What does China want?

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An animated infographic depicting China’s territorial disputes. Is China trying to expand its territory?

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.
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They literally want everything-.-
Where's my ASEAN FAMILY here?

princesskudo
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2016: China claims the North Natuna Sea in Indonesia

TheGudsProduction
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What does China want?

Every single thing

insertname
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M afraid one day china ll strt claimng that my underwear belong to them frm ancient tyms

krnduo
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Next time, China will claim that Pluto is China's Property

clausewitzschultz
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Next: china claims that the whole universe is theirs

justacatthatsconfused
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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.

fredsaga
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In the future, we will witness them claiming that the whole Pakistan belongs to china😂😂

Abrar
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most of the south china sea isn't even near the chinese coast

sereysothe.a
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Question: What does China want?
Answer: Everything.

SWAGGALaGGAZ
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All Asian Pacific nations should unite to teach China a lesson!

nyceazn
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When the Filipinos were still in their reconstruction and rehabilitation from damages of TYPHOON HAINAN the Chinese made creeping development
in the West Philippines Sea islands. They were most hungry than the forest
WOLVES in claiming the islets.

eloradesuyo
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I can understand the claim on Japan and India daa-dee-daa. But that whole chunk down there in South-east Asia region... Surely Vietnam and Philippine wouldn't just sit there idly.

echoosui
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What i hated about china:
Taking everything
Putting their language on almost all of the buildings in the philippines
Copying other companies

ShinzouWoSateSateSate
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Indonesia in natuna: don't touch me!!!

pohonide.
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Well, Diaoyu/Senkaku Island is also claimed by ROC(Taiwan).

Economist, how could you miss that one?

cainiaowu
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And then you've got the Bahrain and Qatar island disputes..
lol

mohaamd_
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🇨🇳: *_Disputes_* 🇻🇳🇧🇳🇲🇾🇵🇭
🇻🇳: *_How dare you?! *Went to the gym for some warming up._*
🇧🇳: *_Criket._*
🇲🇾: *_Shit we ran out of money to fight back cause of Jibby's._*
🇵🇭: *_Made a speech, and then speech again._*
🇮🇩: *_Grab popcorn with some chili._*
🇨🇳: _* _*_Enters the Indonesia's EEZ._*
🇮🇩: *_HooOley sHit. NAH GEDTHOUD. *Build an intense military base._*

🇻🇳🇧🇳🇲🇾🇵🇭🇮🇩: *_*United._*
🇱🇦🇲🇲🇹🇭🇰🇭🇸🇬: *_Cheerleading_* 🙆‍♀️🙆‍♀️
🇻🇳: *_oooh vey._*

ico
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First I used to think that Pluto was autonomous, now I know it belongs to China

aryamore
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you fail to mention the trillions of dollars of deuterium in the WEST PHILIPPINE SEA

michaeltrent