Because the "Panda's" an aggressive bugger who's trying to eat every one that it can.
The Panda's also a bully
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China
- Thread starter Tigers of Old
- Start date
Because the "Panda's" an aggressive bugger who's trying to eat every one that it can.
The Panda's also a bully
Let's hope it the US Diplomats getting involved and Trump remains focus on the November election campaign
Morrison doing what Trump would've told him do last week.
PM and Trump discuss virus amid spikes
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has spoken to US President Donald Trump about the need to “reopen their economies safely” as the US recorded a spike of 70,000 new cases in a single day.
www.news.com.au
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This is exactly the kind of thinking that allowed Japan and Korea to kick our arses in complex manufacturing. China has already surpassed us in terms of high-tech and quality manufacturing.
Huawei 5G ban is as much about keeping the other manufacturers in the game as it is about the risk of a Chinese backdoor. Huawei 5G infra is not only better performing than all the other manufacturers, it's a lot cheaper too.
Huawei are already the Sony of Japan, Samsung of Korea. Won't be long before consumers around the world consider their kit alsongside the other two brands.
I feel we need to call them out as we are currently doing.
If they want alternative markets they can do it any time, we offer stability and continuity.
We are the best alternative for China.
Some would say we are too easy on them, ownership of farm land, ownership of "our" mineral resources, ports, swanky mansions in inner city Sydney and Melbourne. Our hospitals.
They know where their bread is buttered.
If they wanted to smack us hard they would have gone straight to the iron ore and bypassed the barley and a couple of meat processors. That would have stopped us in our tracks!
We aren't as smart as we like to,think we are (at least some of the time)
China’s ‘dark fleet’ now targeting Sea of Japan
James Seidel
news.com.au
July 29, 2020
It’s been a gruesome mystery for years: the wrecks of wooden boats crewed only by skeletons found adrift in the Sea of Japan.
But these ‘ghost ships’ have become a macabre spectre: More than 150 washed ashore last year alone. Some are split in half. Others are empty, but eerily intact. Some carry dead crews. A few hold steadfastly silent survivors. All were clearly North Korean.
Japanese authorities assumed the poverty-stricken fishers had sailed too far for too long in a desperate hunt for increasingly scarce fish. Or that they were defectors from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s authoritarian regime.
Now NBC News and a report by the University of Wollongong has exposed the presence of a vast, anonymous “Dark Fleet” operating in North Korean waters. And it’s been directly linked to Beijing.
UNDER THE RADAR
A study published in the journal Science Advances this week exposes a ‘Dark Fleet’ – fishing trawlers with their identity and location transponders turned off – operating in the Sea of Japan.
Like the South China Sea, it is a contested waterway. North Korea, South Korea, Russia and Japan disagree over who owns which patch of water. Which makes policing the area fraught with diplomatic risk.
But now the movements and identity of the ‘Dark Fleet’ is being illuminated by modern technology.
“By synthesising data from multiple satellite sensors, we created an unprecedented, robust picture of fishing activity in a notoriously opaque region,” says study co-author Jaeyoon Park.
“The scale of the fleet involved in this illegal fishing is about one-third the size of China’s entire distant water fishing fleet. It is the largest known case of illegal fishing perpetrated by vessels originating from one country operating in another nation’s waters.”
The trawlers were detected leaving Chinese harbours. They were tracked passing through the Korea Strait. They were identified operating in North Korean waters.
“The massive scale of this illegal operation poses substantial implications for fisheries governance and regional geopolitics. If the vessels are not approved by their flag State (China) and the coastal State (North Korea), then they are fishing illegally,” says University of Wollongong associate professor Quentin Hanich.
“This analysis represents the beginning of a new era in ocean management and transparency. Global fisheries have long been dominated by a culture of unnecessary confidentiality and concealment.”
But the NBC News team found aggression is also now part of that culture.
“Reporters for this article filmed 10 of these illegal Chinese fishing ships crossing into North Korean waters. However, the reporting team was forced to divert its course to avoid a collision after one of the Chinese fishing captains suddenly swerved toward the team’s boat,” The NBC report reads.
“Spotted at night and roughly 100 miles (160km) from shore, the Chinese squid ships would not respond to radio calls and were travelling with their transponders off.”
FIGHTING FOR FISH
It could be a sign of things to come.
In 2009, a swarm of trawlers encircled and harassed the USS Impeccable, a US survey ship.
In 2016, a South Korean Coast Guard cutter was rammed and sunk while attempting to expel a group of Chinese trawlers from its territorial waters.
In June last year, the crew of a Philippine fishing boat was abandoned to the sea after it was rammed and sunk by a Chinese trawler at night.
In June this year, a Chinese Coast Guard vessel rammed a Vietnamese fishing boat in the South China Sea’s Paracel Islands. A similar incident in April saw a Vietnamese ship sunk.
Beijing is increasingly asserting its unilateral territorial claim to almost the entirety of the East and South China seas. Earlier this year, that claim reached as far south as Indonesia – with a Chinese fishing fleet supported by navy-controlled coast guard vessels intruding on Natuna island.
And it’s ignoring international complaints.
In 2016, an arbitration tribunal for the law of the sea found Chinese vessels had been unlawfully blocking Filipino fishers from their traditional grounds at Scarborough Shoal.
The same tribunal accused the Chinese of destructive fishing methods, destroying the habitat of giant clams and vital coral reef spawning grounds. Many of the region’s most significant ecological habitats have been dredged up and buried under concrete to form Beijing’s illegal island fortresses.
Now, NBC News network says “famously aggressive, often armed” Chinese trawlers are muscling in on North Korean waters.
“Competition from the industrial Chinese trawlers is likely displacing the North Korean fishers, pushing them into neighbouring Russian waters,” researcher Jung-Sam Lee told NBC. They’re also trying to reach Japanese waters, with 2000 intercepted in 2017 alone.
And that means North Koreans are being forced further out to sea than ever before, often beyond the capabilities of their basic timber craft.
KILLER CATCH
Once in North Korean waters, the Illuminating Dark Fishing Fleets report says the Chinese trawlers show no regard for sustainable fishing practices.
Not only are they scaring North Koreans out of the fishing grounds, they’re stripping them bare.
And this has a direct link to the discovery of ‘ghost boats’ washing up on Japan’s beaches.
“Many fishing villages on North Korea’s eastern coast have now been coined ‘widows’ villages’,” the researchers write.
The ‘Dark Fleet’ is believed to have pulled 160,000 metric tons of squid from the region in just one 2018 fishing season.
And that has serious implications.
Pacific flying squid catches have collapsed by more than 80 per cent in South Korean and Japanese waters since 2003. This squid is one of the top five kinds of seafood eaten in Japan. It’s also South Korea’s most crucial ocean harvest. And it’s a vital staple for the diet of impoverished North Korean coastal towns.
Beijing denies it has any knowledge of the fleet’s origins or activities. But this strikes a discordant note among international analysts. China’s fishing fleets are tightly controlled. They are formed into ‘militias’ and co-ordinated by Communist Party political officers. They are required to work in close concert with the nation’s navy.
SHADOW NAVY
The Sea of Japan isn’t the only location ‘dark’ Chinese fishing fleets have been observed. A Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) report from 2019 similarly tracked trawlers’ going dark’ in the South China Sea.
“As they race to pull the last fish from the South China Sea, fishers stand at least as much chance of triggering a violent clash as do the region’s armed forces,” the report reads.
But it also identified a more ominous behaviour.
Many of the fishing boats are not fishing. They’re asserting control.
“A different kind of fishing fleet, one engaged in paramilitary work on behalf of the state rather than the commercial enterprise of fishing, has emerged as the largest force in the Spratlys,” the CSIS study finds.
“The activities of the militia are well-documented — they engage in patrol, surveillance, resupply, and other missions to bolster China’s presence in contested waters in the South and East China Seas. Beijing makes no secret of their existence, and some of the best-trained and best-equipped members engage in overt paramilitary activities such as the harassment of foreign vessels.”
These non-fishing trawlers usually congregate around contested reefs and over disputed fishing grounds. Their presence alone forces non-Chinese fishers to move on.
And the spate of recent collisions and ‘incidents’ in the South China Sea indicates they are getting more and more assertive.
Last year, the United States declared it was “aware” China’s fishing fleet was being used to assert territorial control. Then Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richards warned these trawlers could be considered naval auxiliaries because of the military nature of their training and operations.
“In the run-up to a conflict, the maritime militia may employ coercive tactics, such as ramming vessels to goad an adversary into striking back, while CCG and even PLAN forces wait over the horizon to rush to the scene and ‘teach a lesson’,” warns Professor James Kraska of the US Naval War College.
The alternative is a clear victory for Beijing.
“Failing to confront the (fishing militia) normalises Beijing’s presence and reach in other nations’ territorial seas and EEZs.”
James Seidel
news.com.au
July 29, 2020
It’s been a gruesome mystery for years: the wrecks of wooden boats crewed only by skeletons found adrift in the Sea of Japan.
But these ‘ghost ships’ have become a macabre spectre: More than 150 washed ashore last year alone. Some are split in half. Others are empty, but eerily intact. Some carry dead crews. A few hold steadfastly silent survivors. All were clearly North Korean.
Japanese authorities assumed the poverty-stricken fishers had sailed too far for too long in a desperate hunt for increasingly scarce fish. Or that they were defectors from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s authoritarian regime.
Now NBC News and a report by the University of Wollongong has exposed the presence of a vast, anonymous “Dark Fleet” operating in North Korean waters. And it’s been directly linked to Beijing.
UNDER THE RADAR
A study published in the journal Science Advances this week exposes a ‘Dark Fleet’ – fishing trawlers with their identity and location transponders turned off – operating in the Sea of Japan.
Like the South China Sea, it is a contested waterway. North Korea, South Korea, Russia and Japan disagree over who owns which patch of water. Which makes policing the area fraught with diplomatic risk.
But now the movements and identity of the ‘Dark Fleet’ is being illuminated by modern technology.
“By synthesising data from multiple satellite sensors, we created an unprecedented, robust picture of fishing activity in a notoriously opaque region,” says study co-author Jaeyoon Park.
“The scale of the fleet involved in this illegal fishing is about one-third the size of China’s entire distant water fishing fleet. It is the largest known case of illegal fishing perpetrated by vessels originating from one country operating in another nation’s waters.”
The trawlers were detected leaving Chinese harbours. They were tracked passing through the Korea Strait. They were identified operating in North Korean waters.
“The massive scale of this illegal operation poses substantial implications for fisheries governance and regional geopolitics. If the vessels are not approved by their flag State (China) and the coastal State (North Korea), then they are fishing illegally,” says University of Wollongong associate professor Quentin Hanich.
“This analysis represents the beginning of a new era in ocean management and transparency. Global fisheries have long been dominated by a culture of unnecessary confidentiality and concealment.”
But the NBC News team found aggression is also now part of that culture.
“Reporters for this article filmed 10 of these illegal Chinese fishing ships crossing into North Korean waters. However, the reporting team was forced to divert its course to avoid a collision after one of the Chinese fishing captains suddenly swerved toward the team’s boat,” The NBC report reads.
“Spotted at night and roughly 100 miles (160km) from shore, the Chinese squid ships would not respond to radio calls and were travelling with their transponders off.”
FIGHTING FOR FISH
It could be a sign of things to come.
In 2009, a swarm of trawlers encircled and harassed the USS Impeccable, a US survey ship.
In 2016, a South Korean Coast Guard cutter was rammed and sunk while attempting to expel a group of Chinese trawlers from its territorial waters.
In June last year, the crew of a Philippine fishing boat was abandoned to the sea after it was rammed and sunk by a Chinese trawler at night.
In June this year, a Chinese Coast Guard vessel rammed a Vietnamese fishing boat in the South China Sea’s Paracel Islands. A similar incident in April saw a Vietnamese ship sunk.
Beijing is increasingly asserting its unilateral territorial claim to almost the entirety of the East and South China seas. Earlier this year, that claim reached as far south as Indonesia – with a Chinese fishing fleet supported by navy-controlled coast guard vessels intruding on Natuna island.
And it’s ignoring international complaints.
In 2016, an arbitration tribunal for the law of the sea found Chinese vessels had been unlawfully blocking Filipino fishers from their traditional grounds at Scarborough Shoal.
The same tribunal accused the Chinese of destructive fishing methods, destroying the habitat of giant clams and vital coral reef spawning grounds. Many of the region’s most significant ecological habitats have been dredged up and buried under concrete to form Beijing’s illegal island fortresses.
Now, NBC News network says “famously aggressive, often armed” Chinese trawlers are muscling in on North Korean waters.
“Competition from the industrial Chinese trawlers is likely displacing the North Korean fishers, pushing them into neighbouring Russian waters,” researcher Jung-Sam Lee told NBC. They’re also trying to reach Japanese waters, with 2000 intercepted in 2017 alone.
And that means North Koreans are being forced further out to sea than ever before, often beyond the capabilities of their basic timber craft.
KILLER CATCH
Once in North Korean waters, the Illuminating Dark Fishing Fleets report says the Chinese trawlers show no regard for sustainable fishing practices.
Not only are they scaring North Koreans out of the fishing grounds, they’re stripping them bare.
And this has a direct link to the discovery of ‘ghost boats’ washing up on Japan’s beaches.
“Many fishing villages on North Korea’s eastern coast have now been coined ‘widows’ villages’,” the researchers write.
The ‘Dark Fleet’ is believed to have pulled 160,000 metric tons of squid from the region in just one 2018 fishing season.
And that has serious implications.
Pacific flying squid catches have collapsed by more than 80 per cent in South Korean and Japanese waters since 2003. This squid is one of the top five kinds of seafood eaten in Japan. It’s also South Korea’s most crucial ocean harvest. And it’s a vital staple for the diet of impoverished North Korean coastal towns.
Beijing denies it has any knowledge of the fleet’s origins or activities. But this strikes a discordant note among international analysts. China’s fishing fleets are tightly controlled. They are formed into ‘militias’ and co-ordinated by Communist Party political officers. They are required to work in close concert with the nation’s navy.
SHADOW NAVY
The Sea of Japan isn’t the only location ‘dark’ Chinese fishing fleets have been observed. A Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) report from 2019 similarly tracked trawlers’ going dark’ in the South China Sea.
“As they race to pull the last fish from the South China Sea, fishers stand at least as much chance of triggering a violent clash as do the region’s armed forces,” the report reads.
But it also identified a more ominous behaviour.
Many of the fishing boats are not fishing. They’re asserting control.
“A different kind of fishing fleet, one engaged in paramilitary work on behalf of the state rather than the commercial enterprise of fishing, has emerged as the largest force in the Spratlys,” the CSIS study finds.
“The activities of the militia are well-documented — they engage in patrol, surveillance, resupply, and other missions to bolster China’s presence in contested waters in the South and East China Seas. Beijing makes no secret of their existence, and some of the best-trained and best-equipped members engage in overt paramilitary activities such as the harassment of foreign vessels.”
These non-fishing trawlers usually congregate around contested reefs and over disputed fishing grounds. Their presence alone forces non-Chinese fishers to move on.
And the spate of recent collisions and ‘incidents’ in the South China Sea indicates they are getting more and more assertive.
Last year, the United States declared it was “aware” China’s fishing fleet was being used to assert territorial control. Then Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richards warned these trawlers could be considered naval auxiliaries because of the military nature of their training and operations.
“In the run-up to a conflict, the maritime militia may employ coercive tactics, such as ramming vessels to goad an adversary into striking back, while CCG and even PLAN forces wait over the horizon to rush to the scene and ‘teach a lesson’,” warns Professor James Kraska of the US Naval War College.
The alternative is a clear victory for Beijing.
“Failing to confront the (fishing militia) normalises Beijing’s presence and reach in other nations’ territorial seas and EEZs.”
I guess that's part of it but a lot has to do with economies of scale as well. It is very hard for a small country like Australia to compete with the likes of those countries that have massive populations and local markets.
Very true Rids. We can't compete on quality or price these days and market size is part of that.
It always amuses me when people say "stop buying chinese, buy Australian". We don't make most of this stuff, particular advanced manufacturing, and our goods will be of lower quality and likely much more expensive. Unfortunately people will tend to vote with their wallets whatever their stated political intentions.
It doesn't mean we can't be the clever country - renewables, and some areas of R&D/tech. A few years back I worked for a R&D company in Box Hill that was designing and making high tech medical devices for the North American market. These are expensive, highly specialised products that require cross-disciplinary approaches, and are not manufactured in huge numbers though.
Agree with that; I think we can focus on low volume, high tech specialised manufacturing and be very good at it. Renewables as well.
I am trying to consciously avoid Chinese products where I can. I didn't really have an issue pre-COVID but I am extremely pissed off at how the CCP acted at the start of the pandemic. I'm sure many will disagree but that's my stance.
I've always preferred Australian made, as long as the quality is reasonable, but you just can't get that much of it now. I'll now support goods manufactured in other countries ahead of China where I can.
I truly bemoan the death of the Australian car manufacturing industry. We weren't the best in the world at it but we were pretty good and the bang for the buck was quite good. Australian made cars were unfairly denigrated in my opinion. I've driven a lot of Australian made Fords, Holdens, Toyotas and Mitsubishis and rarely had an issue. But I like big, comfortable and powerful cars not buzz boxes. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons (many valid) the market has moved away from that type of vehicle.
I can't see any circumstance where I would buy a Chinese made car. Although there is no doubt that many of the parts that go into Japanese, South Korean, European and American cars are made in China
Yeah, not sure if the auto manufacturers could have held on now you have Korea making quality cars for a good price as well as Japan. I actually bought a 1st Great Wall diesel utility 4WD second hand a few years back when I was doing some travelling and camping, it was pretty gutless but OK, you really get what you pay for. I looked at the newer models and the quality was vastly improved in only a couple of years.
There are many reasons not buy Chinese if you can avoid it, I agree. People are still going to want cheap smart phones and flat screens though.
There are many reasons not buy Chinese if you can avoid it, I agree. People are still going to want cheap smart phones and flat screens though.
They own most of Africa and will be grooming it as its new resource bowl. Bottom line we need to diversify. We need them more than they need us currently. We also need a strong US with a united coalition that will properly discipline China and Russia for its indiscretions. Otherwise we're in licorice.
Agree, the current world is forcing our hands in a way but also showing the world that we do stand up for our beliefs. Others will follow and we will be alright because we are not the pricks.
I also like licorice, so a win win for me.
JOHN PILGER: Another Hiroshima is coming unless we stop it now
With racially-motivated aggression towards China escalating, it's important to reflect on history to avoid the catastrophe of nuclear war.
The Yanks are the good guys, remember.
Yep, dangerous, the US in the late 70s changed their strategic thinking about nuclear war (assuming the USSR as the enemy back then) from Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) to Nuclear Use Theory (NUTS) and it is a very dangerous strategic position.
Who knows what China's strategic thinking on this is.
Just as an aside, gotta love those acronyms!
DS
Who knows what China's strategic thinking on this is.
Just as an aside, gotta love those acronyms!
DS
