Sunday, September 16, 2012

Beijing Seeks UNCLOS Intervention on Diaoyu

this is just a face-saving gesture to the Chinese masses... obviously, Beijing has bitten more than it can chew...

had the Japanese been as defenseless as the Vietnamese at Johnson Reef, Beijing would have mowed them down with 40mm AA fire too... but Beijing perfectly knows that the Japanese Self-Defense Force would make mince-meat out of its budding navy and air force in a conventional war scenario...

which will leave it with just one viable military option... and that is to lob ballistic missiles across the East China Sea... which is a very expensive proposition if one is diplomatically-constrained in using only conventional warheads... and if those missiles have to run the gauntlet of US ABM technology...

Beijing is now back-pedalling... and remember what Sun Tzu said on a back-pedalling adversary: "when the enemy retreats, we pursue"...

the Philippines should grab this opportunity to quash in an international court all the historically fraudulent "Nine-Dash Line" claims of Beijing in the West Philippine Sea...

so that we can all live happily ever after...

Saturday, September 15, 2012

West Philippine Sea is now official


Philippines, Japan, China: Will History Repeat Itself?


The Philippines and Japan once contributed to the collapse of the last true Chinese Imperial Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty (the last Imperial Dynasty which ruled China, the Qing, was a Manchu dynasty, not a Chinese one).

"During the last years of Wanli's reign and those of his two successors, an economic crisis developed that was centered around a sudden widespread lack of the empire's chief medium of exchange: Silver...

Philip IV of Spain (ruled in 1621–65) began cracking down on illegal smuggling of silver from Mexico and Peru across the Pacific towards China, in favor of shipping American-mined silver directly from Spain to Manila...

In 1639, the new Tokugawa regime of Japan shut down most of its foreign trade with European powers, causing a halt of yet another source of silver coming into China...

These events occurring at roughly the same time caused a dramatic spike in the value of silver and made paying taxes nearly impossible for most provinces. People began hoarding precious silver as there was progressively less of it, forcing the ratio of the value of copper to silver into a steep decline...

In the 1630s, a string of one thousand copper coins was worth an ounce of silver; by 1640 this was reduced to the value of half an ounce; by 1643 it was worth roughly one-third of an ounce...

For peasants this was an economic disaster, since they paid taxes in silver while conducting local trade and selling their crops with copper coins..." (Wikipedia)

This time around, it is not about Silver... 

But about Islands, Shoals and Reefs... 

Will history repeat itself?



Tuesday, September 11, 2012

China vs. Japan at Diaoyu

China and Japan is about to come to blows as a result of Tokyo's decision to nationalize the remaining privately-owned Diaoyu islands...

but while the PLA (People's Liberation Army) has proven in Korea that it is a force to be reckoned with in land warfare... the PLAN (People's Liberation Army Navy) has nothing noteworthy to show that it too deserves the respect of the major navies of the world... the video clip currently circulating in YouTube showing how it literally massacred defenseless Vietnamese sailors at Johnson Reef just further casts doubts on its reputation as a true warfighting formation...

at Diaoyu, the PLAN will be testing its mettle against the descendants of one of the most powerful naval force of the 20th Century...

unless, it reaches for its nuke arsenal... i do not see how the PLAN can stand up to the current reincarnation of the JIN (Japanese Imperial Navy)...

so the leaders of Beijing should tread carefully on this issue... because they might end up getting humiliated in this confrontation...

and humiliated men often resort to irrational means...

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Divide et Impera at Vladivostok

At Vladivostok...

Beijing took the time to talk to Vietnam... but not the Philippines...

Beijing took the time to talk to Brunei... but not the Philippines...

it is starting to emerge that Beijing's pet peeve vis-a-vis its Nine-Dash Line territorial grab in the West Philippine Sea... is the Philippines...

but then... as former subjects of Western Colonial Powers... the peoples of Malaya Irredenta (and Vietnam) already have extensive experience with Divide-and-Rule tactics...

so it is doubtful whether Beijing's latest bag of tricks will work...

by now, Malaya Irredenta and Vietnam are fully aware that their only chance of holding on to their West Philippine Sea territories is to confront as a unified force the seemingly overwhelming economic and military muscle of Beijing...

and Beijing knows this too... so expect the not-so-subtle Divide et Impera moves to continue...