Taiwan-China-Japan 8/4 (AM-Taipei)
As expected, following Pelosis departure things are getting interesting with Chinas military exercises looking like a defacto blockade and getting Japan involved as well.
Global Times said the PLA is preparing to send rockets over the island of Taiwan. As also Axios recapped:
The alert describing six areas in the region as "danger zones" notifies airlines of flight restrictions due to the military exercises from Thursday at 12 noon until 12 noon Sunday Hong Kong time, per Bloomberg, as officials in Japan also expressed alarm at Beijing's plans.
China's government also moved to block imports of citrus fruits and frozen mackerel from Taiwan in retaliation for Pelosi's trip, AP reports.
Taiwan's Defense Ministry described the latest PLA actions as essentially a "maritime and aerial blockade."
China/US Aircraft Carriers Position
Japanese Islands
Those plans show that the Sakishima Islands, including Yonaguni, Ishigaki, and Miyako, could be affected by People’s Liberation Army operations as they assume the PLA is operating to the east of Taiwan,” said Tetsuo Kotani, a professor of global studies at Meikai University.
In Okinawa Prefecture, Yonaguni Island — located just 110 kilometers from Taiwan — as well and Miyako Island are home to Ground Self-Defense Force bases, while construction is currently underway on another base for surface-to-air and surface-to-ship missile units on Ishigaki Island.
China has repeatedly sent warships and warplanes into that area in recent years as part of what it says are routine training operations. It also conducted military drills near Taiwan during what is known as the “Third Taiwan Strait Crisis” in 1995-96.
But the drills announced late Tuesday encompass a far larger area than those exercises, and include large swaths to the northeast and east of Taiwan, where U.S. and Japanese forces would likely arrive from in the event they are deployed to aid Taipei following any Chinese invasion.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/08/03/national/china-target-taiwan-drills-japan/
Japan
Japan has expressed concerns over the war drills that China is conducting in the Taiwan Straits, news agency AFP reported. Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said the PLA exercises in the maritime areas are overlapping with Japan’s exclusive economic zone.
“The maritime areas announced by the Chinese side as those to be used for military exercises… overlaps with Japan’s exclusive economic zone," Matsuno was quoted as saying by news agency AFP.
He further added that concerns were conveyed to the Chinese side due to the live-fire training nature of the drills undertaken by the PLA. He highlighted that stability in the Taiwan Strait is important not only for Japan’s security but also for the stability of the global community.
Okinawa, one of Japan’s southernmost islands, is close to Taiwan. There are also several small islands or islets in that region whose status remains disputed.
PLA official Gu Zhong told the Global Times that they will conduct joint blockade, sea assault, land attack and air superiority seizing plus live-fire shooting of precision weapons drills in the waters near Taiwan.
Okinawa History
Okinawa, a string of tropical islands off far southwest Japan much closer to Taiwan than Tokyo, suffered massive devastation in World War II. Two months of bloody battles between US and Japanese forces left as many as a third of its people dead. Nearly 30 years of US rule followed.
On May 15, 1972, the islands were finally returned to Japan in what was seen as a hopeful step forward from the war's painful legacy. But today they still host the majority of US military bases in Japan, a devil's bargain that has provided jobs but also fed worries about crime and military accidents.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/15/asia/okinawa-marks-50th-anniversary-of-end-of-us-occupation-intl-hnk/index.html
2013
Chinese authorities in the spring of 2013 brazenly challenged Japan’s sovereignty of the islands with a concerted campaign that included an article in a magazine associated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; a widely publicized commentary in People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s flagship newspaper and therefore China’s most authoritative publication; two pieces in the Global Times, the tabloid controlled by People’s Daily; an interview of Maj. Gen. Luo Yuan in the state-run China News Service; and a seminar held at prestigious Renmin University in Beijing.
At the same time, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs refused to affirm that China recognized Okinawa and the Ryukyus as Japanese.
The close timing of events indicated these efforts had been directed from the top of the Chinese political system.
Over the last decade, Beijing has been moving in on Okinawa step by step, almost island by island. It has regularly dispatched its ships and planes to the Senkaku Islands,often entering sovereign water and airspace, in a campaign to wrest from the Japanese those small and uninhabited specks in the ocean. The provocations around the islets, which China first claimed in 1971 and now calls the Diaoyus, spiked upward in 2012 and then noticeably declined the following year.
Beijing’s argument, like all its territorial claims, is rooted in long-ago history—1372 to be exact. By that year, as Gen. Luo pointed out to the China News Service, the Ryukyu kingdom was paying tribute to the Chinese court, and Japan did not complete its annexation of the island chain until 1872.
In their landmark May 2013 People’s Daily commentary, Li Guoqiang and Zhang Haipeng of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences maintained the annexation of the Ryukyus constituted an invasion. Moreover, they wrote that Japan’s defeat in World War II nullified the Treaty of Shimonoseki of 1895, by which the Qing court formally renounced its claims to the islands.
For now, let’s not discuss whether they belong to China—they were certainly China’s tributary state,” said Luo to the China News Service. “I am not saying all former tributary states belong to China, but we can say with certainty that the Ryukyus do not belong to Japan.”
The issues are not as clear cut as Luo, Li, and Zhang indicate, however. A Japanese feudal lord conquered the islands in 1609 but permitted the Ryukyuans to also pay tribute to the court in China. Another complication undermining China’s position involves the identity of the Qing dynasty. Although Beijing now considers that set of rulers to be Chinese, the Qings did not think of themselves that way, especially during the early part of their rule, and the Chinese at the time certainly viewed them as foreign invaders.
Why, then, did Beijing question Japan’s sovereignty over the Ryukyu chain? It looks like it wanted to gain an advantage in the Senkaku dispute, as a May 2013 Global Timeseditorial, titled “Ryukyu Issue Offers Leverage to China,” makes explicit.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/now-china-wants-okinawa-site-of-us-bases-in-japan
Last week
China has for the first time sent a TB001 combat and reconnaissance drone on a solo mission through Okinawa Prefecture’s Miyako Strait, traveling from the East China Sea into the Pacific near Taiwan, according to the Japanese Defense Ministry.
The flight of the drone, which has a maximum range of 6,000 kilometers and can carry missiles and precision guided bombs, occurred Monday from the morning through the afternoon. The Defense Ministry said it scrambled fighter jets to monitor the drone, which did not violate the country’s territorial airspace.
The latest flight comes after the Chinese military flew drones — including a TB001 — in the vicinity of Okinawa Prefecture with other manned aircraft for three straight days last August.
China has ramped up its moves in the Miyako Strait and other strategic waterways near and around Japan in recent months. Tokyo routinely scrambles its fighter jets to monitor the Chinese aircraft. One added benefit of these flights for China is that its military can glean information on Japanese response times, experts say, while simultaneously adding to the wear-and-tear typically associated with flights of multimillion dollar aircraft.
The latest drone flight also came as Taiwan kicked off its five-day Han Kuang (Han Glory) war games, which the Defense Ministry in Taipei said simulated "all possible actions" China could take to invade the self-ruled island.
Observers say it was possible that the move was also intended to gather information on those military exercises, since the drone loitered in the airspace off Taiwan’s eastern coast, according to a map of the flight path provided by the Japanese Defense Ministry.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/07/26/national/china-military-drone-okinawa-taiwan/
A nice summary as to why this may be different than other crisis in the past as I mentioned in my previous post
Rumor is that one side of the power struggle is pushing LI Keqiang as a compromise candidate to replace Xi. This would keep the CCP in charge but is acceptable to the Chinese business cabal.
It is possible that Xi’s lockup of Jack Ma and problems with NYSE listed companies (such as Alibaba) possibly forced to move listings to the Hong Kong exchange because Beijing wont open their books to the SEC are examples of Xi’s struggle against the entire business class.
Xi’s constant covid lockdowns have focused on and in the industrial heartland of China where business production and corporate class power is centered. Lockdowns could be orchestrated by Xi also as retaliation against them as these areas are their base of opposition power.
Jennifer Zeng’s you tube channel Inconvenient Truths by Jennifer Zeng - YouTube has mentioned some of this. One leaked audio she played of a CCP meeting stated that the “covid lockdowns were govt practice for military situations that may arise.” It enables control of their population and the massive cargo traffic (hundreds of ships) bottlenecked at their ports conceals ocean military maneuvers perhaps aimed at Taiwan.
The crux of the issue is that The US is pushing Pelosi to visit Taiwan tomorrow to show our resolve in standing up to XI. But what they fail to realize is that XI (if he is being challenged for power at home) may see it in his interest to have a confrontation. A military event will allow him to consolidate all his power against the China business class as a national emergency. It also deflects from the mortgage crises currently happening due to overbuilding via pyramid schemes in China. It will allow him total control of his enemies at home.
Next step: I don’t think China will do anything outright against Pelosi. A huge possibility is that in the not so distant future they will take over the Senkaku Islands. These are small unoccupied islands claimed by China, Taiwan, and Japan. Taking over the islands would enable China to build bases on them which are north of Taiwan. This would block access from Japan or Okinawa into the Taiwan straits. The islands are included in the US commitment to help defend Japan against foreign attack, so our non-response would be another sign of our impotence. Coupled with their manmade islands in the southern strait, they would effectively seal off the Taiwan Strait and become ready for a future invasion of Taiwan itself.
Watch what happens with the Senkaku Islands!!!!!
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