Neighbourly Disputes, Deadly Threats
"Chinese planes and ships are exercising normal jurisdiction in the waters and airspace surrounding the Diaoyi Islands.
"Japan's desire to fire tracer warning shots as a way of frightening the Chinese is nothing but a joke that shows the stupidity, cruelty and failure to understand their own limitations.
"Were Japan to dare to fire tracers, which is to say fire the first shot, then China wouldn't stint on responding and not allow them to fire the second shot."
Maj. Gen. Peng Guangqian, Chinese Academy of Military Sciences
That should most surely give second pause. But it seems the pugnacious element in the Japanese psyche has been elevated to the extent that caution appears to have flown as anger over Chinese intransigence increases. Or is it Japanese intransigence, in asserting its ownership of the Senkaku islands?
Each country, anxious to assume ownership of trifling, uninhabitable stony outcrops in the East China Sea. China insists that historically the islands - Diaoyi to the Chinese; Senkaku to the Japanese - belonged to China, and that Japan's ownership of the islands is a relatively recent claim. And why should either China or Japan be so exercised over ownership of these little rocky blips in a great sea?
Why their anticipated value as huge sources of underwater natural resources. China's resurrected interest in claiming them for its own, is akin to its hostile attitude to its neighbours elsewhere in the geography, bullying South Korea as well as Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, for ownership of the presumed riches in ocean-submerged minerals and ores on and under the ocean floor as well as petroleum-sourced energy.
China is an energy-and-riches-hungry giant, anxious to own and consume whatever it takes to continue growing, becoming ever more greedy as an economic powerhouse, taking no prisoners in the battle to supremacy. And its neighbours, while abhorring its tactics, also courageously fight back as best they can; they know, for whatever it is worth, that the other, real world power has their back, with the United States having diverted much of their military fleet from the Middle East to the Far East.
Tensions between Japan and China have escalated lately, with China sending a pair of J-10 fighters scrambling after Japanese F-15s which had tailed a Chinese surveillance plane close to the disputed islands. China insisting its surveillance flight was not in violation of Japanese airspace, and that the harassment by Japan was intolerable.
"Every country has procedures for how to deal with a violation of its territory that continues after multiple cautionary measures", fumed Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera. Who implied that tracer shots would in the future be fired against intruding aircraft refusing to change course when alerted to do so.
Those comments "ignore the facts", those facts being that the islands represent China's inherent territory said a Chinese spokesman. China, according to its Foreign Ministry is on "high alert", by Japan escalating tensions. No mention of Taiwan, also claiming the islands. But a Japanese scholar has published an ancient map, claiming it demonstrates unequivocally Japanese ownership.
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On Sep. 26, 2012, Japanese Coast Guard
vessels use water cannon against Taiwanese fishing and Coast Guard
vessels in waters around the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, which Japan claims
sovereignty over. (AP/Newsis)
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The world seems unaware, although if it were more aware, it would be sitting on edge, at the fact that India and Pakistan, with their perennially vicious dispute over Kashmir are once again close to war, and both nations are nuclear-armed. Now, the dispute over these Sankaku/Diaoyi Islands has caused both China and Japan to plan military exercises in preparation for war.
The general staff of China's People's Liberation Army is reported to have issued a nationwide order for the military to prepare for the possibility of war.
Does the world need this?
Labels: China, Conflict, Controversy, Crisis Politics, Japan, Natural Resources
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, January 22, 2013
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