Reuters reports:
Japan plans to dispatch its largest warship on a three-month tour through the South China Sea beginning in May, three sources said, in its biggest show of naval force in the region since World War Two. China claims almost all the disputed waters and its growing military presence has fueled concern in Japan and the West, with the United States holding regular air and naval patrols to ensure freedom of navigation.
The Izumo helicopter carrier, commissioned only two years ago, will make stops in Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka before joining the Malabar joint naval exercise with Indian and U.S. naval vessels in the Indian Ocean in July.
President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte said he may visit the warship. The Chinese navy plans to "shadow" foreign military vessels and aircraft. The U.S. is deploying an attack drone to South Korea to respond to recent North Korean missile launches.
Related Stories
China's devious move under cover of virus
As outbreaks debilitate the US navy, there are fears China may be using the coronavirus pandemic as cover for asserting control over the South China Sea.
A Vietnamese fishing boat has been rammed and sunk. Military aircraft have landed at its artificial-island fortresses. And large-scale naval exercises has let everyone know China's navy is still pushing the boundaries, hard.
Meanwhile, the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier strike group has retreated from the contested waterway in an unscheduled return to Guam – with hundreds of cases of COVID-19 on board.
China's Peoples Liberation Army knows this presents an opportunity.
"The outbreak of COVID-19 has significantly lowered the US Navy's warship deployment capability in the Asia-Pacific region," an article on its official website declares.
The website insists not a single one of its soldiers, sailors or pilots had contracted COVID-19. Instead, the crisis had served to strengthen the combat readiness and resolve of the Chinese military.
That has international affairs analysts worried that even a short-term withdrawal of US and international from the East and South China Seas could give Beijing the opportunity it has been waiting for.
"I think China is exploiting the US Navy's coronavirus challenges to improve its position in the South China Sea by giving the appearance it can and will operate there at will while the US is hamstrung," former Pacific Command Joint Intelligence Centre director Carl Schuster told CNN.
Previously:
(2020-01-09) China Initiates Conflict with Indonesia in the South China Sea
(2019-12-21) Malaysian Top Envoy: China's 'Nine-Dash Line' Claim 'Ridiculous'
(2019-11-22) US Warships Sail in Disputed South China Sea Amid Tensions
(2019-05-14) China Builds New Type 002 Mega Carrier as the Age of Sea Power Wanes
(2018-05-13) China Begins Sea Trials for its First Domestically Developed Aircraft Carrier
(2017-12-24) World's Largest Amphibious Plane in Production Takes Flight in China
(2017-05-25) US Warship Challenges China's Claims in South China Sea
(2017-04-26) China Launches Aircraft Carrier
(2017-03-14) Japan to Send its Biggest Warship to the South China Sea
(2017-01-13) Chinese State Media Boasts About its New Electronic Reconnaissance Ship
(2016-07-14) China's South China Sea Claims Rejected By "Binding" but Unenforceable Tribunal Ruling
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @08:27PM (13 children)
Someone should sink it. It's traditional.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday March 14 2017, @08:40PM (10 children)
The Japs are a determined fighting force of extraordinary magnitude, itching for Nanking 2.0.
If you thought the Okas were bad, wait until they get their suicide pilots behind explosives-laden 747s.
Never underestimate the craziness of the Japs. They wish to bring honor to their families and to their nation and its meatball flag. As I have said many times before, those men who have a fetish for oriental women have never befriended or even met one.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday March 14 2017, @09:18PM (1 child)
*Ohka
Yokosuka MXY7 Ohka
Apparently "Oka" is also a thing(s):
2B1 Oka, Soviet 420 mm self-propelled mortar
OTR-23 Oka, a theatre ballistic missile deployed by the Soviet Union
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @04:33PM
Yokosuka MXY7 Ohka
or 桜花 or おうか or Ouka, depending on how you like to write.
But yes, never おか. That would be something completely different.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by i286NiNJA on Tuesday March 14 2017, @09:48PM (7 children)
"Oriental women"
That's like something an 80 year old man says. Holy shit you're a dick dude.
My (asian) wife is probably the nicest person I've ever met.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Tuesday March 14 2017, @10:01PM (1 child)
Agreed. And same here: my Japanese girlfriend is also probably the nicest person I've ever met.
(Score: 1) by Atatsu on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:55PM
My ex-wife is Japanese. Crazy as fuck. She'd of rather stayed married, miserable, than to get divorced and admit "defeat". Japan as a country is a fun place to visit, as a tourist, but I think their culture (or certain aspects of it at least) is disgusting.
At first I was impressed with how polite everyone always is. But can you imagine the toll that would actually take on a person? All polite all the time! Non-stop forced politeness regardless of how your day is going. Yuck.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @10:47PM (4 children)
Also agreed. Amusingly, the GP's racially bent rant has enough holes in it to sink a large Japanese warship. I get the grumpy old man thing*, but geeze, he'd have to have served in WWII for that screed to make any kind of sense.
* I want him off my lawn! :)
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday March 14 2017, @10:54PM (3 children)
He's acting. Eth is a professional (well, "professional") troll, and I doubt he believes even a tenth of the stuff he says. He does it for the attention and what I am reliably informed are referred to as "teh lulz." Is he a sick bastard? Kinda, but unlike several other people i can name, he probably remembers the first rule of drug dealing: "don't get high on your own supply."
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday March 14 2017, @11:33PM (1 child)
"Asian" has a different meaning to different countries. I wanted to make it clear here that I meant squinty-eyes rather than durka-durkas.
But "oriental" isn't offensive at all. Sure, I'll give them "Nip" or even "Chinaman" as a concession, but no way is "oriental" offensive.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday March 15 2017, @03:54AM
Yes, yes, that's a good...er...well, a functioning-as-usual Ethie. Go nap now, the grownups are talking.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday March 15 2017, @08:44PM
What is sad is this site is so damned full of puppies a good 90% of his bits fly right over their heads. I mean you call yourselves geeks and NOBODY got the Kentucky Fried Movie reference? Really? Sigh...look up " fighting force of extraordinary magnitude" on YouTube. Geez I bet the demographic here is so damned wet behind the ears their first Star Wars movie was the prequels!
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @09:51PM
B8.
Did I hit?
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Wednesday March 15 2017, @03:46AM
I'm guessing this is what the young people call a meme. Have you forgotten that time when "all capital ships of the Russian fleet in the Pacific were sunk" by the Japanese?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Gaaark on Tuesday March 14 2017, @08:27PM (17 children)
Does China care?
They'll just keep doing as they're doing, expanding islands and building bases in the area and ignoring all the sabre rattling. Expand, build, ignore.
It's going to take Japan or the US going and building a base on one of those islands as well: then see if China responds or not.
Non-Chinese forces need to force the issue, then see if China starts rattling sabres itself. Then diplomats might come in handy.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday March 14 2017, @08:44PM (10 children)
Rare-Earth metals.
When the Chinese get their grubby hands on all the world's rare-earth metals, they will have everyone by the balls. Meanwhile, America shut down their only rare-earth mine only to re-open it [gizmodo.com] fairly recently.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday March 14 2017, @08:56PM (4 children)
Simple solution (well, maybe not that simple):
Asteroid mining. You can probably find all kinds of rare-earth minerals in asteroids. We'd need to develop the infrastructure to prospect and capture them, and then mine them in orbit and transport the refined ores down to Earth. But if there's a lot of valuable minerals in a small number of asteroids, it could very well be worth it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:56AM (3 children)
" You can probably find all kinds of rare-earth minerals in asteroids."
Wouldn't those be rare-asteroid minerals? ;^)
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday March 15 2017, @03:21AM (2 children)
I know you're kidding, but they're called "rare earth" because they're rare (relatively, not really *that* rare, but compared to silicon, carbon, titanium, etc. they are) in the Earth's crust. That doesn't mean they're rare somewhere else. They might be extremely plentiful in certain asteroids, though I really don't know (and I doubt anyone else has a really good idea since we haven't done enough research on asteroids).
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Wednesday March 15 2017, @03:50AM
Cerium is as abundant (on Earth) as copper.
They are not especially rare, but they tend to occur together in nature and are difficult to separate from one another. However, because of their geochemical properties, rare earth elements are typically dispersed and not often found concentrated as rare earth minerals in economically exploitable ore deposits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @05:32AM
I know you're kidding, but they're called "rare earth" because they're rare (relatively, not really *that* rare, but compared to silicon, carbon, titanium, etc. they are) in the Earth's crust.
No. The "earth" part in "rare earth" does not come from the name of the planet Earth. Rather, they both take the word "earth" from its original meaning of "soil", "ground", etc. You can have earth, aka soil, on Earth, Mars, Mercury, asteroids, TRAPPIST-1 c, wherever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_%28chemistry%29 [wikipedia.org]
The chemical term earths was historically applied to certain chemical substances, once thought to be elements, and this name was borrowed from one of the four classical elements of Plato. "Earths" later turned out to be chemical compounds, albeit difficult to concentrate, such as rare earths and alkaline earths.
Earths are metallic oxides, and the corresponding metals were classified into the corresponding groups: rare earth metals and alkaline earth metals.
(The quoted text is the entire article. It must be the shortest Wikipedia article I've ever seen.)
I still laughed at the GP's joke, BTW :)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @09:29PM
The only reason China's the main exporter for those is that it's currently cheaper to have them do the mining, we have plenty of that stuff ourselves. 'Rare' in 'rare' earth is a misnomer, it doesn't mean that it's rare, just that it's rare as opposed to other kinds of dirt.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:19AM (2 children)
Rare-Earth minerals are not mined in the US due to the Thorium "problem". Essentially, it is regulated under the Nuclear non-proliferation treaty, so nobody wants to touch it.
THE THORIUM PROBLEM - Manufacturing & energy sector hobbled by thorium [youtube.com]
gordonmcdowell
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Wednesday March 15 2017, @05:56AM (1 child)
> [...] it is regulated under the Nuclear non-proliferation treaty [...]
I watched the first 12 minutes of your video, and didn't see that claim. Merely mining and purifying thorium ought not to be relevant to the NPT; loading it into nuclear reactors--as your video, predictably, urges us to do--is another matter. To make efficient use of thorium as a nuclear fuel requires breeder reactors and a reprocessing programme.
All reprocessing can present a proliferation concern, since it extracts weapons usable material from spent fuel.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor [wikipedia.org]
Under the NPT, unless I'm mistaken, such programmes may be undertaken in the pursuit of nuclear energy. The goal of the treaty is the elimination of nuclear weapons by lessening their spread to additional countries, with the countries that already have them dismantling their stock-piles (the latter is more often breached than observed).
With breeder reactors and reprocessing, one could also make use of 238U, which yields 239Pu, which in turn is easily separated and can be weaponised. The wastes from reprocessing are highly radioactive. The video says that thorium has a 12.5-billion-year half life; other sources say that the most common isotope has a half life of 14 billion years. Regardless, it's very long-lived, hence only mildly radioactive.
https://www.britannica.com/science/thorium [britannica.com]
That radioactivity seems like less of a problem than the potential problems associated with the proposed solution.
The video advocates increased mining of monazite, which also contains radium. Most of the radium would have to be disposed of, or a use found for it. Careless disposal of thorium, uranium and radium in the 1940s may have led to "higher-than-normal rates of cancer" in St. Louis. I'm sure we could do better today, were we to decide to.
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/24/us/mountain-of-nuclear-waste-splits-st-louis-and-suburbs-888.html [nytimes.com]
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday March 15 2017, @07:51AM
The political problems are discussed at 20:40 [youtube.com]
The video does not actually use my exact wording.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @10:12AM
"Rare-Earth metals" ... are NOT rare. News at 11.
stop panicking about things you don't understand.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 14 2017, @08:56PM (5 children)
I'm definitely more worried about Trump having an impulsive moment than about any of the others crossing a line they can't walk back.
I also wish they would stop calling the US meddling "freedom of navigation". Ships can go through the disputed waters without any problems. The only ones bumping heads are the fishing boats, and that's not something I want Trump to start a war over.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @09:05PM (4 children)
You say ships can go through, but this isn't real unless you do it. If you are afraid or otherwise inhibited, then you have accepted the territorial claim and no longer really dispute it. As best you're still whining.
We do this all around the world, except for a weird agreement with Canada. We did it with Libya, which had a far better claim than China, and ended up shooting down a couple planes. We do it with Malaysia and Indonesia, which especially benefits China.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 14 2017, @09:12PM (3 children)
The Chinese want the islands, and the exclusive fishing and mining rights around them.
I may have missed every single report that random cargo ships weren't allowed "freedom of navigation" nearby, but it doesn't fit the Chinese needs, so why would they bother?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @07:56PM
Military ships count too.
The other nearby countries would also like to own those fishing rights. Failing that, they'd like to share (international waters) or have an off-limits area that might serve as a breeding ground.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday March 15 2017, @11:29PM (1 child)
China doesn't just want the existing islands. China is building islands:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mischief_Reef [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiery_Cross_Reef [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday March 15 2017, @11:48PM
"Islands" was almost hyperbolic for what was mostly inhospitable rocks and reefs ...
To achieve proper fait accompli, and guarantee that any competing claim (or international judgement) wouldn't be easily enforced, the Chinese needed enough room for a bunch of military equipment, including airstrips to conduct patrols.
(Score: 4, Informative) by richtopia on Tuesday March 14 2017, @08:47PM (5 children)
FYI, this ship is a helicopter destroyer. This means no turrets like the destroyers of WWII, but rather it has surface to air missiles and point defense against anti-ship missiles. More importantly, it has 5 helicopter landing pads, useful for the primary role of anti-submarine warfare and the secondary role of disaster relief.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izumo-class_helicopter_destroyer [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Funny) by Dunbal on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:32AM (3 children)
Yeah, a 27,000 tonne destroyer (the same displacement as the USS Yorktown air craft carrier from WW2). It's not a destroyer. They just CALL it a destroyer to get around the limitations in their constitution. And this is not a 10MT thermonuclear warhead, it's a Peace Ambassador.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday March 15 2017, @03:23AM
The US does the same thing with the new Zumwalt destroyer. It's at least as big as a cruiser.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday March 15 2017, @04:27AM (1 child)
There's a photo of it floating around somewhere next to a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, they're the same size. It's a full-size aircraft carrier in all but name and the lack of a ski jump.
(Score: 3, Informative) by fnj on Wednesday March 15 2017, @05:53AM
Jeeze. It's not "the same size", either by mass or by dimensions. Not even close.
Izumo: 27,000 tons, 248x38 m
Nimitz: 106,000 tons, 333x77 m
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday March 15 2017, @04:10AM
That's what you think it is. They've actually refloated the the Yamato, outfitted it with FTL engines, and renamed it Uchū Senkan Yamato [wikia.com]. That'll certainly scare the Chinese back out of the West Philippine Sea.