“Vietnamese newspaper Tien Phong reported that 40 individuals from foreign ships thrashed the fishermen aboard the Vietnamese ship with iron pipes and stole their fishing gear,” relayed The Eur-Asian Times. Four fishermen were seriously injured, three had broken limbs.
At the time of that September 29th report, the vessels that attacked the fishing boat were only identified as “foreign.” But everyone knew which country was responsible.
Only the Chinazis, as Hong Kongers call those atop the Chinese Communist Party, behave with such brutality and callous disregard for the rights of others. The boats involved turned out to be part of China’s Maritime Safety Administration.
“Safety”?
Well, safe for Chinese exploitation of the entire South China Sea (SCS), 90 percent of which the genocidal totalitarian regime claims as its own and is now actively policing — without regard to international law or the rights of the Vietnamese, Filipinos, Malaysians, Taiwanese, Indonesians and others.
After arbitration between the Philippines and China under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas, an international court ruled in 2016 that China’s SCS claims were without any foundation. Obviously China continues to ignore the international court — and with increasing force.
“[T]he Chinese Coast Guard and the Philippine Navy clashed at sea and in the air a whopping six times in August over key areas of the SCS,” noted a story in The National Interest, adding that five of the six incidents occurred in Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone. The sixth was in international waters. None took place anywhere close to China.
Without a military alliance with the United States “China would basically consider you as a meat on the table,” explained Professor Renato Cruz De Castro of De La Salle University in Manila,
“China would simply subjugate you,” the professor continued, “whether you appease China or challenge China.”
This stark reality now drives even Vietnam to seek help from the United States … as the world lurches closer to World War III.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Note: After putting this commentary to bed, news broke last night that China’s military is encircling Taiwan in a military exercise practicing an invasion and/or blockade of the democratic island nation.
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2 replies on “‘Meat on the Table’”
The Chinese state is knowingly acting in a manner which brings many states in its neighborhood together in a coalition with the United States. The Chinese state knew, before acting in this manner, that it could more readily pick-off its eventual targets, one at a time. We should ask what its purposes must actually be.
Elsewhere, I have noted that the United States has almost never achieved its ostensible objectives in the many wars that it has fought during my lifetime, but that its citizens have lost ever more of their liberty during this process; and I have concluded that one of the major purposes of these wars has been for the United States to defeat America.
I suggest that the Chinese state is stirring-up trouble with nearby states and nations — all the while telling the Chinese that they are victims of foreign aggression — as part of the more general programme of controlling China.
As I have said before, to fight an actual war successfully, Xi must surrender considerable authority to a military leader who will subsequently become a threat to Xi. Xi may stumble his way into a full-blown war, but what he wants is something far short of that.
A military alliance with the US is not enough to protect Vietnam, the Philippines and other Asian nations from Chinese aggression. Clearly, not even the many ‘international’ agreements signed on to by China won’t matter either. No one will enforce them. The Chinese strategy can be summed up in three words: ‘might makes right’.