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China's Island-Building In Pictures
An anonymous reader writes: The South China Sea is just small enough to have high strategic value for military operations and just large enough to make territorial claims difficult. For over a year now, the world has been aware that China is using its vast resources to try and change that. Instead of fighting for claims on existing islands or arguing about how far their sovereignty should extend, they simply decided to build new islands. "The islands are too small to support large military units but will enable sustained Chinese air and sea patrols of the area. The United States has reported spotting Chinese mobile artillery vehicles in the region, and the islands could allow China to exercise more control over fishing in the region." The NY Times has a fascinating piece showing clear satellite imagery of the new islands, illustrating how a fleet a dredgers have dumped enormous amounts of sand on top of existing reefs. "Several reefs have been destroyed outright to serve as a foundation for new islands, and the process also causes extensive damage to the surrounding marine ecosystem." We can also see clear evidence of airstrips, cement plants, and other structures as the islands become capable of supporting them.
Who cares why china is building islands and increasing instability in an already unstable area? Let's give them another Olympics!!!!
The NYT article didn't really explain this bit: "The Chinese were relative latecomers to island building in the Spratly archipelago" So this tactic isn't new or unique to China.
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They being the mainland Chinese?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
You get the 12 mile military and 200 mile fishing limits for your land per international law. However, this must be land above the water. You cannot find land under the surface, dump tons of dirt on it, and claim those rights, per same law.
This doesn't mean you can't create the islands, but you can't do the 12 mile/200 mile thing. China thinks it can.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Well, let's see...
That's from one quick search (obviously not needed for the Chernobyl item). And beyond those, the contrast in the level of pollution between democratic, capitalist West Germany and authoritarian, Marxist East Germany at the time of unification is well-documented, the subject of many studies and articles. It's about as close to a lab comparison as you could ask for.
Are there, and have there been, environmental problems in the free world? Certainly. But the idea that they're worse than in undemocratic countries is ludicrous, especially since the Marxist countries had their problems even with the benefit of hindsight, since most of them industrialized long after the free world had.
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
Do they erode fairly quickly, requiring continuous replenishment of their fill or can they build them with good long-term stability?
I don't think jingoism was something everyone else leaped to. The intent is clearly not scientific (although hopefully they took notes and let a few scientific observers watch).
Calling these things 'unsinkable aircraft carriers' shows just what a daft idea this is, militarily.
In a no-holds-barred fight, they have a HUGE bullseye painted on them, and will be easy to take out. The general idea of naval power is to project power, and being able to hide this capability in plain sight in a huge ocean is what makes a movable aircraft carrier a better idea. You wouldn't use one of these to fight an actual war.
Fixed fortifications are monuments to human stupidity. I could see this being like the Maginot Line or the Atlantic Wall.t
The only reason why they would do this, is so that they can call it sovereign territory, and to game international border rules to their own benefit.
That's what really worries me. Without prospects for marriage, what are billions of horny Chinamen going to do to vent their frustration?
Um, marry someone who is not Chinese? It already happens in Vietnam and Thailand. Some even marry white American girls after moving to the US [pauses for the sound of conservative Americans' heads exploding].
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Because the "west" never : ...
If you add up all the fatalities from all those "disasters", you get this number: 0.
The OP may have meant "nearing," instead of "past." One of the reasons we went through so many FAE weapons during Desert Storm is that they were close to their Best Use By date and it was cheaper to expend them in combat than pay to dispose of them.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
while Trump yammers about Mexico. I see so much about Trump in the news while this island building has been major activity for some time, all part of plan to "extend" territorial boundaries of China. Glad to know we got our priorities properly set.
mfwright@batnet.com
The funny point is that once you kill coral by dumping tons of sand on it, the island will not raise anymore with oceans. They are going to need a lot of sand to keep the island afloat.
I Googled and came up with this comparison of total radiation released:
Fukushima: 900 PBq
Chernobyl: 5,200 PBq
Also maximum radiation detected for Fukushima was 72.9 Sv/h, while for Chernobyl it was 300.
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
My suspicion is that China's island-building brinkmanship is intended simply to stoke the fires of nationalism while the Chinese economy teeters on the verge of collapse. What better way to mis-direct the discontent at home than perceived enemies abroad (us against the world or at least our nearby neighbors)? That or the Party is making the landgrab while it still.
That's what really worries me. Without prospects for marriage, what are billions of horny Chinamen going to do to vent their frustration?
Um, marry someone who is not Chinese? It already happens in Vietnam and Thailand. Some even marry white American girls after moving to the US [pauses for the sound of conservative Americans' heads exploding].
Why would conservative American heads explode?
You're right about Vietnam and Thailand though. Those countries are already exporting wives to Taiwan to the point where a huge fraction of recent marriages in Taiwan involve at least one foreigner. Once China becomes wealthy and that wealth is widely distributed (if they can make that happen) I'm sure they'll start importing women from southeast Asia. They'll likely increase their imports from Russia too.
As for Chinese marrying Americans - for some reason there seems to be a lot of racial preferences among American women that keep that from happening in large numbers. I remember reading a study that men are generally willing to date women of any race but that women tend to have a strong preference for marrying within their race - the big exception being women of Asian ancestry who are frequently willing to marry white men. So you tend to see a lot of AF/WM couples but very few WF/AM couples. But hopefully women will stop being so racially biased and we'll see more interracial marriages in the future. Perhaps as more Chinese men get rich while females will be more open to dating them.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Um, marry someone who is not Chinese? It already happens in Vietnam and Thailand. Some even marry white American girls after moving to the US [pauses for the sound of conservative Americans' heads exploding].
What kind of numbers are we talking? Will the world actually absorb 50M excess Chinese men?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Also, Fukushima is only rendering about 500sq miles uninhabitable for (currently optimistically estimated) 25 years while Chernobyl is about 900sq miles for over 25 years so far. It won't return to average radiation levels for over 20,000 years. You can live there now... if you don't want to have children and accept a higher risk of cancer. About 600 elderly live there now. The animals in the area have mutations, stillbirths, etc. But, those that survive handle the radiation better as time goes on and thrive from the lack of human predation and habitat destruction.
The Chernobyl radiation area 's sort of butterfly shaped tho and due to wind pattern there is a second 'wing' / exclusion area which is also uninhabitable of similar size- so about 1800sq miles total.
http://www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/...
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Is the west often bad? Yes. Were the communist nations consistently worse? Also yes.
Destruction of the environment is not a "democracy" thing. It's a human thing; "we need this now, we'll worry about consequences later". And it's worse when those responsible can hide it--which in turn is easier under a repressive government.
Japan being a high-tech nation with a much smaller land area, they're going to genetically engineer a bioconcentrator that will mop up the cesium in their exclusion zone long before the 25 years is up.
Nature points the way: http://pelagiaresearchlibrary....
Muslim countries let 25% of the population have 95% of the women. Not sure about numbers though.
I see a number of errors in your claim. Fukushima has the potential to be 25 to 30x radio-nucleotide release greater than Chernobyl.
1st item, the single Chernobyl reactor(Unit 4) while somewhat higher power output core, was ~1/2 of combined power rating of the melted Fukushima cores(unit's 1,2,3)
2nd) Chernobyl unit 4 was newly constructed, and it's core burntime was still in it's infancy.. (~2yrs), It may or may not have undergone it's first refueling swap-out (~1/3 of the core). Meanwhile Fukushima involved 30+ year old reactors(Unit's 1,2, and 3), with 3 fully mature cores, upwards of 5 years of burn-time per core near the start of the next refueling cycle (I.E. ~Worse case for radio-nucleotides) .
3rd, Fukushima is far from over. all indications point to a melt through below the plant, into an subterranean river flow, which will end up carrying the contents of those melted cores into the pacific ocean.
3rd) Iodine-131 is still being detected onsite. I.E. fission is still occurring, thus Fukushima is still of moving target. Note: At relatively low neutron flux levels indicate that the fission yield of I-131 will be maximized(~6x greater)
4th) Unlike fallout on land, where isotope mobility is somewhat limited, the Pacific ocean is far more efficient in respect towards bio-concentration of radio isotopes up the food chain.
Be prepared to write off the food chain for Northern Pacific ocean for the next hundred years or so. It's being subjected to equivalent fallout of ALL Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons ever detonated (worldwide 1945-1980) by just this one incident.
Watch Radioactive Wolves of Chernobyl. You may enjoy it. I even dug you out a link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Yes.
[citation needed]
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...now that they're lifting the one-child-per-family law, they're expecting a huge population explosion! They're also leveling mountains to create more city space: http://www.newser.com/story/18... http://www.newser.com/story/18...
They are NOT building new islands... Rather they are building military infrastructures on existing islands that are center of ownership disputes.
If you read asian news... You'd see that China singly declares ownership of lots of islands in this ocean region... single handedly announced 30 days of no-fishing for all countries around the area... which caused lots of people to starve because they don't have the ability to stand up against Chinese Navy.
They have now deployed military presence and airports all over the ocean region... US is challenging their airspace ownership by moving both Navy and AirForce patrol into the region. They repeatedly got asked by the Chinese to leave as it was their airspace, but US replied simply "This is international airspace".
I'd like to see the Chinese having a ball big enough to open fire first....