Videographic: What does China want?
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An animated infographic depicting China’s territorial disputes. Is China trying to expand its territory? Click here to subscribe to The Economist on YouTube: http://econ.trib.al/rWl91R7 ONE reason China’s spectacular rise sometimes alarms its neighbours is that it is not a status quo power. From its inland, western borders to its eastern and southern seaboard, it claims territory it does not control. In the west, China’s border dispute with India is more than a minor cartographic tiff. China claims an area of India that is three times the size of Switzerland, the state of Arunachal Pradesh. Further west, China occupies Indian claimed territory next to Ladakh in Kashmir, an area called the Aksai Chin. China humiliated India in a brief, bloody war over the dispute in 1962. Since 1988, the two countries have put the dispute on the backburner and got on with developing commercial ties, despite occasional flare-ups. More immediately dangerous is the stand-off between China and Japan over disputed islands in the East China Sea, known as the Senkakus in Japan and Diaoyu in Chinese. Japan says they have always been its territory and admits no dispute, claiming also that China only started expressing an interest when it began to seem the area might be rich in oil and gas. A new and much more dangerous phase of the dispute began in 2012 after Japan’s government nationalised three of the islands by buying them from their private owner. China accused Japan of breaking an understanding not to change the islands’ status. Ever since, it has been challenging not just Japan’s claim to sovereignty over the islands, but its claim to control them, sending Chinese ships and planes to patrol them. Raising the stakes is Japan’s alliance with America, which says that though it takes no position on who owns the islands, they are covered by its defence treaty with Japan, since it administers them. Especially provocative to America and Japan was China’s unilateral announcement in November 2013 of an Air-defence Identification Zone, covering the islands. The worry is less that big powers will deliberately go to war over these desolate little rocks, but that an accidental collision at sea or in the air might escalate unforeseeably. Similar fears cloud disputes in the South China Sea, where the maritime claims in South-East Asia are even more complex, and, again, competition is made more intense by speculation about vast potential wealth in hydrocarbon resources. Vietnam was incensed in May 2014 when China moved a massive oil-rig to drill for two months in what it claimed as its waters. This was near the Paracel Islands, controlled by China since it evicted the former South Vietnamese from them in 1974. To the south, China and Vietnam also claim the Spratly archipelago, as does Taiwan, whose claim in the sea mirrors China’s. But the Philippines also has a substantial claim. Malaysia and even tiny Brunei also have an interest. But it is with Vietnam and the Philippines that China’s disputes are most active. The Philippines accuses China of salami-slicing tactics, stealthily expanding its presence in disputed waters. In 1995 it evicted the Philippines from Mischief Reef, and in 2012 from Scarborough Shoal. This year it has tried to stop the Philippines from resupplying a small garrison it maintains on the Second Thomas Shoal, and appears to be building an airstrip on the Johnson South Reef. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea—UNCLOS—is one forum for tackling these disputes. But UNCLOS cannot rule over territorial disputes, just over the waters habitable islands are entitled to. And China and Taiwan point to a map published in the 1940s, showing a big U-shaped nine-dashed line around the edge of the sea. That, they say, is historically all China’s. This has no basis in international law, and the Philippines, to China’s fury, is challenging it at an UNCLOS tribunal. In fact China often fails to clarify whether its claims are based on the nine-dashed line, or on claims to islands, rocks and shoals. That lack of clarity alarms not just its neighbours and rival claimants, but the United States, which says it has its own national interest in the freedom of navigation in a sea through which a huge chunk of global trade passes Also alarming is that if these arguments over tiny specks in the sea become so unmanageable, what hope is there for resolving the really big issues? And the biggest of all is the status of Taiwan, still seen by China as part of its territory, but in practice independent since 1949. For now, Taiwan and China have a thriving commercial relationship. But polls suggest that few in Taiwan hanker after unification with the mainland. And China’s rulers still insist that one day they will have to accept just that.
Comments
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What a biased piece of shit video. Now hear this out. The British with it's separatist movement in the North (Scotland) vying for independence the British still insist on keeping all their islands especially Spartly islands and continue with it's imperialism
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so basically similar to the US? To expand its reach? have more land to control? Expand military bases? Control trade and be able to influence other countries? to hold power over new gas reserves etc? sums it up..
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China is a stealer
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The one thing most people don't realize the more someone has the more they want fact
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China sometimes remind me of fire ants 🐜
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China needs to be stopped and taking down a few notches before they get too cocky and they will too
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Southern Asian nations need to revolt to China and show them that they cant be pushed around
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Any video's to show why US likes to displace middle east leaders by assassination?
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China is ignorant.
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sb
All of the territorial disputes came from the history of Western colonial aggression, ALL. -
China's adversaries both economical and militaristic need to band together and destroy Chinese expansionism.
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Okay, its all for you just for you China, so how about Moon, Mars, the milky way next? if you trust there is God in this life, you can have the throne too. So how about chinesse alien? you got bigger eyes as you want to. chinesse angel? chinesse god? chinesse devils? hahaha, you got all you want like the man who sold his kidney to buy apple stuff. Hmm, intersting maybe. (sorry bad english, no offense, and smile) :)
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go china go ........nobody gonna touch
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What men want with power???....................... .... More power.
China is greed. they want to show the world how powerful they are.
but I see a country full a saliva like a dog hunger, gluttony, voracity and rapacity for power. -
They want to be powerful and superpower than US. That fucking chinese want!!
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China need the whole world, but this world do not need China. This have been proven from the projects of silk road.
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首先南中国海是中国的那就面对世界打一场漂漂亮亮的国际官司。中国自己不是有很多強而有力的证据吗?那就使出自己的看家本領站出來面对考验。十三億竟然没有一个敢出來?真是XXX。也不明白中国到底在怕什么?
China need the whole world, but the world not need China... from the silk road projects it proved. -
Cut all the craps, China simply want one thing: the USA getting out of the East Asia/West Pacific arena, and then being the hegemony in this arena, just like the US being the hegemony of the world.
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中国作小偷 丢脸
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The Economist, is is a eugenics-based manipulation media thing?
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