Oh, you mean like the islands Vietnam claimed that China took from.them by force?

Or the islands that the Phillipines own that China is forcing a dispute over by parking a ship off of them? Basically pushing the 'possession is 9/10 of the law' definition to the fullest?

China forcing an alliance from it's neighbours, is like germany in 1904... and going to end in disaster; with or without US involvement.

Here's a link to the wiki and map that I should have included.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_disputes_in_the_South_China_Sea#/media/File:South_China_Sea_vector.svg

So from what I am hearing, goldfinger would prefer China to forcibly take over the natural islands?

China should stop flexing their muscles and laying claims to islands that don't belong to them.

@Private Entrance: is that in the same way that the US should have stopped expanding towards the pacific in the 19th century?

Yes? I don't see how that is relevant, but both were immoral.

Morality never had much to do with Chinese diplomacy.

Morality never had much to do with most countries' diplomacy.

Morality as an excuse for diplomacy originated with the US.

Morality is the fallacy of any colonialism.

Superior civilization righteously conquering and appropriating to advance itself and bring light to the darkness.

Well I can think of a couple things before that... So... No, no it didn't.

^^^That was to Gobble, not wjessop.

I suppose if you think about it that way that's true.

Colonialism however was first and foremost about resources and no one pretended otherwise. Which is really what we are comparing Chinese aggression and US interventionism to anyway.

"Yes? I don't see how that is relevant, but both were immoral."

i just want to know which version of morality Private Entrance is using before i get into a discussion with them.

Sabre rattling

It for economic power. Control your own people fly a red hearing. Watch everyone panic over islands and Sth China sea . control enough production and have "the west by the balls " .

the west has lost but doesn't know it yet.

How do you kill the west. Slowly let it strangle itself in debt..

The Fall of Rome was not done by outsiders , as the fall of the west is aspiring to follow.

Anything to back up this claim?

I can certainly believe that it's at least partly a red herring foreign policy issue to distract Chinese citizens from domestic concerns--such as overproduction, for example. ;)

But then, there is genuine economic power/influence at stake too. Just not world-ending power as implied by Smokey Gem.

I've been listening to a lot of Edward Luttwak, and other youtube lectures linked.

The impression i get is as follows. There is a huge amount of internal stuff going on in China, and the party itself is far more concerned with internal policy than understanding what the rest of the world thinks.

There is a tiny coast guard which is getting new ships and pushing be more influential and this is one factor. One army division also had a border skirmish of sorts with India (while the next division along the border did nothing, because their commander wasn't interested in doing something stupid) and a bank refused to fund a project to build a road in this contested border region with India...

The general idea is that China is just blundering along, like an unstoppable juggernaut, with numerous conflicting goals and ideas for how to proceed; and no real interest in what Japan, India, Vietnam and Australia think or are doing about this potential regional threat (ie forming an alliance, in deeds if not in words)

A much more nuanced view that american diplomats who have some experience in the area is rather interesting...

Like here: https://youtu.be/oNuYgJfr6eA

Smokey is about as off as it gets. China is massively increasing the amount of debt it has, faster than almost any other country. Then there's the fact that they're sitting on a growth time bomb due to demographics and no social safety net.

China will not, and is not close to, eclipsing the West.

"The Fall of Rome was not done by outsiders , as the fall of the west is aspiring to follow."
Well, I mean, it's not to say they didn't help at all...
There were a lot of things that led to the fall of Rome. Officially, the Western Roman Empire was conquered in the end by Germanic and Gothic peoples, the Eastern Roman Empire was conquered in the end by the Ottoman Empire, and the Holy Roman Empire (though it wasn't holy, Roman, or an Empire) was ceded to become the Confederation of the Rhine by Napoleon to the German princes.

Surely the third rome was the Patriarchy of Moscow after Patriarchy of Constantinople fell, a emperor styled Czar, after the great Caesar... Far more so than the 'holy roman empire'

The South China Sea issue is not about distracting its populace, who are still generally content with the domestic economic situation. The islands are strategically situated over large oil and marine reserves.

It's first and foremost about controlling sea routes.

I think it's possible for it to achieve a dual purpose. It's not necessarily the economic situation the party wants to distract the populace from (though its part of it) but rather the lack of social and political freedom. As we've seen time and time again, people are willing to trade freedom for security in times of conflict.