Japan frees crew of 'illegal' Chinese fishing boat

Japan has released the captain and crew of a Chinese fishing boat who were arrested last week on suspicion of illegally fishing in Japanese waters.

The 100-tonne boat with 13 crew members had been fishing for coral near Miyako island in the Okinawa chain.
They were about 150km (95 miles) from a group of islands at the centre of a dispute between Japan and China.

The crew were released on Sunday after the Chinese consulate paid their bail, China's Xinhua news agency reported.
Xinhua said the boat, the Qiong Yang Pu F8139, had set sail for China late on Sunday with all its crew on board.

Coast Guard official Yasuhiko Oku said the captain had admitted being inside Japan's exclusive economic zone when he was stopped on Saturday, the Associated Press reports.
The incident came amid high tensions between Japan and China over the disputed islands, known as the Senkaku in Japan, which controls them, and the Diaoyu in China.

The dispute over their ownership has been rumbling for years, but it reignited in 2012 when the Japanese government purchased three of the islands from their private Japanese owner.
Shortly before the Chinese crew were arrested, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had vowed to defend Japan against Chinese "provocation".

China-Japan : The drums of war

Hallucinating Chinese arm chair generals high on the polluted air of Beijing openly talking of war on TV talk shows

WATCH Chinese television these days and you might conclude that the outbreak of war with Japan over what it calls the Senkaku and China the Diaoyu islands is only a matter of time. You might well be right. Since Japan in September announced it would “nationalise” three of the islands that had been privately owned, China, which has long contested Japan’s sovereignty over them, has also started challenging its resolve to keep control of them. So both countries are claiming to own the islands and both are pretending to administer them. China this week announced its intention to map them thoroughly. Something has to give.

Since then China, too, has become more assertive over the islands. Already, in his speech to the Communist Party’s five-yearly congress in November, Hu Jintao, its outgoing leader, had declared China’s ambition to “build itself into a maritime power”, the first time this had been stated so explicitly. Nor is it clear that his successor, the less wooden Xi Jinping, who will be named president in March, shares his predecessors’ habitual caution in dealings with America. He will surely see no benefit in compromising with Japan, which is despised by many Chinese. And, with little or no military experience, he will want to appear a strong commander-in-chief.

It is against this backdrop that televised military punditry is booming in China. On current-affairs programmes, armchair warriors pontificate about the Diaoyus. Newspapers propagate a uniformly jingoistic analysis of the increasing likelihood of armed conflict.


They are not making it up. Last month a small aircraft of China’s State Oceanic Bureau flew into what Japan considers its territorial airspace over the Senkakus. Flying too low to be detected by Japan’s land-based radar, it was spotted too late for a scramble of eight F-15 fighter jets to prove effective. Since then, Japan has deployed Airborne Warning and Control Systems (AWACS). On January 7th Chinese patrol ships spent more than 13 hours near the islands—longer than ever before, said Japanese officials. On January 10th, when two Japanese F-15s scrambled to intercept a Chinese plane flying near the islands, China scrambled its own fighter jets.

Now the Japanese air force is weighing whether to fire warning shots if Chinese aircraft come into its airspace, for the first time since 1987, when the former Soviet Union intruded. For General Peng Guanqian of the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences, interviewed on a Chinese web portal, this would amount to the first shot of “actual combat”. China should then “respond without courtesy”, he said. The Japanese press reported that America had also warned Japan against firing shots.
A widely read, if shrill, Beijing newspaper, Global Times, has argued that Japan might not be deterred and “we need to prepare for the worst”. Japan, it said, had become the “vanguard” of an American strategy to “contain China”. The implication was that China should also be ready to take on America, which has made clear that its security treaty with Japan covers the disputed islets.

Satellites Spot China’s Mysterious New Warplane - Y 20 ?

Y-20 is almost the same as Boeing-made C-17, blueprints of which China obtained several years ago through a spy working for the Chicago-based plane manufacturer.

The Y-20 at Yanliang on Jan. 1. Photo: GeoEye GeoEye 1

Y-20 at Yanliang on Dec. 25. Photo: GeoEye IKONOS

Reverse Engineering and copying at its best. Why don't they copy democracy from other countries

China transfers 11 PLA Navy warships to marine surveillance

China has transferred two destroyers and nine other ex-navy vessels to its maritime surveillance fleet, reports said Monday, as it moves to beef up its position in bitter territorial rows with Japan and other neighbors.

Beijing renovated the ships and transferred them to surveillance operations to “alleviate the insufficiency of vessels used to protect maritime interests,” said a report on Tencent, one of China’s major news portals.

China is embroiled in a maritime dispute with Japan that has seen tensions between the two Asian giants, the world’s second- and third-largest economies, at times reach fever pitch.

It is also engaged in a simmering row with its southern neighbors over its claim to vast swathes of the South China Sea.

Beijing has been sending maritime patrol vessels into waters around the East China Sea islands — which it claims as the Diaoyu and which Japan controls and calls the Senkaku — since Tokyo nationalized the chain in September.

China is apparently seeking to prove it can come and go in the area at will and on Monday three of Beijing’s ships were spotted in the waters around the islands, according to Japan’s coastguard, in the latest perceived incursion.


Two of Beijing’s newly refurbished vessels are destroyers, with one each to operate in the East and South China Seas, with the others including tugs, icebreakers and survey ships, according to the Tencent report.

The destroyers, the Nanjing and Nanning, numbered 131 and 162 respectively, each had a displacement of 3,250 metric tons and had a top speed of 32 knots, according to sinodefence.com, an independent UK-based website.

It said that during their time in the navy they were equipped with 130mm guns with a range of 29 kilometers, anti-ship missiles and other weapons.

The Nanjing went into service in 1977 and the Nanning in 1979. Both retired this year from the Chinese navy, previous domestic media reports said.

It was not clear whether it was the first time the maritime surveillance fleet has acquired destroyers, or when the transfers took place.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment when asked about the destroyers at its regular briefing on Monday.

Officials at the Ministry of Defense and headquarters of the China Marine Surveillance were not immediately available to comment when contacted by AFP.

The transfer report was first published in the International Herald Leader, a Chinese-language newspaper linked to Beijing’s official news agency Xinhua, and the author said the operation had been given significantly more capacity.

“The maritime surveillance team’s power has been greatly strengthened and its capacity to execute missions sharply improved, providing a fundamental guarantee for completing the currently arduous task to protect maritime interests,” wrote Yu Zhirong, of the government’s Research Center for Chinese Marine Development.

Since 2000 the maritime surveillance fleet, which is tasked with “protecting China’s interests and executing law enforcement missions,” has also received a total of 13 new vessels, the report said.

Daily patrols have been stepped up from six vessels before the disputes heated up to “more than 10” Yu said, adding authorities planned to build another 36 surveillance ships by 2015.

A Chinese plane overflew the islands in the East China Sea earlier this month, in what Japan said was the first time Beijing had breached its airspace since at least 1958. Tokyo scrambled fighter jets in response.

Japan mulls spy drones for East China Sea

Moves come in response to a report that China has transferred two destroyers and nine other former navy vessels to its maritime surveillance fleet.

JAPAN is considering introducing US spy drones to boost surveillance of its territorial waters near islands in the East China Sea at the centre of a bitter dispute with Beijing, Kyodo News says.
The Japanese defence ministry hopes to introduce the unmanned Global Hawk aircraft by 2015 "in a bid to counter China's growing assertiveness at sea, especially when it comes to the Senkaku Islands", the news agency said, citing unnamed government officials.
Beijing has been sending maritime patrol vessels into waters around the Japanese-controlled islands, which China claims as Diaoyu, since Tokyo nationalised the chain in September.
China is apparently seeking to prove that it can come and go in the area at will, and on Monday three of Beijing's ships were spotted in the waters around the islands, according to Japan's coastguard, in the latest perceived incursion.

Chinese PLA determines to improve its work style

China's peaceful rise bluff is going to reveal itself shortly

To echo China’s new central leadership's call to improve work style, the Central Military Commission (CMC) of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the General Staff Headquarters (GSH) of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) issued regulations and notices successively, which shows the CMC’s determination to set an example in improving the PLA’s work style.

　　The regulations and notices were reduced by the public to prohibition on alcoholic drinks, control on vehicles and anti-corruption, etc. In the wake of which, the share price of Maotai fell accordingly. It seems that the public opinions have reached a common judgement that the CMC’s determination was real and serious this time. The regulations and notices show that improper practices indeed existed inside the PLA and the PLA was not a pure land free from corruption. Usually, the PLA was seldom supervised by China’s public opinion and always presented a positive image in the public, and all its problems were solved internally.

　　The CMC and the GSH of the PLA publicly required that the PLA’s work style should be improved and the PLA’s unhealthy tendencies should be exposed to the people of the whole country, which is another important progress of China’s political transparency and is widely greeted with sincere applause from the public.

　　Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the PLA has not only fought dauntlessly for China and its people, but also shared weal and woe with China’s reform and opening-up. As an organic component of the Chinese society, the PLA has shared China’s progress and honor. And in turn, the PLA has been inevitably influenced by numerous complicated factors of the society.

　　The PLA is competent on the whole, as evidenced by having shouldered its due responsibilities for the country and its people. So far, the PLA has never been defeated, for which it is very dignified strategically.

　　In the past 20-odd years, China has been in a state of relative peace, both the equipment and the comprehensive combat effectiveness of the PLA have been promoted rapidly. And with increasing deterrent force, the PLA has been supporting China’s international status as a great power and also China’s peaceful rise, in the form of remaining quietly dignified. How the PLA plays its role in China’s daily social life has been constantly adjusted since China’s reform and opening-up. The most typical example is that the PLA could conduct business, but afterwards got out of the business completely.

　　It is very difficult to build up the military in peacetime. The PLA should not only maintain fish-and-water relations with the people, but also keep special distance from the people and do what is incompatible with our daily life. Even in the future, the PLA will probably have its own style, including not being so highly reactive with public opinion as other industries.

　　However, the PLA should not be completely out of the social supervision. As to how to supervise the military, China needs to establish an innovative system which can not only protect the military’s independence as a special force but also ensure that the military will not become a “blind zone” of country’s supervision. In terms of code of ethics, the PLA should live up to the people’s expectations and stand high in the Chinese society.

　　Strict management is the only road for the development of the Chinese PLA. The requirements for the PLA will inevitably keep rising with increasing openness of the whole society of China. The combat effectiveness of the PLA also depends on the social understanding and support.

　　The PLA has over two million servicemen, and its overall image will be heavily influenced as long as an individual soldier has malpractice or a scandal is exposed to the society. With its comprehensive national strength ranking second worldwide, China has stood in the teeth of the storm, and its future strategic security environment will be probably complicated and confusing. The Chinese PLA has been playing an increasingly important role in safeguarding the interests of China and its people, and it is one of China’s most urgent issues to strengthen and better the military through strict management.