China's Island Factory – New islands being made in disputed China Sea

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/2014/newsspec_8701/index.html

by roc123 • 12 years ago

186 144 12 years ago

bbc.co.uk

adventured4• 12 years ago

Every time I see discussion about the nine dash line, I can't help but wonder how it can seem sane to anybody that China should have the water rights to an area ~600 km south of what is blatantly Vietnam's coastal waters (and the southern tip of their land) and just barely north of Malaysia's physical territory.

I know the correct answer is: China doesn't care, and isn't concerned with reason when it comes to the nine dash line. It still boggles my mind.

There is no valid Chinese claim on those waters, there is only who has the military power to dictate terms.

anigbrowl6• 12 years ago

To quote a Chinese official from a few years ago 'Vietnam is a small country and China is a big country and that is just a fact.'

melling4• 12 years ago

So, what you are saying is that every time we buy something that's "Made in China", we are fueling the next major military power, which in turn will lead to a major conflict in the area?

seanmcdirmid• 12 years ago

Vietnam fared fairly well against China the last time they fought over Cambodia.

jonyt• 12 years ago

It wasn't that clear cut the last time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War

xnull2guest• 12 years ago

Almost exactly the tactic and politics Israel uses. If there's violent conflict, the lesser power is 'terrorist' and this justifies the use of greater militaristic power to squelch the rebellion. If there's no violent conflict the greater power continues to push into the area it wants and plays coy with the politics for recognizing the other state's legitimacy.

fsiefken• 12 years ago

why was the above voted down? what's wrong with the parallel with Israel's settlement policy?

philosophus• 12 years ago

"there is only who has the military power to dictate terms." That's generally how these things work, yes. What were you expecting?

adventured4• 12 years ago

That's exactly what I was expecting.

peteretep• 12 years ago

Devil's advocate: if you say the Spratly Islands are Chinese, then the line makes pretty good sense.

chj2• 12 years ago

Just think about Falkland Islands.

ultraboy• 12 years ago

Territorial claims is NOT base on distance.Is Hawaii to far to be a state of the us?

melling4• 12 years ago

Does the US claim all the ocean between the west coast and Hawaii? No, because it's too far from land.

dba7dba• 12 years ago

@ultraboy Despite the risk of down votes, I have to say this.

Did you really say that?!

ekianjo11• 12 years ago

there is only who has the military power to dictate terms.

Yeah, just like the American invasion of Iraq in 2004. Just because they could, despite it being unlawful at all international levels. But hey, Russia also does it, so there's not really any good example out there of a country that does not seize opportunities.

mikeyouse• 12 years ago

Yeah, just like the American invasion of Iraq in 2004.

The US war in Iraq started in March, 2003.

justin663• 12 years ago

The United States never made a territorial claim to any part of Iraq.

mikeash8• 12 years ago

This is just a friendly reminder that "international law" is a convenient fiction (even more so than other human institutions, even) and only exists as a voluntary framework. Law has no meaning without a body that can enforce it.

est• 12 years ago

The problem is not China, you should see everyone else's claims. Vietnam's claimed and occupied islands are just as ridiculous as China's.

In fact ASEAN could not stand together against China in this case is exactly because every country around South China Sea has conflicting claims.

BBC is trying to avoid this as much as possible. Facts are hard, Let's just blame bad China.

JDShu• 12 years ago

I was very surprised when I found this out. It makes sense though - just like in any negotiation, you don't start with what you're willing to settle for, you start with what you want.

In general, there are always two sides to the coin. Where from an American perspective you see Chinese aggression outwards, if you flip the arrows on the map around, you might notice that from a Chinese perspective, the US is aggressively boxing China in.

trhway3• 12 years ago

there is only who has the military power to dictate terms.

officially it is called "international law"

HowardMei2• 12 years ago

South China sea had been the traditional 'naval silk road' of ancient Imperial China for hundreds years while both China and the neighboring tribes/countries under tributary system hadn't learned the concept 'nation' from the western colonists.

Since 17th century, a few islands had been controlled by various western countries and more had been marked or renamed.But the pirates, armed merchants and provincial navy of imperial China were still the dominant power in the area for a long time.

Chinese people totally lost control of it after the Sino-French war which changed the geopolitical status drastically: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-French_War

The nine-dash line stems from the eleven-dash line when ROC was the ally of the US after WWII and was accepted as the transferee of those islands from Japanese army who had acquired them from France/Great Britain.

But the ROC were too eager to fight back to the mainland instead of sending naval troops to guard those islands.It just chose one island Taiping as a strong point.

The unattended reefs and islands have been occupied by various countries in all kinds of sneaky/funny ways merely in past 30 years after the US-Vietnam war.

The validity argument makes no sense in this 'occupy and claim to own' game. Every country is a thief and the biggest is Vietnam whose navy had been more powerful than China's with the support from the former USSR during the PRC-USSR conflict.

Maybe the ROC in Taiwan should be the rightful owner according to the arrangement after WWII. But it is too weak to say anything now.

The whole history of the area is a vivid example of military power dictates terms.

anigbrowl6• 12 years ago

That's just wild. The Economist has been covering this territorial dispute in detail for the last couple of years, worth keeping up with if you are interested in the subject.

mje__• 12 years ago

Fascinating article. I also really enjoyed the presentation - the mix of writing, video and images worked well together. This is the first time I've seen the "BBC Magazine", and the experience is great.

chdir• 12 years ago

More than the article, I enjoyed the presentation. The whole design is very intricately woven together with various media elements. I loved the style but at the same time I was slightly annoyed by not being in control (probably the auto changing images with scroll was slightly over the top). I wonder how's the user experience with others.

kissickas2• 12 years ago

I had the opposite experience; usually I can't stand when a website tries to do something novel with my scrolling, but here all they did was update to a more relevant map alongside the text, for example. I was a bit too ecstatic to see that.

onethree• 12 years ago

on mobile (android), it was absolutely awful, every few scrolls it took over my screen and started automatically playing a video. if i wanted to watch the video in your article, i would press play, don't force it upon me

westiseast• 12 years ago

The software they used (shorthand.com) says it's in private beta - I'm sure they'd appreciate feedback. Otherwise on a laptop it was fantastic.

oska• 12 years ago

Are you using the stock Android browser? I found it presented well on Firefox for Android. And I didn't have trouble with the videos playing automatically, something which I also hate.

Dolimiter2• 12 years ago

I found the multimedia presentation to be over-designed, clunky, unusable nonsense.

Doctor_Fegg• 12 years ago

Agreed: the presentation is excellent. Very much in the tradition of the BBC's radio 'From Our Own Correspondent'.

It says it was built with Shorthand - http://shorthand.com/ . Anyone know of an open-source equivalent?

muyuu• 12 years ago

I found it extremely frustrating myself.

laoshuni• 12 years ago

A nice and neutral report by British, Japanese, etc

pankajdoharey• 12 years ago

South China Sea Has oil , and china will do anything to take over the area. China has been making claims of Arunachal Pradesh India for years, since it has high concentration of gas and shale oil deposits.

kissickas2• 12 years ago

I get that environmental concerns don't affect anything here, but are any of these coral reefs? Or are they just areas with shallow water?

BrandonMarc3• 12 years ago

They're all coral reefs.

veidr6• 12 years ago

I've watched with fascination as the Japanese Senkaku islands slowly and gradually came to be labeled 'disputed' in the western media, after China's recent claims.

It seems like China has figured out a way to hack the media (the free media outside of China, I mean -- the government there obviously has root on Chinese TV and newspapers).

Japanese ownership of this territory is basically as settled under international law as anything of this nature can be; the islands have been held by Japan since the 1800s, then controlled by the USA for a time after it defeated Japan in WWII, and eventually returned to Japan along with the return of Okinawa.[1]

But after China's slow and steady media campaign, it has somehow become widely reported as 'disputed territory'. (Which it is in a meaningless and pedantic sense only.)

This island-building is another hack, and maybe a clever one. Killing 70 Vietnamese soldiers in the military action in the 1980s to seize a submerged reef didn't make China look good at all.

But perhaps by building new 'islands' to buttress its aggressive and expansionist claims to the territorial waters of other nations, we may end up seeing the western media in ten years uncritically reporting that "China, which has 9 islands in the disputed waters, insists that it is merely defending its territory..."

Which is very important, because none of the countries whose territories China is going after -- not even Japan -- would do well in a straight up military conflict. The Philippines only hope is American protection. So the way China's aggression is covered in the western media is actually very important.

Interesting times.

[1] http://csis.org/publication/japan-chair-platform-senkaku-isl...

sdrothrock2• 12 years ago

because none of the countries whose territories China is going after -- not even Japan -- would do well in a straight up military conflict.

I'm curious about why you don't think Japan would do well in a straight-up military conflict.

veidr6• 12 years ago

Japan's self-defense force is better-equipped, I will grant, but there are a few reasons.

One is that there is always a higher level China could escalate to. I mean, in the end game they have nukes and Japan doesn't. But even if it didn't get to that level, China is a totalitarian regime with a history of brutally suppressing dissent, and I also assume that China would be willing to lose a lot more lives to make gains.

Japan is a high-functioning democracy, and has been one of the most peaceful advanced economies of the world since losing the war. Before that, yeah, they were a definite bad actor on the world stage. But they haven't committed any military aggression toward any country in more than 65 years.

It is my personal opinion that there is almost no way that the people of Japan (where I live, though I am American) would support a war against China. Even if China just up and landed an occupying force on Japan's Senkaku islands.

In a democracy, that public support really matters. In a totalitarian regime, not so much.

I don't personally know that much about the military stuff -- how much would Japan's superior equipment matter in an actual conflict -- so I'd be interested to hear more knowledgeable people chime in. But in Japan, a war with China would be politically untenable unless China like, invaded Tokyo, or something. Which is highly unlikely.

As with the Philippines, I think the USA is the main deterrent to Chinese aggression. And these days it's a pretty shaky deterrent.

Danieru• 12 years ago

The Economist has talked about their coverage of the Senkakus in a few videos. They have mentioned a few times how if they write anything without mentioning the "dispute" they take heat. Thus they resort to always using both names.

illumen• 12 years ago

In a straight up military conflict the world ends. People are idiots though, so I guess that will happen at some point.

veidr6• 12 years ago

Not necessarily true. Not even probably true. The nuclear-armed USA has invaded a number of smaller and weaker countries over the past decades. China has also attacked several neighbors, though in a less balls-out manner. Armageddon did not ensue.

The scariest scenario in Asia right now is: China attacks Japan (e.g. invades the Senkakus, or even accidentally kills some Japanese soldier in one of China's frequent reckless acts of attempted intimidation, like flying dangerously close), the Japan retaliates, the China escalates, then USA intervenes, and somehow USA and China end up in direct armed conflict.

But even there, China and USA have directly fought each other in a war (Korean war) and nobody pulled out their nukes (though China didn't have them yet iirc). The USSR and USA were always invading somebody or other. The nuclear Armageddon scenario is probably a lot less likely than feared--whereas I think the possibility of a nevertheless-vey-bad war in Asia is broadly underestimated.

trhway3• 12 years ago

not necessary. A modern conflict can happen in the disputed area without anybody bombing cities of the opponent. iPhones will continue to be shipped to US from China while J-20 will be playing hide-and-seek with F-22/35 over, say, the South China Sea. A very related example - Great Britain didn't bomb Buenos Aires 32 years ago nor did Argentina strike at anything Britain's outside of the war zone.

chj2• 12 years ago

Senkaku islands is never undisputed. It is brought into spotlight mainly because the relationship between two countries went very bad in recent years due to Japanese PMs' frequent visits to Shinto shrine despite the constant protests from China and South Korea.

lisptime2• 12 years ago

... Japan’s diplomats say their country “discovered” the islands in 1884.

... They are recorded in “Voyage with a Tail Wind”, published in 1403, a portolano recounting a journey from Fujian province to Ryukyu, the old name for the Okinawa chain of islands. By the following century, in “A Record of an Imperial Envoy’s Visit to the Ryukyu Kingdom”, Chinese names were given to all the islets in the Diaoyu group. Japanese diplomats do not bring it up, but the great Japanese military scholar, Shihei Hayashi, followed convention in giving the islands their Chinese names in his map of 1785, “A General Outline of Three Countries” (see map). He also coloured them in the same pink as China.

http://www.economist.com/news/christmas/21568696-behind-row-...

PedroBatista• 12 years ago

Following the same logic, the Portuguese would now own half of the World and the Spanish another half.

Like any large country that tastes power and prosperity for a couple decades, China got rich with money from exports and drunk with power, and like any other country including the U.S. it will not end well. Too bad i makes life miserable for their neighbors too.

Jack000• 12 years ago

the claims on the South China sea are patently ridiculous, but I don't think it can be compared with the senkaku islands. From what I've read China actually did have better claim over those islands prior to 1884 and immediately after WWII, but didn't assert those claims because well.. the islands were worthless. Now that they've found oil they want to roll back the clock.

I think there is a fundamental cultural difference in the way the west and China views the dispute. To the west if you found a piece of land and lived there for 100 years, it's yours - that's how the US was founded after all. But to China it's just the latest in a series of conflicts with Japan going back hundreds of years.

akfanta3• 12 years ago

To the west if you found a piece of land and lived there for 100 years, it's yours - that's how the US was founded after all

Some say the genocide of the natives also helped a lot. These kind of logic just can't be applied to the problems in Asia, where the territory disputes trace back to hundreds of years ago. It's not a west vs east thing.

GFK_of_xmaspast• 12 years ago

"To the west if you found a piece of land and lived there for 100 years, it's yours - that's how the US was founded after all"

You, uh, do realize that every piece of land in the US was found first by people who were already living there?

BrandonMarc3• 12 years ago

It helps that China has been around for, what, millenia? During the thousand(s) of years, you can probably find a century somewhere in there that they had/enforced a claim to most pieces of land, either owning outright or controlling access to.

netcan2• 12 years ago

Here's the things about "disputed" territorial claims, national rights, sovereignty and such: They are not real. There is no objective basis for resolving them. Borders, maritime boundaries the existence of such a thing as "Chinese," "Scottish" or "Kurdish" is only given substance by people believing it and acting as if it were real.

Every piece of land in the world has been competed for and disputed many times. Sometimes identities such as "Chinese," "Scottish" or "Kurdish" are created or hardened specifically to serve that dispute. Other times they are dissolved by the outcome of the dispute.

I'm not trying to make some grand claim that "It's all an illusion." China is disputing Japan's ownership of these islands. The ownership of these islands is in dispute. We can either have some sort of lawful (or otherwise peaceful) way of resolving these disputes or we can go back to the traditional method of war and intimidation.

Our international legal systems were put in place in politically difficult circumstances to prevent world wars. They have definitions of territorial claims and some shambles of a system for resolving them and (theoretically) enforcing them. But this system (being a shambles) get very little respect. They are ignored by major power, minor powers and sometimes by upstarts (ISIS declared the border between Iraq & Syria dissolved and implemented that declaration).

Fuzzwah• 12 years ago

"then controlled by the USA for a time after it defeated Japan in WWII"

Perhaps something like:

"then controlled by the USA for a time after Japan surrendered to the Allies in WWII"

... would make your comment sound a little less ignorant.

Dolimiter2• 12 years ago

When did this type of website design become acceptable?

I'm starting to see it more and more.

It reminds me of when "Multimedia CD-ROMs" first appeared circa mid-1990s, where flashy interfaces were ranked much higher than useability.

Please stop it. Give me a webpage with text, and images that I can enlarge when clicked. Thank you.

kgabis• 12 years ago

This trend is terrible, not only those webpages are hard to read, but they're also hogging CPU. I had to close a tab with it, because it reduced my remaining time on battery from 50mins to 20 mins...

gambiting• 12 years ago

I for one disagree completely. I think this is great and I really liked the videos, they added depth to the article.

knowaveragejoe2• 12 years ago

Same, though I think perhaps the ideal solution is somewhere in the middle. If built with it in mind, the page should gracefully degrade to something more basic, where the videos are all optional. I can see how this would put strain on mobile devices(as another comment responding to the parent pointed out)

knowaveragejoe2• 12 years ago

Don't read much BBC I take it? Rarely if ever do they have enlargeable images.

teamonkey• 12 years ago

At least it doesn't break the scroll bar

prawn• 12 years ago

I would rather see the text broken up more with images and pullquotes rather than less. I find a story like this presented as a bland slab of text so mundane unless I have the time to really sit down and read it, which is never.

kourt• 12 years ago

I see your point. But I love that it's one feature at a time, rather than being placed between two columns of links to other stories, other photos, automatically-playing videos, and ads.

joelrunyon• 12 years ago

See medium.

sixQuarks2• 12 years ago

I don't like where this is all going. I've seen too often how seemingly trivial things can lead to all-out wars.

Thanks to Iraq and Afghanistan, the US has spent a lot of treasure. The population doesn't have the desire for more war. Now Russia and China are seeing how far they can push. I hope I'm wrong, but I feel like we're seeing the beginnings of things that lead to a major war between Russia & China on one side, and the US on the other.

The Fermi paradox is a reminder that we are living in very dangerous times right now.

afterburner• 12 years ago

Now? Nuclear World War has been a possibility for 60 years now. And 60 years ago the US was actually fighting China.

shangxiao• 12 years ago

Yes but the threat of a nuclear war has been considerably low for the past 20 years. Now we have generations of people not knowing what it was like to live under the threat of nuclear annihilation.

sixQuarks2• 12 years ago

60 years is merely an eyeblink in human history, and a nanosecond in life's history. Human nature hasn't changed in 100,000 years. How many brutal leaders has the world seen, Hitler being only one. It's not a question of if, but when we will see another one. The difference this time is that he/she can destroy the entire world.

Silhouette• 12 years ago

I feel like we're seeing the beginnings of things that lead to a major war between Russia & China on one side, and the US on the other.

If you think that's scary, consider the all too plausible possibility of a shooting war between Russia and China over what is currently south-east Russia.

mikeash8• 12 years ago

This may be a stupid comment, but could we stop using "treasure" outside the context of forgetful pirates and sunken ships and such? When talking about Iraq and Afghanistan it's just an overly fancy way to say "money".

dragonwriter4• 12 years ago

This may be a stupid comment

Indeed.

but could we stop using "treasure" outside the context of forgetful pirates and sunken ships and such? When talking about Iraq and Afghanistan it's just an overly fancy way to say "money".

No, its an accurate way to say "treasure" -- or, if you have some need to avoid pirate-related associations in your head, "wealth". Money is, of course, one form that treasure takes, and also money values are used for "keeping score" of all forms of treasure, but what is actually at issue is the treasure--wealth, material assets of all kinds--expended, not just money (sure, those assets were generally purchased for money at some time in the past, but often that was before the war started and not specific to it -- what was consumed by the war was the concrete assets, not the money.)

krapp• 12 years ago

I generally agree with you, but it (likely) refers the the archaic (and somewhat romantic) phrase "blood and treasure"[0] commonly used to describe the cost of war for a nation or state.

[0] http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2013/02/blood-and-treasure...

ck2• 12 years ago

China is going to pull a Putin with "just try to stop us".

ellysetaylor21• 12 years ago

It is more than 800 nautical miles from the Chinese coast and yet Beijing claims that this submerged reef is an integral part of Chinese territory.

cpursley• 12 years ago

Politics aside, what an environmental disaster.

bwilliams18• 12 years ago

This is a shitty remake of a NYTimes article: http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2013/10/27/south-china-s...

sp332• 12 years ago

It can't be a remake, this was written by the BBC's own Tokyo correspondent who was in the boat.

cylinder• 12 years ago

This one renders much better than BBC's as well. Although I'm still undecided on this newsgraphic trend.

matthewwiese• 12 years ago

Very interesting article with good reporting, love the mix of video, text, and images. Great design for a page layout too imo, the BBC seem to have taken cues from Medium.

China's Island Factory – New islands being made in disputed China Sea

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