You still continue your habit of expressing your opinions as concrete facts. The Oil rig conflict and the harsh words spoken from both PRC and VN govt officials clearly indicate that their relationship was not quite friendly at all. Be honest and state that it's your own personal opinion and don't try to make it out as a concrete fact.
They are all my opinions, mostly.
But I based them on what has already happened and haven't happened.
Almost all of the top military commanders of Vietnam has visited China in one trip. Trade is still going strong, Vietnamese government is offering protection for Chinese businesses, and other compensations.
There have been quite a few diplomatic talks since then with state visits in between.
The oil rig is what it is, and harsh words? We are not best buddies. Tough words are needed at the moment, what do you want the Vietnamese government to say, they can't appear weak either. Actions speak louder than words.
But we are friendly enough that Vietnam won't take this to an international arena and won't affect talks, and trade, or anything of significance.
What exactly were you looking for with friendly.
If they are not concrete facts, then why did you word them like they are concrete facts? Here are some quotes from your original article:
"The topic at hand is how would China proceed based on concrete evidence and actions,... "
"Ironically, it is the fact China isn't a dictatorship that makes it far more likelytime will be the main weapon, rather than actual weapons."
Do the honest thing and word them explicitly as your opinions. Wording them as facts when they are debatable opinions would get you a D in school.
State visits, trade, military interactions, these have happened, even in your eyes right, I'm assuming you would accept them as fact.
The first is BASED on facts, not the conclusions drawn from it. China isn't a dictatorship, it's called single party authoritarian government, but this has the least to do with the topic at hand.
I have explicitly said the conclusions I draw are opinions, how many times do you need me to say it. IT doesn't makes your arguments anymore valid by bring this up.
You still don't get it. I wasn't doing any guessing work. Rather, I was exposing your own guess work or flaws in your arguments. Take for example your argument that quotes some PRC military spending figures and the adjustment you've made on those figures. I did not give my own figures to counter yours. Rather, I highlighted the fact that PRC military spendings are not transparent and that you yourself do not know the details of various military equipments.
When did I say you were, I said I was, you offer no insight into the future and present, so what would you need to do guess work for.
There are various organizations around the world that offers insight into this particular issue of military spending, I went a step further and made the number bigger, to accommodate any error they may have.
The Pentagon and all the other organizations research China a lot more throughly than you or I, are we not to take their words as true.
We see the same events, but you choose to interpret them a different way and then call my theories flawed, they could be, but ACTUAL ACTIONS like war, trade war, or anything of that nature has not happened, while the opposite has happened when China starts to increase trade invite them to Silk road and the banking initiatives and other organizations like SCO for India.
ASEAN +3 has also been ongoing, and never stopped.
You think this is trivial, the only thing not trivial is going to trial. Never go to trial dude, if you did you might lose, settle.
THIS IS MY PERSONAL OPINION, the Philippines may not even want the trial to actually finish and may instead want to settle, if won the China don't have to obey and the leverage would be gone, if lost, they would lose with no more justification to continue. The threat of a trial is far more important to them.
Having a museum does not mean that your historic claims are not debatable. VN has them too. Countries like North Korea also have museums, but it doesn't mean their historic artefacts are legit.
More importantly, having a museum or artefacts does not mean that you are entitled to territorial claims. For that, you would need to go to a court where there will be historians and researchers scrutinising your histroic evidences and also legal experts to examine whether such historic evidences can be legally translated into territorial claims or not.
When have I ever argued that VN's historic claims are better or worse? You are trying to change the topic. All of your posts originally state that China's claim has historic basis. This is all I want to dissect in here.
Elsewhere in the 100+ threads where Viets and Chinese members have their history debate, I've always said that their debate is worthless if both countries never dare to take their debate formally in a court.
I'm not saying you are saying VN's claim are better or not, just that we are all not coming in with anything too concrete. But they do exist is not something that can be ignored. Right now because we all have evidence of around the same validity, the validity of a single party is not that important anymore as relatively it's about the same.
Are you trying to say we have none or we have a weak claim here, or that whether it should translate into territory regardless of weak or not.
The Philippines does not even need a history to even participate in a historical debate. All they need to do is argue that Chinese history does not give China any entitlement to territorial claims based on international law.
In other words, they just need to find flaws in Chinese territorial claims that were based on history.
Maybe, this has not happened yet, we will see how it goes.
It doesn't really matter what those "norm" was because the more recent UNCLOS, which China is signatory to, has legally binding laws and conventions that now overrides those previous norm. If China wants to play by those old norm or how the US is playing, then China should not have ratified the UNCLOS. But China did, so too bad.
Now who's using personal opinion.
Yes you have the ability to rain down death on the whole ASEAN. But you will face heavy consequences. As you've already mentioned previously, China will not use this type of heavy arms intervention because it will bring more complications. But this does not mean that China is not raining death because it is patient. It just means that China has constraints.
WW1 WW2 didn't have consequences? Any war didn't have consequences? We can win, and rather easily, we chose not to is significant.
You are using your own personal opinion to make China out to be this power that cannot declare war if we must, but we don't feel like we need to and we haven't is an indication of things to come.
Give credit where credit is due. Philippines actually fired on Taiwanese fishermen, with what limited "power" they have.
Yes I know you're saying that China is waiting until its economy and military might is nearly on par with the US and this might will be unquestionable. But why does China has to wait until that time? so that negotiations can be fair and peaceful? If you are referring to any negotiations regarding US and Chinese disputes, then I might agree to this.
But if you're also referring to disputes with non-US parties, then it would be absurd. Take for example the dispute with the Philippines, the arbitral tribunal is a fair platform to resolve sea disputes and the US has zero influence in that tribunal. Therefore China does not need to wait for any period to have a fair and peaceful negotiation with non-US parties. The ICJ and UNCLOS is already here.
The only other reason I could think of is that China is waiting for this undisputable power so that it could use the threat of military force, or economic war, to get the upper hands in dealing with these smaller non-US countries.
I think
@LeveragedBuyout have described this game succinctly as, "Submit to China."
This is a misunderstanding, I don't mean submit to China. Why would they need to why would we want to. I'm simply saying at some point US Chinese power will be at par in Asia, and we will pass them on economy at around the same time.
If the US isn't in Asia, that would do wonders for our prestige.
This dispute is about US's right to have surface ships and spy planes right next to Chinese military bases. Once that's solved what does it matter how much sea China controls.
If this is truly about Philippines we would have made sure they remember crossing us means death, but we don't because it's not about them and when it's all said and done, we still need them as a partner.
You are under the assumption China is using power to scare powers into folding, we can do that now, but we can't do it to the US, at least in our immediate sphere, and that's the problem.
Consider this, China is expanding GLOBALLY, if we don't show what we are about in a positive light, then how do we expand globally.
The China Sea is an important, but ultimately small piece of the puzzle.
How can the future ruling of the tribunal be upheld? By accepting the tribunal's ruling and follow its order. Why? because both the Philippines and China are signatories to UNCLOS, which has legally binding provisions to run that arbitral tribunal. In other words, both the Philippines and China has already committed themselves to the legally binding laws of UNCLOS, so the future ruling of the tribunal needs to be obeyed.
Well you can go talk to Xi or whoever succeeds him to follow, the 1.3 billion Chinese they represent, and the 2.2 million military men and women who have sworn to protect their home land.
Are you referring the UNCLOS as international bullcrap? then why did China ratify it? The bottom line is, since China has already ratified UNCLOS, China needs to follow the future ruling of the tribunal.
Are you saying the Capitalist Party of China is full of contradictions?! Outrageous.
According to PRC Chinese here, 80% of PDF members are Viets. I can see that you guys are paranoid about them.
You user name is black flag, and I asked if it is the same black flag I'm thinking the one that fought the French for Vietnam under a Chinese commander with Vietnamese and Chinese soldiers.
So is it not reasonable to assume you could be, and if it's a different meaning you can just say it.
I'm not interested in debating whether the Philippines, VN or any other countries are expansionists or not. I'm only here to examine your claim that China is not expansionists.
Taking back one's own legal territory is not expansionists. But China haven't formally proven that the the Scarborough shoal is their legal territory. It refuses to participate in a arbitral tribunal run under UNCLOS. That sounds like expansionists to me.
Sounds like to you doesn't make it so. China isn't expansionist, the seas maybe debatable, that doesn't mean it isn't rightfully ours. Since the Song Dynasty, our navy and trade fleet was second to none, and Philippines didn't exist and Vietnam was nothing. We have made surveys and records of these islands since then. about a thousand years ago and many time since.
Now if you don't agree that's your problem. Not ours, we don't need to wait for everyone and their mother to get on board first before making the move.
But China haven't kept the status quo in the SCS.
So? It hasn't gotten to the point where we need to, doesn't mean we won't if we have to.
You've already previously said China will compromise.
Yes, that's me, a personal opinion, funny you would take my word as fact. I'm saying the state won't say they will, but it looks to me from the current actions and reactions China will compromise, eventually.
I thought you were trying to imply that China was hardly expansionists throughout history and never will be one because the Chinese mindset is not imperialistic. I guess I was was. However, saying China is reverting back to its imperial mindset would only help enforce the view that China will become expansionists.
Chinese imperialism and Western imperialism is different. The ZhengHe voyage never conquered a single land that had people on it. The only reason for the invasion of Vietnam was because of an ancient claim, thought at that point, not that ancient.
They are not good indications at all. Before and during the Scarborough shoal events, trade between China-Phil was in full swing (except for the banana ordeal, but you said it's unrelated). And the SCS shipping was also in full swing. So trade or the Silk Road plan does not indicate that Scarborough shoal style take over won't happen again.
I said the rare earth was unrelated not the banana deal. IF I didn't make that clear, I was wrong.
I just said we won't use war as a means to an end, I never said , in fact I been quite open about my opinion on Coast Guard actions.
You seem to be speculating that China will wait until it's on par with the US In terms of military and economic power.
Then China would either draw Asian countries into its sphere of influence or intimidate them into submission. Thus, Asia will be integrated under China. The US will be booted from the region.
I think you have underestimated the weaker countries here. During the past few decades, our world was unipolar with the US as the only super power. Yet, there were/are many countries that refuse to join the US sphere. I'm not only talking about the nutcase regimes like NK but also plenty of respectable countries in the NAM.
So under your multipolar world, what makes you think the weaker Asian countries will definitely join or submit to China?
Given that some of them might have to compromise their territorial integrity, wouldn't they rather choose the US?
Since it seems like the weaker countries won't be given any spot in any negotiation table, it seems likely that they would prefer to choose the US sphere or play the balancing game.
In other words, your speculated future Asia might just end up looking like the present Asia.
The Asian countries can do what they want, if there's one thing to be learnt is don't tie your fate to these countries, if shit hits the fan like the US is right now, you can reasonably pull out without losing face or influence.
-China will break international laws if it is worth it.
As everyone would.
-China will use it's economic and military might to threaten/intimidate the weaker countries to get what China wants. (correct me if I've misinterpret this)
Misinterpret yes.
-Territorial disputes will be solved through intimidation and not through international law.
Through talks.
-China will boot the US out and become the sole superpower in Asia.
That's essentially right.
-China's demand in the Asian seas is hypocritical, but so what?
Also right more or less.
-China's demand is legally illogical, but so what?
essentially the same thing as above.
-China's rise will be driven by an imperial mindset.
Not the same imperialism as you are thinking.
It doesnt sound like a non-aggressive and non-destabilizing China. It might even sound like Hitler's Germany after all. The only difference was that Hitler used military force while according to your calculation, China can achieve the same thing without any military action.
That is the key difference, absent of war. If you think 20 million dying and not dying is the same then I don't know what to tell you.
But here's the thing, what if the weaker countries still refuses to submit to China and compromise their territory when faced against Chinese intimidating military and economic might? Would China use force then? It sounds pretty much like VN is currently making that stand.
Again, I'd say your envisioned Asia might just end up looking like the present Asia.
It is the present Asia with one minor Change, less America. Which part of as long as America isn't a military force in Asia anymore the SCS would lose strategic value didn't you understand.
So why would we fight over something that would lose its value when we have achieved the main goal.
I may have misunderstood all your posts. I thought you were trying to salvage the good image of China and paint it's rise as non-aggressive.
Not really, just to comment on what's happening and what will happen going forward.
In this world, it's better to be feared than loved, though it's becoming increasingly similar, the two.
We've used the term "logical" to refer to different things. I was using it to refer to China's legal claim. If winning one claim will causes you to lose another, then the claims are legally illogical.
yes we are.
