Around 1,000 fishing boats have been mobilized by China to lay claim to a disputed island chain now controlled by Japan, in one squabble among several over territorial claims in Asia-Pacific.
Japan announced last week that it had bought a portion of the archipelago from a private Japanese family. The Chinese government flatly rejected the legitimacy of the sale, and hundreds of violent protests erupted in more than 50 cities in China.
Both countries claim historical and legal rights to the Diaoyu, or Senkaku, islands, which may have large deposits of oil beneath them.
The dispute has origins way back in history, with China claiming it was the first to discover the islands. But in it’s modern form, the quarrel emerged following WII, when Japan was forced to give up territory it hand seized. Now territorial claims are bungled in confusing and convoluted international treaties signed since then.
US Secretary of Defense visited Tokyo recently and tried to play it cool. “It is in everybody’s interest…for Japan and China to maintain good relations and to find a way to avoid further escalation,” he said.
But the US role in this and various other Asian territorial disputes is not one of a neutral player trying to avoid escalation. Rather, the US has pursued an aggressive posture of expanding military assets in the region and teaming up with all of China’s neighboring rivals to side with them on territorial issues in a nationalistic scheme to block China’s rise as a world power.
This has aggravated China and emboldened the less powerful states, making for a muscular clash ahead.
“Signs of a potential harsh reaction are already detectable,” a recent CSIS report said. “The US Asia pivot has triggered an outpouring of anti-American sentiment in China that will increase pressure on China’s incoming leadership to stand up to the United States. Nationalistic voices are calling for military countermeasures to the bolstering of America’s military posture in the region and the new US defense strategic guidelines.”
The US will do everything it can to stop China from getting OIL, the Whole Iran matter is about stopping China from being able to buy OIL, As are the Spratley's and other island groups an attempt to stop China from drilling for OIL, the US Senators will surely tell you that it is America that should be drilling for that oil, not China!
It's like taking a time machine and going back one hundred years except that now he imperial hubris, and the weapons, are all the more dangerous.
Meanwhile, we have our MSM to thank for consistently failing to inform the public on the background of the disputes, and instead pouring more fuel on the China-bashing bonfire at every turn, by portraying China as being solely responsible for all the troubles in every report filed. Even NPR, which bills itself as a news source for thinking men and women, can offer us nothing better than Mary Kay Magistad, who clearly enjoys being a critical pundit more than actually doing a reporter's job, and can be counted on to confirm every rumor (however preposterous) of Chinese duplicity and dastardliness, while dismissing with impunity any and all evidence to the contrary.
One of the conspiracy theories currently being peddled by these 'reporters' is that China may have instigated this row to distract its public from economic woes and embarrassing leadership problems, such as the case of the former police chief currently on trial for his involvement in the Bo Xilai scandal. However, they offer no explanations as to how the CCP managed to convince the Japanese government to cooperate by nationalizing those islets just in the nick of time!
Behind every ill-fated foreign adventure we have embarked upon in the last couple of decades, one can find a complicit media that played the role of the willing enabler. This is of course nothing new; we can probably find similar examples all the way back to the antiquities. The Chinese and Japanese media are no doubt doing their own part to help escalate the tension between their countries. What is truly sad is the inability of a large segment of the public to learn from history and see through these agendas. We probably have our schools to thank for this.
A poorly-educated public is a prerequisite to a poorly-informed public.
The Chinese are absolute idiots. The ball is in their court yet they're allowing the Yankees to play them like marionettes when all they have to do is stop buying their toxic sh*t, kick all the manufacturing out and demand that their financial obligations by met at once. The end!
Let's just hope that cooler heads prevail.