"China's maritime disputes " Topic

Interesting article here.
"…While I do not think that the Japanese government is denying th war atrocities, I do think a lot of people in China would feel better toward Japanese if the Japanese government adopt the same attitude toward this subject as Germany has adopted toward the Holocaust. When something like the recent Diaoyu/Senkaku dispute came up, it came across as another reminder of Japanese aggression for Chinese people. Back when the two countries normalized relations in 1978, Deng Xiaoping made a strategic decision to not overly press Japan over this issue in exchange of money and technology to help with the Chinese economy. And I think while China was still economically weak and needing Japan, this was something it was willing to do (not overly voicing past grievances). However with China's growing power in the past 10 years, this is no longer the case, so the current generation of Chinese population and officials do not see the need to hold pacifying attitude toward Japan. With the Koizumi/Abe visits, all of these anger/grievances from the past 60 years flared up and it is tough for me to see how relations between China/Japan will get better.

The difference between the Diaoyu/Senkaku dispute and the South China Sea dispute is that the entire Chinese population is invested in this issue. It's not just the PLA or a group of nationalist cranks on the internet forums that are passionate about this, it's the ordinary people. You've seen that with the wide spread boycotting of Japanese business in the past few months due to the outrage in China over the entire Diaoyu/Senkaku issues. This is not just a couple of islands. This is 70 years of grievances. It's also seen in the expansion of civilian maritime patrol fleet. In the past few months, 11 ships from PLAN have been sent to the shipyards to be retrofitted and removed of weaponry so that they can join the CMS fleet and patrol the disputed regions with Japan…"
Full article here.
link

Agree that to defuse the effects of bilateral relations Japan should apologize to China.

Amicalement
Armand

I know a "full-blooded" Chinese man (PhD type) whose family has a rich history in China and Hong Kong, including service throughout the Opium Wars, various rebellions, the warlord period, the Japanese invasion, and fighting the communists (most of his family has been killed in one action or another). We get together and talk about history every once in awhile. He said that China is in a position to assert itself after centuries of imperialist control and national humiliation. In addition, everyone in China knows about the Sino-Japanese War and the Rape of Nanking. This is very much a part of the national sense of being. Japan's continued denial of significant attrocities increases tensions that already exist. He said that it is known that the Chinese Navy is not a match for the Japanese Navy and that the presence of the American Navy is just making a tense situation more tense and increasing the likelihood of someone doing something stupid.

A Japanese apology would probably only inspire the Chinese to be even more belligerent over the issue of the islands, since it will be seen as weakness.

I'll lay 5:1 odds that if "someone" does something stupid in the region, it won't be the US Navy, or her personnel starting it off.

No, probably their bosses :)

ASW…. beyond the range of PLA air force and local coast guard.

Without ASW the Chinese merchant fleet will be stuck in port. Foreign flagged ships will stay away if no insurance in the "dispute/war" zone. No trade…coming or going, no oil, no raw materials, no food. Time will determine the winner. Even a old WWII era pig boat can hit a oil tanker or similar large slow merchant ship in the South China Sea or someplace outside of 1000km from China. Just think what a modern submarine force like the IJN or other Western powers can do. Wouldn't even need torps … just surface nearby, demand surrender or else, and sail prize to nearby port with prize crew.

Till China has a "true" blue water navy with strong ASW trained ships, the maritine war would be short… then it is just a matter of time.

Not much in the way of ASW, but otherwise getting to be quite a powerful force. Plus it has it's own nuclear siubmarine fleet – may not be able to take on the US, but most other nations would fare badly against it:

link

I dunno about WW2 pig boats. Modern merchies move a lot faster than they did in WW2. I'm talking sustained 14+ knot travel speeds.

That makes it really hard for a diesel sub to get ahead of any merchie.

I dunno about WW2 pig boats. Modern merchies move a lot faster than they did in WW2. I'm talking sustained 14+ knot travel speeds.

That makes it really hard for a diesel sub to get ahead of any merchie.

Uh Lion, have you checked the underwater speeds of most modern Diesel-Electrics recently? Thy can do sustained speeds of 20+ underwater. That was the whole point of the Type XXIII hull design of the Germans at the end of the war.

To be fair, they really don't have to be very fast to present a credible threat.

Just sow a few mines in the bottlenecks, and/or use some of those more modern, captor-like mines, which rest on the bottom until a suitable target passes nearby. Then, the homing torpedo portion of the mine is released, and boom, a shot heard round the world, especially in maritime shipping insurance offices.

Forget China's import trade (important as it is). Just squeeze its exports and the they'll howl. Without that constant train of container ships leaving its ports, China will be in deep trouble and then some.

Things still seem to be rather hot over there.

Apparently, the Japanese are protesting actions a Chinese naval vessel took against their vessels recently. Supposedly, they locked a weapons radar onto at least one Japanese vessel.

I imagine they are very lucky the Japanese kept their cool, since that could invite a missile, or gun salvo in response.

On their northern front, the Japanese also scrambled jets to fend off a few Russian fighters flying near the island if Rishi. Russia denies the incident, but regularly tests Japanese aircraft response times in the region, since they also have disputes with the Japanese over ownership of islands there.