Closer to Armageddon?; China talking war with the US

Chinamens got fighter jets on Woody island...

Chinese fighter jets seen on contested South China Sea island, evidence of Beijing's latest bold move
April 12, 2016 - The Chinese military has deployed new fighter jets to a contested island in the South China Sea and bolstered their advanced surface-to-air missile system on the island, new satellite imagery provided exclusively to Fox News shows. The move is expected to escalate tensions in the region days before Defense Secretary Ash Carter visits the Philippines, where China’s recent provocative actions in the region are expected to be a point of discussion.
Satellite imagery from ImageSat International (ISI) taken on April 7 and authenticated by U.S. defense officials Tuesday show two Chinese Shenyang J-11 fighter jets on Woody Island. The Chinese J-11s, known as “Flankers” by the Pentagon first entered service in 1998. They are a modified version of the Russian Sukhoi Su-27, comparable to a U.S. Air Force F-15 or Navy F/A-18 Hornet. Woody Island is the largest island in the Paracel chain of islands in the South China Sea. The Chinese installed a runway there in the early 1990s. It lies 250 miles southeast of a major Chinese submarine base on Hainan Island. China has claimed Woody Island since the 1950s, but it is also contested by Taiwan and Vietnam.

The concern among senior officials in Washington is that China will eventually control the South China Sea if its militarization continues unchecked. An estimated $5 trillion in cargo and natural resources pass through these coveted sea lanes each year. The satellite photos also show a newly installed fire control radar system on Woody Island, which makes China’s surface-to-air missile launchers first deployed in February fully operational. The U.S. military is concerned the new radar allows China to track U.S. fighter jets, bombers and intelligence gathering aircraft keeping an eye on the Chinese military. The photos from ImageSat International show four of the eight surface-to-air missiles ready to fire on the eastern side of Woody Island.

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The Chinese HQ-9 radar system, which closely resembles Russia’s S-300 missile system, has a range of 125 miles and can pose a threat to civilian airliners in addition to U.S. military aircraft. Fox News first reported the deployment of the missile system in late February while President Obama was hosting 10 Southeast Asian leaders in Palm Springs. In a separate disputed island chain, located 200 miles from Manila, U.S. defense officials are also tracking a number of Chinese ships near Scarborough Shoal. Defense Secretary Ash Carter is headed to the Philippines later this week to talk about regional threats. He also will finalize a deal allowing the U.S. military to be stationed there for the first time since the closing of the Subic Bay naval base in 1992.

There were discussions that Carter would visit China on his current trip to Asia, but the visit was postponed amidst rising regional tensions. In February on a visit to Washington, China’s foreign minister expressed interest in visiting the Pentagon, but a “scheduling conflict” prevented the visit from happening according to Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook. China has deployed J-11s to Woody Island on separate occasions recently. Fox News reported one deployment in late February, when Secretary of State John Kerry was hosting his Chinese counterpart in Washington. In November, Chinese state-run media showed photos of J-11s on Woody Island as well.

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How China’s fishermen are fighting a covert war in the South China Sea
April 12,`16 — In the disputed waters of the South China Sea, fishermen are the wild card.
China is using its vast fishing fleet as the advance guard to press its expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea, experts say. That is not only putting Beijing on a collision course with its Asian neighbors, but also introducing a degree of unpredictability that raises the risks of periodic crises. In the past few weeks, tensions have flared with Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam as Chinese fishermen, often backed up by coast guard vessels, have ventured far from their homeland and close to other nations’ coasts. They are just the latest conflicts in China’s long-running battle to expand its fishing grounds and simultaneously exert its maritime dominance. “The Chinese authorities consider fishermen and fishing vessels important tools in expanding China’s presence and the country’s claims in the disputed waters,” said Zhang Hongzhou, an expert at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. “Fishermen are increasingly at the front line of the South China Sea disputes,” Zhang said, “and fishing incidents could trigger even bigger diplomatic and security tensions between China and regional countries.”

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Here, in the fishing port of Tanmen in the southern island of Hainan, 50-year-old captain Chen Yuguo was in the wheelhouse of his trawler last week, carrying out minor repairs after a six-week fishing trip to the disputed Spratly Islands. A portrait of “Comrade” Mao Zedong hung in a place of honor behind him, alongside an expensive satellite navigation system supplied by the Chinese government. Chen said catches are much better in the Spratlys than in China’s depleted inshore waters, but the captain said he is also fulfilling his patriotic duty. “It is our water,” he said, “but if we don’t fish there, how can we claim it is our territory?”

Experts say the battle for fisheries resources, an often overlooked destabilizing influence in the South China Sea, is a source of unpredictability, volatility and risk. At the end of March, Malaysia’s maritime authorities spotted about 100 Chinese fishing boats, accompanied by a Chinese coast guard vessel, in its waters. They were close to Luconia Shoals, less than 100 nautical miles from Malaysian Borneo but 800 nautical miles from China’s southern island of Hainan. Early this month, Vietnam seized a Chinese ship that it said was supplying fuel to Chinese fishing boats in its waters.

The biggest flare-up came on March 20, when Indonesian officials boarded a Chinese fishing vessel close to Indonesia’s Natuna Islands . As an Indonesian vessel began towing the boat to shore, a Chinese coast guard ship intervened to ram the fishing boat, pushing it back into the South China Sea — until the Indonesians released the tow line.

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