy up and puts heating pads inside his shoes and gloves for warmth. He said he has no complaints about the ready-made meals he can warm up with a special heat packet and that can include risotto, chicken curry and potatoes.

On Sunday, special guests, many of them with Google, which is sponsoring the project, had a first look at the plane inside a huge white tent at Moffett Airfield. The guests also mingled and took photos with Piccard and fellow Swiss pilot Andre Borschberg.

Piccard landed the Solar Impulse 2 in Mountain View, in the Silicon Valley south of San Francisco, on Saturday night following a 62-hour, nonstop solo flight from Hawaii without fuel.

The landing came hours after Piccard made a fly-by over the Golden Gate Bridge as spectators below watched the narrow aircraft with extra wide wings.

Piccard and Andre Borschberg have been taking turns flying the plane on an around-the-world trip since taking off from Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, in March 2015. It made stops in Oman, Myanmar, China, Japan and Hawaii.

The trans-Pacific legs were the riskiest part of the plane’s travels because of the lack of emergency landing sites.

“We have demonstrated it is feasible to fly many days, many nights, that the technology works” said Borschberg, 63, who piloted the plane a five-day trip from Japan to Hawaii and who kept himself alert by doing yoga poses and meditation.

The project has helped to show that “as a human being you can be sufficiently sustainable to be able to fly at least five days in such a plane.”

The aircraft faced a few bumps along the way.

The Solar Impulse 2 landed in Hawaii in July and was forced to stay in the islands after the plane’s battery system sustained heat damage on its trip from Japan. The team was delayed in Asia, too. When first attempting to fly from Nanjing, China, to Hawaii, the crew had to divert to Japan because of unfavorable weather and a damaged wing.

A month later, with better weather conditions, the plane left Nagoya in central Japan for Hawaii.

The plane’s ideal flight speed is about 28 mph, though that can double during the day when the sun’s rays are strongest. The carbon-fiber aircraft weighs over 5,000 pounds, about as much as a midsize truck.

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China to build on disputed Scarborough Shoal this year: Report BY AT EDITOR on APRIL 25, 2016 in CHINA, JAPAN, SOUTHEAST ASIA, TOP NEWS (From AFP)

China to build on disputed Scarborough Shoal this year: Report

BY AT EDITOR on APRIL 25, 2016 in CHINA, JAPAN, SOUTHEAST ASIA, TOP NEWS

(From AFP)

Beijing will start construction this year on a South China Sea islet within the Philippines’ claimed exclusive economic zone as it seeks to project its power in the disputed waters, Hong Kong media reported Monday.

Chinese surveillance ships are seen off Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea

China will establish an outpost on Scarborough Shoal, 230 kilometres (143 miles) off the Philippine coast, the South China Morning Post newspaper cited an unnamed source close to the People’s Liberation Army as saying.

Beijing claims nearly all the strategically vital sea, despite competing claims from several Southeast Asian neighbors, and in recent months it has developed contested reefs into artificial islands, some topped with airstrips.

Manila claims Scarborough Shoal but says China took effective control of it in 2012, stationing patrol vessels in the area and shooing away Filipino fishermen, after a two-month stand-off with the Philippine Navy.

The SCMP cited the source as saying construction at the outpost would allow Beijing to “further perfect” its air coverage across the South China Sea, suggesting it plans to build an airstrip.

At a regular press briefing, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she was not aware of the report but the area was China’s “inherent territory”.

Beijing will “adopt the necessary measures to resolutely protect China’s sovereignty and legitimate rights and interests”, she said.

The report comes ahead of an international tribunal ruling, expected within months, on a case brought by the Philippines over the South China Sea.

It also follows an announcement by the US and the Philippines that they would launch joint naval patrols in the sea.

The construction plans were likely to be accelerated in light of the upcoming ruling from the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, the newspaper cited the source as saying.

“China should regain the initiative to do so because Washington is trying to contain Beijing by establishing a permanent military presence in the region,” the source said.

Washington has sailed ships close to islands claimed by Beijing, accusing China of militarizing the South China Sea and deploying missiles in the area.

Hua said the recent patrol flights in the area by the Philippines and the US were “deserving of suspicion”, urging “some countries” active in the region to exercise restraint and “make cooperative efforts with China”.

Beijing admits building military-capable airstrips and deploying unspecified weapons on some of the islands, but insists US patrols have ramped up tensions.

China’s expansion ‘worrisome’

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, speaking ahead of a visit to Beijing, said on Monday China was making the world “worried” with its military build-up and maritime expansion in the East and South China Seas, Reuters reports.

Ties between China and Japan, the world’s second- and third-largest economies, have long been plagued by a territorial dispute, regional rivalry and the legacy of Japan’s World War Two aggression.

China and Japan dispute sovereignty over a group of uninhabited East China Sea islets, while in the South China Sea, Beijing is building islands on reefs to bolster its claims.

“Candidly speaking, a rapid and opaque increase in (China’s) military spending and unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the East and South China Seas under the aim of building a strong maritime state are having not only people in Japan, but countries in the Asia-Pacific region and the international community worried greatly,” Kishida said in a speech to business leaders.

Kishida plans to visit China as early as Japan’s “Golden Week” extended holiday, which starts on Friday.

“Through candid dialogue with the Chinese side, I want to get the wheel turning to create the Sino-Japanese relations that are suitable for a new age,” he said.

‘Consensus’ over sea row

China’s foreign ministry said on Sunday that Beijing has agreed with Brunei, Cambodia and Laos that the South China Sea territorial dispute should not affect relations between China and the Association of South East Asian National (ASEAN), Reuters reports.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi spoke to reporters in the Lao capital, Vientiane, on Saturday and was quoted by his ministry as saying China had reached “an important consensus” with Brunei, Cambodia and Laos.

The South China Sea problem was not a China-ASEAN dispute and it “should not affect China-ASEAN relations”, the ministry said in a statement, referring to their agreement.

China’s maritime claims are ASEAN’s most contentious issue, as its members struggle to balance mutual support with their growing economic relations with China.

PHILIPPINE NATIONAL SECURITY & OTHER ISSUES

Monday, April 25, 2016