March 9, 200917 yr At least the incident not is very "hot", the chinese no use real warships neither: The Pentagon identified the Chinese boats as a naval intelligence-gathering ship, a Bureau of Maritime Fisheries Patrol Vessel, a State Oceanographic Administration patrol vessel, and two small trawlers.
March 10, 200917 yr Sadly the last line of that story is the only one that really matters.... "While relations between Beijing and Washington are complex, any sense of military competitiveness is dwarfed by America's need for China to continue buying US debt to fund its huge and growing deficit, our correspondent adds. "
March 11, 200917 yr Interesting info here, from the FAS Strategic Security Blog: "The latest incident allegedly occurred in international waters only 75 miles south of a budding naval base near Yulin on Hainan Island from where China has started operating new nuclear attack and ballistic missile submarines. ... Among Chinese submarines the USNS Impeccable was monitoring is probably the Shang-class (Type-093) nuclear-powered attack submarine, a new class China is building to replace the old Han-class, and which has recently been seen at the Yulin base. ... An earlier image from February 2008 showed a Jin-class (Type-094) ballistic missile submarine at the Hainan base for the first time. The Jin-class is not visible on the later image. China has been reducing its submarine fleet by replacing old boats with fewer modern ones. The submarines normally stay close to shore, but in 2008 sailed on 12 longer patrols – twice as many as in 2007."
March 11, 200917 yr From Navy Times Rising navy, assertiveness behind China flap By Christopher Bodeen - The Associated Press Posted : Wednesday Mar 11, 2009 16:42:05 EDT BEIJING — China’s weekend scrap with a U.S. Navy surveillance ship is drawing attention to a new submarine base that Beijing is using to strengthen its presence on the strategically vital South China Sea, which it claims as a whole. U.S. claims that the the Navy mapping ship Impeccable was operating legally when it was harassed by Chinese boats in international waters about 75 miles off China’s southern island province of Hainan. China’s foreign ministry has said the U.S. claim isn’t true. In Washington on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton emerged from a private meeting to say the countries agreed on the need to reduce tensions and avoid a repeat of the confrontation. But neither side yielded in their conflicting versions of events — indicating neither side was prepared to back down, even as they prepare for a much-anticipated first meeting between Hu and President Barack Obama at next month’s G20 summit in London. Defense Department officials say the Impeccable was on a mission to seek out threats such as submarines and was towing a sonar apparatus that scans and listens for subs, mines and torpedoes. With its numerous Chinese military installations, Hainan offers rich hunting for such surveillance. Of particular interest is the new submarine base near the resort city of Sanya that is home to the Chinese navy’s most sophisticated craft. Photographs of the base taken last year and posted on the Internet by the Federation of American Scientists show a submarine cave entrance and a pier, with a Chinese nuclear-powered Jin class sub docked there. While little else is known, its location on the South China Sea offers the People’s Liberation Army Navy access to crucial waterways through which much of the shipping bound for Japan and Northeast Asia must travel. High-seas encounters such as the Impeccable incident are likely to grow more common because China wants to assert its right to protect its secrets in the area, while the U.S. wants to gain as much knowledge as possible about China’s subs and the underwater terrain, according to maritime policy analyst Mark Valencia. “Thus such incidents are likely to be repeated and become more dangerous and they do not pertain to China and the U.S. alone,” Valencia wrote in an article posted Wednesday on the Web site of the Far Eastern Economic Review. China’s claim to the entire South China Sea and its hundreds of islands and reefs overlaps with those of a half-dozen other nations, leading to occasional clashes and standoffs. Increasingly, China’s rapid naval upgrade, exemplified by the Hainan base, is putting muscle behind its arguments. From Russia, China has purchased a dozen Kilo-class diesel submarines, Sovremmenny class destroyers and supersonic Sunburn and Sizzler anti-ship missiles. China’s own advanced Shang, Song and Yuan class submarines are being produced at a rapid tick, and there is increasing talk of an aircraft carrier being launched in coming years. President and Communist Party leader Hu Jintao, who also heads the commissions overseeing the armed forces, called on the military Wednesday to pick up the pace of modernization to “resolutely safeguard the country’s sovereignty, security and territorial integrity.” China’s territorial claims are sharpened still more by Beijing’s interpretation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. China sees the convention as giving it the right to ban a broad range of activities within its exclusive economic zone. That grates against the U.S. position that the Navy ships were in international waters and therefore have the right to conduct surveying. Those dueling claims also lay at the heart of the last major confrontation between the two militaries, a 2001 mid-air collision between a Chinese fighter jet and a U.S. spy plane in international air space south of Hainan. This time, Beijing appears to be pressing its stance even harder, citing both the U.N. convention and its own domestic laws and regulations. “The Chinese government always handles such activities strictly in accordance with these laws and regulations,” the Foreign Ministry’s Ma said in his statement.
March 12, 200917 yr Sadly the last line of that story is the only one that really matters.... "While relations between Beijing and Washington are complex, any sense of military competitiveness is dwarfed by America's need for China to continue buying US debt to fund its huge and growing deficit, our correspondent adds. " If our government wasn't busy driving their stretch limo's down the street throwing money out the windows at anything that moves (or doesn't) we wouldn't have that huge debt.
March 23, 200917 yr RAW video of the incident as provided by the Navy Visual News Service and available on YouTube: Video 1 Video 2 Video 3 Video 4 Video 5 Video 6 Video 7 Video 8
Create an account or sign in to comment