New satellite images have largely confirmed earlier reports that China is building a military base near the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands that Japan also claims and administers. Last week IHS Jane’s reported that satellite images from October 2014 show that China is building a heliport with 10 landing pads and wind turbines on Nanji Island, which is […]
Who “minds the gap” in the South China Sea? The gap, that is, created in international law concerning the use of coercion or aggressive force and the right of self-defense of victim states. China exploits this gap in the international law on the use of force to compel its neighbors to accept Chinese hegemony in […]
Satellite imagery analysis by IHS Jane’s has confirmed that China is building a military base on islands 300 km away from the dispute Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. The imagery, captured on 13 October 2014 by Airbus Defence and Space’s Pleaides satellite, shows a heliport with 10 landing pads in the centre of Nanji Island, one of a […]
Military Spending: In the face of an expansionist China seeking to dominate the East and South China Seas, Tokyo has set its largest defense budget ever to help defend islands that it rightfully considers Japanese territory. As its military, economy and ambitions grow, so too does China’s assertiveness about control of the Yellow Sea, the […]
The Chinese government has opened an official website which endorses China’s position towards the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. The website, www.diaoyudao.org.cn, is accessible in Chinese under the isles Chinese name, the Diaoyu Islands. According to this blog from the New York Times, the home page of the site opens to a Chinese national flag next to […]
NEW YORK – Japan should take its disagreements with China over the Senkaku Islands to the International Court of Justice, Jerome Cohen, a New York University law professor and expert in Chinese law, said in an interview. “I want Japan to use international law,” Cohen said, stressing that Japan should follow in the steps of […]
Recently released British government files attest to a prior agreement between Japan and China to shelve their territorial dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. The files record a 1982 conversation between Zenko Suzuki and Margaret Thatcher, then the prime ministers of Japan and the U.K., respectively. In that conversation, Suzuki told Thatcher that he had reached […]
Usually countries fight for gains or to prevent losses, but US experts are quite different. Michael Pillsbury, the director of the Centre on Chinese Strategy at the Hudson Institute, holds quite different views. In his recent article “China and the United States Are Preparing for War” he holds that war is inevitable because China is […]
China’s shift away from muscle-flexing and a confluence of interests with a US-led order offer hope it will not continue to engender large-scale regional instability next year, says Yoon Young-kwan CHINA spent much of 2014 seeking to revive a concept that Japan proclaimed seven decades ago, when it was an imperial power seeking to impose […]
A nudge by air in 2013. A probe by sea in 2014. Will China take a crack on land in 2015? For the sake of world peace, let’s hope not. However, China’s nudge and probe record, especially over the last two years, should worry diplomats and alert headline writers. In 2013, China tested Japanese and […]