Recall back in March, when the Chinese pounded
their chests over the U.S.S. Impeccable's presence in China's EEZ.
You're provoking us, they said. How dare you violate our sacred waters?
Flash forward almost 3 months to the day, when a Chinese submarine struck the sonar array of the U.S.S. John McCain. It sounds like the collision took place in Philippino territorial waters, but it's possible it occurred in the Philippines' Exclusive Economic Zone instead.
Either way, I'm pretty sure Manilla didn't grant Beijing permission to operate there. Which clearly demonstrates that to the Chinese, only China's naval territory is inviolable.
UPDATE: A good explanation of the Impeccable incident over at YouTube.
What? Don’t you know? Austronesians are descended from people from south China. Therefore everyone in the Pacific, since they all intermingled with Austroneasians, is a Chinese minority. Therefore the entire Pacific basin is Chinese national marine territory.
Michael
Plus ca change.
To the Americans, only America’s naval territory is inviolable.
😉
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Really? America is harrassing ships outside its territorial waters (but inside its EEZ)? And ramming its airplanes into foreign planes within its Exclusive Economic Zone?
Hadn’t heard about that.
http://foreignerinformosa.typepad.com/the_foreigner_in_formosa/2009/03/china-america-and-the-un-convention-on-the-law-of-the-sea.html
OK – so the US didn’t ratify UNCLOS – do you think that means they’d be cool with foreign navies of non-allied countries sailing into their EEZ?
Of course not.
I’m not saying that China is right [it isn’t], just that if the biggest guy on the block doesn’t play by the rules, why should the others?
And the US does more than harass outside its territorial waters – it fires missiles and kills people.
Sorry – should have finished reading your link before posting.
Your last line:
Perhaps the reason the Chinese were not approached was that the U.S. Government wished to send them a message: If you’re not going to abide by the terms of the treaty, then why should WE?
Well, and vice versa. This is a new age. We can only hope that India and China will treat our great-grandchildren as nicely as we treated their great-grandparents.
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re: 11:54 comment
Actually, non-allied non-friendlies used to sail into the U.S. EEZ all the time during the Cold War. As I recall, the States would dispatch ships to monitor Soviet spy ships, sure. But harassment of the kind we’re seeing from the Chinese?
I don’t believe so.
Remember, we’re talking about two things here. There’s Chinese territorial waters, where U.S. ships have no business being, and the Chinese EEZ, where the Impeccable had every right being, but the civilian research vessel, Marcus G. Langseth, does not. (And by the way, I haven’t heard any updates about the Langseth, so it’s entirely possible that the university DID eventually ask for Chinese permission.)
As for the part about firing missiles, that’s the War on Islamofascism, which is another issue entirely. If terrorists attacked China and subsequently fled into Philippino waters, China might very well have the right of pursuit.
As far as we know however, there weren’t any Uigher suicide bombers or Dalai Lama madmen Buddhist jihadis swimming around in Subic Bay.
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re: 12:06am comment
I’m not too worried about India, it being a democracy and all. There may at times be friction (ie: France and America), but I think we can all live with that.
As for China, its next-door neighbors are the ones who have something to really worry about. Because Beijing didn’t always treat their great-GREAT-grandparents that well…
I was thinking more about US actions in Central America, rather than Iraq / Afghanistan – with numerous direct and indirect interventions in the region.
Is China’s policy [if that’s what it is] much different to the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine?
Which is not to say that I think China’s in the right- I live in Taiwan and like it being free – only to note that this is what ‘great powers’ do, expand their spheres of influence.
I’m not too worried about India, either. I think they are probably far more civilized and humane than, until quite recently, Western democracies were, and so will not be invading countries and running too many colonies and puppet governments.
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I take your point. But democracies are shameable. So much so, that by the 1990s, it wasn’t politically easy to intervene in a clear basket-case like Haiti.