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Chinese Military,Political and Social Superthread
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Anyone else here watch Kevin Spacey's "House of Cards" on Netflix, anyone? ;D
Shanghaiist
Meanwhile both protesters and supporters were awaiting his arrival:
Shanghaiist
Shanghaiist
Meanwhile both protesters and supporters were awaiting his arrival:
Shanghaiist
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Chinese fighters buzz another RC-135? It's horrible timing for this, especially during a state visit by a PRC leader to the US.
Defense News
Defense News
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I have posted a long, three part, but very useful article in the "Grand Strategy for a Divided America" thread but it should be read by all with an interest in China's strategic dilemmas, too.
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Seems quite ironic that Xi would want to meet Mark Zuckerberg considering that Facebook is banned in China. And to think that Mark Zuckerberg's Mandarin language skills are so good he didn't utter a word of English when he met the Chinese president. Zuckerberg's Chinese language skills are probably close to the level of Mr. "Da Shan"/Mark Roswell of Canada.
Diplomat
Diplomat
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Kal, drawing in the Economist, sums up Paramount Leader Xi Jinping's dilemma in visiting America:
Source: http://www.economist.com/news/world-week/21667971-kals-cartoon?fsrc=scn/li/cp/pe/st/kalcartoonseptember25th
Source: http://www.economist.com/news/world-week/21667971-kals-cartoon?fsrc=scn/li/cp/pe/st/kalcartoonseptember25th
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Some of the latest news on this week for China:
Perhaps it seems the US may have to rely on its allies' partner agencies among the other "5 Eyes" for a while for foreign-intelligence gathering in China after this?
CNN
Plus...more possible separatist violence?
No word yet on whether this was related to any of the dissident or separatist causes in China, but most of what Chinese state media should be taken with a grain of salt anyways.
Reuters
A further sign that the current Chinese economic slump won't improve? But then again everyone's also watching what Jack Ma of Taobao/AliBaba is also going to do...
Shanghaiist
Perhaps it seems the US may have to rely on its allies' partner agencies among the other "5 Eyes" for a while for foreign-intelligence gathering in China after this?
CNN
Plus...more possible separatist violence?
No word yet on whether this was related to any of the dissident or separatist causes in China, but most of what Chinese state media should be taken with a grain of salt anyways.
Reuters
A further sign that the current Chinese economic slump won't improve? But then again everyone's also watching what Jack Ma of Taobao/AliBaba is also going to do...
Shanghaiist
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Economic issues, Xi Jinping's brief and barely noticed (wedged, as he was, in between the Pope and Putin) visit to America and the recent "victory" parade have all overshadowed the 66th anniversary of the founding of the Peoples' Republic of China on 1 Oct 49. Even events in China were low key: http://en.people.cn/n/2015/1001/c90785-8957669.html
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And moving on to the naval front...
The picture at the link below already shows the keel laid at the shipyard for their future indigenous carrier:
US Naval Institute
The picture at the link below already shows the keel laid at the shipyard for their future indigenous carrier:
US Naval Institute
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An article that discusses why nuclear-powered aircraft carriers are simply beyond China's means:
National Interest
National Interest
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As much as the CCP cadres in Beijing hate to admit it, there is actually a Hong Kong nationalistic consciousness, distinctly separate from any unified Chinese national consciousness, that is developing. Whether that will one day lead to an independent city-state much like Singapore or simply fade into obscurity in 2047, when the 50 year "One country, two systems" arrangement for Hong Kong officially ends, remains to be seen.
Shanghaiist
Shanghaiist
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Just in case anyone thinks that Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign has stalled, in the face of economic headwinds, it hasn't ... People's Daily reports that: "Jiang Jiemin, former head of China's state-owned assets regulator, sentenced to 16 years in prison Mon for corruption"
Source: https://twitter.com/PDChina?lang=en
Source: https://twitter.com/PDChina?lang=en
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E.R. Campbell said:
Contrary to what you said before, it seems the US is actively challenging China's ludicrous territorial claim to the whole of the South China Sea:
Financial Times
Washington Post
A move welcomed by at least one of their allies in the region:
Philippine Star
Plus more to put this in context:
Diplomat
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This article, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from Foreign Affairs, is a couple of days old but it germane to SMA's post just above:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2015-10-12/all-good-fon
There is, still, considerable, room for both misunderstandings/miscommunications, accidental or intentional, and incorrect responses, both American and Chinese, to FON exercises.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2015-10-12/all-good-fon
All in Good FON
Why Freedom of Navigation Is Business as Usual in the South China Sea
By Mira Rapp-Hooper
October 12, 2015
By all appearances, the U.S. Navy is poised to begin Freedom of Navigation exercises in the South China Sea. Rumors first emerged in May 2015 that the Pentagon was contemplating military operations around China’s new artificial islands among the Spratly Islands. Through such exercises, the United States would aim to demonstrate that it does not recognize spurious Chinese claims to water and airspace around the islands. So far, the Department of Defense has declined to make moves near China’s so-called Great Wall of Sand. The administration has, however, consistently stated that there are U.S. national interests in freedom of navigation and overflight in this vital waterway, where $5 trillion of global trade passes each year. With the presidential summit between U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping now complete, operations seem imminent.
At the very least, the public debate about South China Sea Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPS) has already begun. Already, two myths about their role in U.S. foreign policy have emerged. The first is that they are a strict alternative to diplomacy with China. According to a Politico article, this narrative holds that there are some “military leaders who want to exercise their freedom of navigation” while diplomats are demurring in the interest of continued diplomacy with China. The second misconception is that they would challenge China’s claims to territory in the Spratly Islands. Even the best reporting on these exercises suggests, as did a recent Wall Street Journal article, that the purpose of FONOPS is to “directly contest Chinese territorial claims.”
Combined, these two misconceptions suggest that U.S. FONOPS would be a serious escalation by Washington in the South China Sea. As the history of the Freedom of Navigation Program and its relationship to international law make clear, however, such operations would complement U.S. diplomacy and, although they would contest China’s claims to water and airspace under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), they would not contest its claims to territory. If the Obama administration decides to begin these exercises in the coming days, there are a few ways for it to signal that FONOPS are simply business as usual.
Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet Admiral Scott Swift stands in front of a large poster of an Australian Navy frigate
as he prepares to hold a media conference at the 2015 Pacific International Maratime Exposition in Sydney, Australia,
October 6, 2015. In a strongly worded address, Swift said the United States remained "as committed as ever" to protect
freedom of navigation through the region.
REPUTATION FOR FON
Freedom of navigation operations have long been a part of U.S. foreign policy. In 1801–1805, an embryonic U.S. Navy saw its first action protecting American overseas commercial interests in the Barbary Wars, when pirates demanded that the Jefferson administration pay tribute so that merchant ships could pass through the Mediterranean Sea. It was not until 1979, however, under U.S. President Jimmy Carter, that the mission was formalized into a freedom of navigation program. The U.S. FON program was developed in conjunction with UNCLOS and was officially established a year later. Although Washington is not a signatory to UNCLOS, the goal of the FON program has always been to promote international adherence to it. The FON program does so by challenging “excessive claims” to maritime and air space that do not conform with the convention.
The Department of State and Department of Defense jointly oversee the FON program, which has three major components. The State Department files diplomatic protests of excessive claims; State and Defense consult with their international counterparts on claims’ consistency with international law and work with the through military-to-military engagements; and Defense conducts what it calls “operational assertions,” through which it demonstrates physically the United States’ nonrecognition of excessive claims.
Although there is no open source repository of data on the exact frequency and location of the Pentagon’s FONOPS, available figures indicate that the United States uses the tool quite frequently, particularly in Asia. The Department of Defense challenged 19 excessive claims worldwide in 2013 and 35 claims in 2014. Of those 35, 19 were located in the U.S. Pacific Command’s geographic region of responsibility. And they were equal opportunity challenges; in 2013–2014, the Department conducted FONOPS of various forms against China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam—each of the countries that occupies territory in the South China Sea.
Despite these facts, the debate in Washington has persisted in the idea that FONOPS are extraordinary measures above and beyond diplomacy. Reports have suggested that U.S. military commanders support South China Sea FONOPS, whereas the White House and the Pentagon have been hesitant to pursue them. Others have argued that the Obama administration has preferred the State Department’s “creative diplomacy” to the use of FONOPS, suggesting that there is room for only one agency or approach to engaging China’s island building in the South China Sea. But diplomacy and FONOPS are complementary tools, not stark alternatives, and a decision to begin FONOPS should not be seen as a victory for military over civilian leaders, or as a sign that diplomatic efforts have been exhausted.
For their part, Chinese officials have stated that they would interpret U.S. exercises within 12 nautical miles of the features they hold in the Spratlys as provocative challenges to Chinese sovereignty. Beijing has every reason to imply that it would respond harshly to any maneuvers. The trouble is that the same misconception about the purpose of FONOPS has been proffered in Washington as well.
In a recent Senate hearing, Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) argued that Washington’s failure to transit within 12 nautical miles of China’s claims “grants de facto recognition” of them. A report soon followed with the headline “McCain: U.S. Should Ignore China’s Claims in South China Sea.” This was likely not the message the Senator intended to convey, but reporting has consistently suggested that FONOPS would be used to push back against China’s claims to territory. The United States, however, has a long-standing policy that it does not take a position on other countries’ sovereignty disputes. FONOPS are meant to challenge excessive claims to water and airspace; they do not challenge territorial claims.
In other words, the FONOPS reality is both considerably more nuanced and far less escalatory than the popular narrative suggests.
FON WITH OBAMA
In the aftermath of the Obama-Xi summit and with Beijing firmly committed to its position that it will continue to build what it likes in the Spratly Islands, Washington may begin FONOPS in the area in the coming days or weeks. If it does so, the basic facts of the Freedom of Navigation Program and of UNCLOS should serve as reminders that these operations do not represent a significant change in U.S. policy in the South China Sea.
First, under UNCLOS’ principle of innocent passage, foreign navies are entitled to transit within a state’s 12-nautical-mile territorial sea, as long as that vessel does nothing that is prejudicial to peace. Put differently, even if the United States didrecognize China’s sovereignty in the Spratlys, which it does not, international law permits it to pass peacefully nearby. China exercised this right in early September, when it transited U.S. territorial waters in the Bering Sea. The International Court of Justice has affirmed that this and operations like FONOPS are consistent with the right of innocent passage.
Second, precisely because the South China Sea territories are disputed, and because Washington does not take a position on such sovereignty disputes, it need not recognize territorial seas or airspace around any of China’s artificial features—or those of any other countries. In short, territorial seas are a function of recognized state sovereignty, and where that sovereignty is disputed, vessels and aircraft may pass freely.
Third, even if China’s Spratly holdings were uncontested, the fact remains that Beijing’s seven island features are artificial. Under UNCLOS, man-made islands do not confer territorial seas or airspace. Rather, they are granted only a 500-meter safety zone. In China’s case, before its building spree, at least three of its seven artificial islands were low-tide elevations or reefs, rather than rocks or islands. Under international law, these features are not even subject to sovereignty claims—by China, or by anyone else. By this logic, even without persistent sovereignty disputes, Mischief Reef, Gaven Reef, and Subi Reef would not be entitled to water or airspace of their own, and therefore may be especially appropriate features around which to transit.
As Washington prepares to conduct FONOPS, there are two steps it can take to show that these exercises are not escalatory but are usual practice in the global commons. First, Washington should alert countries in the region about its plans and should ask for their public support where possible. Australia, India, and Japan have all recently expressed serious concern that China’s island building will threaten freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. Their public support for U.S. maneuvers would demonstrate that this is not an issue of U.S.-Chinese tit-for-tat but a matter of regional diplomacy and rule of law.
Second, whether the Pentagon decides to operate within 12 nautical miles of only those Chinese features that were previously reefs, or opts to transit near other Chinese artificial islands too, it should conduct FONOPS around other claimants’ features as well, including low-lying reefs that are controlled by the Philippines or rocks held by Malaysia or Vietnam. Given that these countries are themselves gravely concerned about freedom of navigation and have expressed a willingness to sign on to recent U.S. diplomatic proposals to halt destabilizing activities in the South China Sea, it is unlikely that they would object to inclusion in this demonstration of legal principle.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter declared in May that the United States would continue to “fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows,” and the Obama administration reiterated this pledge to Xi in September. Spratly Islands FONOPS are entirely consistent with this position. By soliciting the support of other regional states and conducting exercises around the features of multiple claimants, Washington can reinforce this program’s long history and record. Freedom of navigation is just business as usual in the South China Sea.
There is, still, considerable, room for both misunderstandings/miscommunications, accidental or intentional, and incorrect responses, both American and Chinese, to FON exercises.
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What possible military advantage would Taiwan have in using missiles to target huge population centres on the mainland such as Hong Kong or Shanghai in the event of a war with China? Missiles are a far cry from WW2-era carpet bombing.
Especially with the thousands of Taiwanese expatriate businessmen who live and work on the mainland in such areas.
Shanghaiist
Especially with the thousands of Taiwanese expatriate businessmen who live and work on the mainland in such areas.
Shanghaiist
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I have rattled on several times over the past few years about "grassroots democracy" and local elections in China. I have explained that the Chinese leadership, the small handful of middle-aged men (they're all men right now) in the Zhongnanhai in Beijing don't believe that our, Western liberal democracy works ...
(Parenthetically, when they see this
who can blame them?)
... they are, in the main, Confucians by education and instinct and they continue the 2,500 year long search for a meritocratic form of government.
One of the problems is that the meritocracy is very, very hard to implement and, just as we know that not all platoon commanders, even most, platoon commanders, are going to turn into a Gen Vance, many of the "leaders" selected to earn their spurs at the bottom of the heap in the CCP structure, as local neighbourhood or village chiefs, fail. This is especially true in the rural villages when, too often, the man (or woman ~ there is an increasing number of women at all but the most senior levels in the CCP), often from a city, just recently graduated from a university, cannot make an old, dilapidated agricultural enterprise work. Then, the Chinese turn to local elections ... which appear to me (I have seen one, close up) to be quite "free and fair." Sometimes (often? usually?) the Party runs a candidate, often the one who just failed (as a sort of punishment/humiliation, I think), but the locals are allowed to nominate their own choices and, more often than not, that local choice wins. Whether or not the "freely elected" leader does any better than an appointed one is an open question. To the best of my knowledge (which may be very imperfect) local elections have been confined, exclusively, to very small towns and villages in rural regions.
Anyway, until now, all I've had to post are my personal observations and the reports of friends, but here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from Foreign Affairs (a pretty solid source) is an article on the subject by someone who has carefully researched the subject:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2015-10-14/country-lessons
Edit: typo
(Parenthetically, when they see this
... they are, in the main, Confucians by education and instinct and they continue the 2,500 year long search for a meritocratic form of government.
One of the problems is that the meritocracy is very, very hard to implement and, just as we know that not all platoon commanders, even most, platoon commanders, are going to turn into a Gen Vance, many of the "leaders" selected to earn their spurs at the bottom of the heap in the CCP structure, as local neighbourhood or village chiefs, fail. This is especially true in the rural villages when, too often, the man (or woman ~ there is an increasing number of women at all but the most senior levels in the CCP), often from a city, just recently graduated from a university, cannot make an old, dilapidated agricultural enterprise work. Then, the Chinese turn to local elections ... which appear to me (I have seen one, close up) to be quite "free and fair." Sometimes (often? usually?) the Party runs a candidate, often the one who just failed (as a sort of punishment/humiliation, I think), but the locals are allowed to nominate their own choices and, more often than not, that local choice wins. Whether or not the "freely elected" leader does any better than an appointed one is an open question. To the best of my knowledge (which may be very imperfect) local elections have been confined, exclusively, to very small towns and villages in rural regions.
Anyway, until now, all I've had to post are my personal observations and the reports of friends, but here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from Foreign Affairs (a pretty solid source) is an article on the subject by someone who has carefully researched the subject:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2015-10-14/country-lessons
Country Lessons
A Rural Incubator for China’s Political Reform?
By Salvatore Babones
October 14, 2015
In the spring of 1989, students from Beijing's elite universities protested in Tiananmen Square to demand democratic reform. The military crackdown and repression that followed were not limited to Beijing, and its victims were not only students. But the Tiananmen movement of 1989 has nevertheless gone down in history as one of the world's great student movements for democracy.
In China and elsewhere, democratic student movements often disappoint. From revolutionary France and postcolonial Africa to Weimar Germany and today’s Iraq, history has shown that stable democracies can be built only on a broad base of politically educated citizens—ordinary people who believe that democratic decision-making and the rotation of leaders into and out of power are both normal and fair.
Democratic norms, of course, must be learned. And although they are often learned first by urban elites, it's no good having democratic leaders without a democratic society. If democracy flowers in urban squares such as Tiananmen, then it must also be rooted in the countryside. Even in rapidly urbanizing China, most people are still no more than one generation removed from the land—and so it is in China’s villages, through local elections and popular protests, that potentially transformative democratic habits might be forming.
RURAL ROOTS
Western political philosophers have romanticized the virtues of the countryside for millennia. In the Politics, Aristotle claimed that farmers make the best raw material for participation in representative democracies because they are too busy working to meddle in government. Romans of the early Republic revered the citizen-farmer Cincinnatus. And Thomas Jefferson believed so strongly in the political class of the small farmer that the very term "Jeffersonian democracy" has come to mean a republican government founded on the universal (white, male) suffrage of a largely agricultural population.
In India, Mahatma Gandhi looked to traditional village councils as the training grounds for democratic life. India's post-independence rulers discarded Gandhi's vision in favor of the centralization of power at the national level. After three major wars, two separatist insurgencies, and a 21-month suspension of the rule of law, in 1992 India returned to Gandhi's vision and reinstated village councils.
China, too, has elected village councils. Democratic experiments begun in the 1980s were suspended after 1989, but they resumed in the mid-1990s. After 1998, the direct election of village-level representatives was in principle rolled out nationwide. By law, these posts are contested on secret ballots.
These elections are generally free and fair, if lackluster. Indeed, most village elections are sleepy occasions firmly under the control of local Communist Party bosses: the party recruits and vets the candidates, and in the years since agricultural taxes were abolished in 2006, there has been little to fight over. Only rarely does a village election flare into national prominence because of a dispute over environmental pollution or land grabbing.
Still, since the late 1990s, hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens have participated in a quiet triennial ritual in which they choose their local leaders. Of course, corrupt incumbents representing entrenched interests often stay in office without real opposition. But even officials such as these are learning to become more responsive to popular opinion, and on occasion, local authorities have even been thrown out of office by angry voters.
In some ways, village elections are merely a tool used by the undemocratic Chinese Communist Party to keep watch over local functionaries. But even if the specific outcomes of China's village elections are not very important for the future of democracy at the national level, the democratic norms being developed in the villages are. Chinese villagers are learning that elections are the way leaders are chosen and that if they make enough fuss, they can even fire their leaders. The significance of these lessons should not be minimized—and they are perhaps best learned in circumstances like China's village elections, where the choices on offer are limited and the stakes are relatively low.
EDUCATION IN DEMOCRACY
China's limited education in electoral democracy is restricted to rural areas, but that doesn't mean that only rural residents have a stake in village elections. Although nearly 55 percent of China's population lives in cities, some 65 percent of Chinese nevertheless have rural hukou, or household registrations, which determine the allocation of many state services. In other words, nearly two-thirds of China's population is formally tied to rural villages. And many rural-urban migrants—who constitute around 36 percent of China's urban population—have one child living with relatives in the countryside. China's new urbanites thus have enduring ties to the land.
Another large segment of China's population lives in formerly rural villages that have suddenly found themselves on the edges of China's growing cities. Such settlements can be breeding grounds for grievances encouraged by rapid urbanization. In a highly publicized incident in 2011, residents of the eastern village of Wukan publicly protested the corrupt transfer of land rights to developers from nearby Lufeng, a rapidly growing city infamous as the illegal drug capital of China. In the village elections that followed, the sitting administration was decisively defeated.
According to Chinese government reports, tens of thousands of such "mass incidents"—official jargon for unauthorized gatherings of 100 or more people—have occurred since the early 1990s. Most are sparked by wage disputes, land seizures, or environmental pollution. Nearly half of them have involved protests against specific political officials.
Wage disputes overwhelmingly concern rural-urban migrants, and land seizures are highly concentrated in the villages of China's urban fringes. No one knows for sure the extent to which the experience of village elections prompted the participants in these protests to stand up for their rights—if at all. But rural-urban migrants are a massive and growing segment of the Chinese population, and many of their children are still forced by their hukou to experience village life firsthand. Might not the democratic norms developed in villages carry over to cities, where so many democratic movements have taken shape?
Rural-urban migrants have served as a democratizing force in the past, most notably in nineteenth-century England. On August 16, 1819, tens of thousands of pro-democracy activists gathered in Manchester and throughout Lancashire, in England’s northwest, to demand greater representation for the county’s townspeople. Most of these demonstrators were recent transplants from farm to city; the keynote speaker in Manchester, the radical politician Henry Hunt, was the son of a country squire. As the assembly in Manchester grew, the authorities panicked, ordering the cavalry to charge on the crowd. Around a dozen people were killed in what came to be known as the Peterloo Massacre. As with the aftermath of the crackdown in Tiananmen Square, the immediate outcome of the Peterloo Massacre, which is widely regarded as the seminal event of the British parliamentary reform movement, was repression rather than reform. Change didn't come until 1832, when the city of Manchester finally achieved representation in Parliament. And universal suffrage came much later, in 1918 for adult men and some women and in 1928 for all adults. It took 99 years for the United Kingdom to progress from the first major confrontation of the parliamentary reform movement to universal male suffrage.
THE PACE OF CHANGE
It took China just 35 years to make up for the economic costs of a century and a half of colonialism, occupation, civil war, and centralized maladministration. This raises the question of whether political reform in China could proceed at a similar pace. Of course, if real democracy ever comes to China, it won't come from a Tiananmen-style revolution, and it won't come from top-down reform. It will come the same way it did in South Korea and Taiwan: through a growing sense of entitlement among ordinary people to select their own leaders, coupled with a growing realization among authoritarian rulers that repression is ultimately unsustainable. Democracy, in short, will arrive through the slow evolution of norms.
Given that most of China's population is still close to the land, village democracy is an important force for normative change. Rural children born in 1980 are now the veterans of half a dozen regular election cycles. Equally at home in country and city, they have also become accustomed to the mundane freedoms of consumer choice and online criticism. Networked by social media, they are increasingly aware of and demanding their rights under Chinese law. The Chinese government has so far been reluctant to violently suppress their protests.
Today, these urban dwellers are still outnumbered by their more cautious elders. But by 2017 or 2018, the post-1980 generations will make up a majority of the Chinese population, and a decade later, they will make up a majority of the adult population. By 2040, they will be running the country. If this generation chooses to pursue democratic reform, the seemingly empty gesture of village elections will in retrospect seem highly consequential. China's market reforms grew out of its villages. Perhaps its political reforms will, too.
Edit: typo
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