Tag: Sino-imperialism

Chinese Communist Party Releases Final Japanese Hostage

Beijing graciously releases Japanese chemical munitions removal specialist from captivity.

Advice to the Japanese government:  When you're in a hole, stop digging.  The CCP has demonstrated its eagerness to take hostages, so stop providing them with the hostages it so desperately craves.

They want 65 year-old chemical shells removed from their soil?  Let 'em clean 'em up themselves. 

No need for them to be on the Japanese dole, now that they're a big, rich, powerful country.

Beijing Relaxes “The Chinese Charm Offensive” Against Japan

Resumes rare earth shipments to Japanese high-tech industries.  (The four Japanese hostages it took earlier have still not been released, however.)

On a somewhat-related topic, there's one irony I've been meaning to mention regarding Taiwan's involvement in the Senkaku affair.  Taiwan's Chinese Nationalist Party will enthusiastically spend tens of thousands of dollars to defend the "right" of a Taiwanese citizen to hoist the R.O.C. flag on Japanese soil. 

Yet that same party is willing to spend MILLIONS to prevent Taiwanese citizens from hoisting that very same flag on their OWN SOIL (at least when Chinese Communist Party apparachiks come-a-callin').

Curious, is it not?

Give ‘Em An Inch And They Won’t Just Take An Isle

They'll take the whole archipelago.  Chinese ultranationalists at Taiwan's China Post salivate not just over the Senkaku Islands, but over ALL the islands in Japan's Okinawa Prefecture.

The Senkakus?  Merely an appetizer.

UPDATE:  In claiming the Senkaku Islands for "China", the China Post of Taiwan refers to a Japanese map from 1783 (on which the islands are given the same color as China).

Hayashi Shihei, Japan's first cartographer, positioned the Senkakus as belonging to China in the eighteenth century.

This all leads to a place where the Chinese ultranationalists of the Post most certainly did intend to go.  Because interestingly enough, that very same map represents Taiwan with an entirely different color from China.  (China & the Senkaku Islands are colored pinkish-red on the map, while Taiwan is colored yellow.)

Ergo, if you believe the Japanese map is irrefutable proof of China's ownership over the Senkakus, then you must also hold it to be irrefutable proof that Taiwan is an country independent of China.

Q.E.D.

1783 map from Japan shows Taiwan is independent from China

(Hat tip to Ampontan, who was the first to make this observation)

i-1

The Chinese Charm Offensive

Beijing's bellicosity wins friends and allies – for America.  Danke schoen, Kaiser Hu Jintao.

Incidentally — and I speak only hypothetically — if China is justified in waging economic war against Japan over the Senkaku Islands, wouldn't America be justified in waging economic war against China for its currency manipulation?  Robert J. Samuelson at the Washington Post seems to think so.

[Let's be clear though on this last point:  As an economic subsidiary of Communist China, Taiwan would suffer terribly from a Sino-American trade war.]

 

When It Absolutely, Positively, DOESN’T Have To Be There…

Google went Galt in China earlier this year, and perhaps it's high time that Japan followed its example.  Because both the Daily Yomiuri and Asahi Shimbun are reporting that Beijing is erecting politically-motivated customs trade barriers to cripple Japanese industry.  From the Daily Yomiuri:

Shanghai customs authorities informed major Japanese transport firms last Tuesday of a decision to immediately boost the ratio of imports and exports subject to sample inspections at the city's customs house from the previous 30 percent to 100 percent.

Shanghai's quarantine authorities have also raised the ratio of quarantine inspections of commodities from the previous 10 percent to 50 percent, they said.

Because of the subsequent delay in the clearance and quarantine procedures, many air cargoes bound for Japan, including electronics parts, remain in Shanghai, according to the sources.

Similar measures have been taken at many other customs houses, including those in Fujian, Guandong and Liaoning Provinces…

Meanwhile, Communist China is denying that it had ANYTHING to do with the decision of Chinese rare earth exporters to cease shipments of their products to Japan.  Just as they denyed that the equipment they moved into the East China Sea had ANYTHING to do with oceanic gas field drilling.

[Surprise, surprise – the latest word is that the water near the Chinese offshore facility is dirty and turbid.  Which is just the sort of thing that one expects when AN UNDERWATER DRILL BIT MEETS SOLID ROCK.]

Democratic Japan Suffers Economic Pearl Harbor At Hands Of Communist China: Loses Sovereignty Over Senkaku Islands

Releases Chinese captain who rammed two Japanese Coast Guard vessels in Japanese waters.

On Tuesday of this week, Premier Wen Jiabao of China issued this threat:

"China has no choice but to take the necessary 'coercive measures.' "

And a mere three days later, Japanese prosecutors cut loose Captain Ramboat.  A sad spectacle it must have been to watch them claim that their decision was based solely on the law…and then hear them quickly contradict this by declaring that the political importance of smooth Sino-Japanese relations was something they also had to consider.  

Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper outlines the precise 'coercive measure' which may have been most instrumental in bringing Japan to heel:

A Chinese government source said Thursday that Beijing resorted to the harsh measure of stopping all exports of rare earth metals to Japan because "Japan had crossed over the red line."

The paper further reports that "a sense of shock, fear and helplessness" began to grow in the Japanese industrial sector, as managers discovered to their horror the folly of economic dependence on Asia's Communist behemoth.  The Japan Times elaborates on this latter point:

Japan imported 31,383 tons of rare earths in 2008, of which 29,275 tons, or 92 percent [emphasis added], came from China…

92%.  [And in another news, a hospital somewhere in Michigan recently granted Dr. Jack Kevorkian control over 92% of their life-support equipment.  Because really, what could go wrong?]

The Asashi Shimbun reports that China's unofficial embargo was apparently not as clumsy or as random as a blaster:

The stoppage was designed to hurt Japan's high-tech industries, and it was apparently planned well in advance.

According to several sources, top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party issued instructions in mid-September to the Foreign Ministry, Commerce Ministry, State Development and Reform Commission as well as researchers covering Japan at government-affiliated think tanks to devise specific measures that could be imposed on Japan.

"Instructions were given to consider sanctions that would hit the Japanese economy where it is especially vulnerable," a Chinese government source said [emphasis added].

It's almost superfluous to point out that earlier this year, the Chinese Nationalist Party of Taiwan assured voters that the Communist Party of China would never, ever, EVER mix politics and economics.  Signing a free-trade agreement with Zhongnanhai would be an economic shot in the arm for Taiwan — so the argument went — and there was absolutely no chance that becoming Beijing's industrial and commercial satellite would imperil Taiwan's democracy or its sovereignty.

Ask the Japanese whether that holds true today.  Because the Taiwanese should be aware that the KMT's flimsy hypothesis now utterly without foundation.

The only question which remains is:  When will Communist China choose to launch a similar assault on the economy of democratic Taiwan?

UPDATE:  In what I assume is pure bluster meant for domestic consumption only, Japan's Trade Minister threatened to file a grievance with the World Trade Organization in response to China's rare earth embargo.

No way in hell that'll happen.  They didn't have the stones to prosecute a mere Chinese fishing boat captain…but instead they'll take on China in a WTO courtroom, mano-a-mano?

Who's he kidding?

UPDATE (Sept 25/10):  It's not enough that I must win — everyone must know that YOU have lost.  Not satisfied with having enforced its will upon Japan, Chinese ultranationalists demand a kowtowing apology to boot.

UPDATE #3:  Heh.  "Eternally ours, since 1971."  Good to see that not all Taiwanese have drunk President Ma Ying-jeou's Chinese ultranationalist Kool-Aid.

UPDATE #4:  A 1969 P.R.C. map showing the Senkaku Islands as Japanese territory.  Think I've seen this somewhere before, but I've never posted it here.

People's Republic of China map from 1969 showing the Senkaku Islands belong to Japan

UPDATE #5:  Realizing that Communist China is an unreliable supplier, Japan looks to Mongolia as another source of rare earths.

UPDATE #6:  China's belligerence towards its neighbors causes them to seek closer relations with the U.S.A.  The law of unintended consequences strikes again.

(Speaking of which, Okinawans are apparently livid about Tokyo's latest surrender, fearing large Chinese fishing flotillas will now ply the local waters.  Will this glimpse of China's "Yakuza diplomacy" cause them to view American military bases with greater favor?  We'll see.)

UPDATE #7:  Japan's Foreign Minister seems appreciative of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's assurances that the Senkaku Islands "are within the scope of application of Article 5 of the Japan-U.S. security treaty."

i-1

Cheese Commercials Which “Hurt The Feelings Of The Chinese People”

After Zhongnanhai watches these Panda's are jerks! ads, can a major diplomatic row between Beijing and Cairo be far behind?

(Those living in countries bordering China will probably see a LOT of subtext in these ads.)

UPDATE:  The original link, which has a larger player screen.

Pack Hunters

"You are an excellent tactician Captain. You let your second in command attack, while you sit and watch for weakness."

-Khan Noonien Singh, ST:TOS

Perhaps that's the only explanation I have for China's relatively mild reaction to the recent incident off the coast of Japan's Senkaku Islands.  I mean, think about it:  Japan arrests a P.R.C. fishing boat captain for violating Japanese waters, and what does Beijing do?

It blusters, dresses down the Japanese ambassador a few times, cancels a few underwater resource meetings, and sends a SINGLE fishery escort vessel.  (For good measure, it also leaves open the possibility that it "may not be able" to control anti-Japanese mob action.)

A relatively measured response, given that it's Communist China we're talking about.

Shortly thereafter though, Taiwan does a curious thing.  Remember, absolutely none of its mariners are cooling their heels in Japanese detention.  Yet despite this, President Ma Ying-jeou reacts far more militantly than the P.R.C., making the "independent" decision to dispatch not one, but twelve — 12! — coast guard ships to the Japanese islands.

Like the man said, the second-in-command plays the heavy.

While the boss sits back, watching for weakness.

Khan Noonien Singh (played by Ricardo Montalban). From Star Trek: The Original Series.

(Khan image from Zaphodsheads.spaces.live.com)

UPDATE:  The Chinese might be breaking their pledge not to drill in a disputed undersea gas field.  This, we don't know for sure, yet.

i-1