China and the Philippines - water cannon attacks

[Chojin]

It's pretty common knowledge that China claim a lot of the South China Sea but I hadn't realised how much things were heating up in that area. China actively being the bully in that area, probably thanks to all the other events in Eastern Europe and M.E. taking the attention away from them. It's not been getting much coverage in the West but Washington Post seem to be on top of it.

Most recent altercation:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/30/philippines-disputed-shoal-south-china-sea-scarborough/eaa25e88-06e9-11ef-b60b-a512fc749f9b_story.html

Another previous water cannon from onboard the Phillipines vessel demonstrating how powerful they are against the crew:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1772218052828188897

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/26/asias-next-war-could-be-triggered-by-rusting-warship-disputed-reef/

Map of the 9-dash line (now 10) shows how ridiculous China's territorial claim is.

It all seems rather messy and despite the 1951 U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty, China can get away with a lot before that is activated.

 

[Chojin]

China doesn’t want US getting involved in South China Sea anymore than they want them involved in the North Atlantic, basically. And so they claim it all, build artificial islands full of military hardware, runways, SAMs. As for the other countries….well.

China will be upset that the annual Balikatan drills are currently underway then, and even the French are involved showing their support.

thought the china europe railway was now taking a lot of trade away from sea and puts UK to shame;
Didn't really understand their $140b gold reserves announced this week, as being indicative that taiwan attack was more likely - currency protection ?

They use the gold to build up their petroyuan system so they can buy oil from Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia. Bypass sanctions, diminish the petrodollar system. Currently US has the "exorbitant privilege" of being able to print dollars but a competing power would want to remove that in the long term.

IIRC the Chinese navy at the moment is mainly "coastal", they have little capacity for deep water operations, and their aircraft carriers for example are currently not working out very well.

If they start messing around it won't just be the US ship builders, it'll likely be the South Koreans etc who have a vested interest in making sure the waterways stay open and clear.

The US lost an F35 in the South China Sea a couple of years ago - it would have been a disaster for them if China got to it first and were able to reverse engineer it.

 

[Chojin]

I had heard of these water cannons, but I didn't realise how devastating they could be. Surely it is an armed attack at this point.

I would have thought so yes - there have already been some injuries and the power of the cannons has the ability to kill.

Since land grabs are back in fashion it makes me wonder how much appetite there is for defending a shoal against China's might. It seems like the focus is on upgrading Philippine hardware - they are budgeting a $60 billion upgrade. Until then it's just the usual show of force that the US does sailing their fleet through the sea as a deterrent.

They already stole the plans via hacking.

Throwback Attack: Chinese hackers steal plans for the F-35 fighter in a supply chain heist - Industrial Cybersecurity Pulse

The similarity between China’s J-31 fighter and the U.S.’s F-35 is more than coincidental. China stole plans for the F-35 in a data breach.

www.industrialcybersecuritypulse.com

Main advantage they probably would have gotten (if they didn’t already have it) would have been the materials that make up the skin of the plane.

It's shocking but also not surprising that they got their hands on the plans. One of the reasons Iran is such a big player in drone technology is following the Iran–U.S. RQ-170 incident where they captured a US drone.

It's a pity that these incidents have allowed adversaries to close the gap.