Tag: China

I wonder if the Chinese Communist Party will take credit for the fighting that the Nationalists primarily carried out fighting Japan during World War II?:

Seoul’s presidential office has officially announced that President Park Geun-hye will visit China from September 2 to 4 to attend Victory Day events marking the end of World War II.

Along with the main commemoration ceremony on Thursday next week, the South Korean president will also attend a military parade in Tiananmen Square, featuring 12-thousand troops and conventional and nuclear missiles.

Presidential Spokesman Min Kyung-wook told reporters Wednesday that Park decided to attend the event in consideration of South Korea’s friendly and cooperative ties with China, and its hope for the country’s role in the unification of the two Koreas.

A day ahead of the Victory Day celebration, President Park and Chinese President Xi Jinping will hold a summit. On the last day of her visit, Park will be in Shanghai to attend the reopening ceremony of the historic building where the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea was located during Japan’s colonial occupation of the Korean Peninsula.   [KBS World Radio]

The cause of China's deadly Tianjin blast wasn't just chemicals–it was also a lack of civil society.http://t.co/DXXosUPHRf

— Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) August 19, 2015

DURING MILITARY EXERCISES CHINA HAS SHOWN NEW ARMED RECONNAISSANCE VEHICLEhttp://t.co/bVHwCnHFnN pic.twitter.com/agancleB9X

— Defence Blog (@Defence_blog) August 4, 2015

'London-bound flight forced to land in Amsterdam after diverting around Chinese military exercises' http://t.co/fCnBvxJlYT

— Adam Cathcart (@adamcathcart) August 3, 2015

This would be real provocative towards India if China does in fact try and build islands in the Indian Ocean:

There are growing fears, particularly in India, that China may soon launch an island reclamation project in the Indian Ocean.

The fears stem from a constitutional amendment passed by the small archipelagic nation of Maldives last week, which for the first time allows foreign ownership of Maldives territory. Specifically, the constitutional amendment allows foreigners who invest over $1 billion to own land, provided that at least 70 percent of the land is reclaimed from the sea.

Since July 2013, China has launched a massive reclamation project in the South China Sea that has created 2,000 acres of artificial landmass in five Spratly island outposts. Some 75 percent of this been dredged this year alone.

Unnamed Indian officials have told local media outlets that they are “concerned” that China now plans to do the same in some of the Maldives’ 1,200 islands, which are located strategically in the Indian Ocean.

They are not alone; domestic opponents of the amendment have expressed similar concerns. For example, Eva Abdullah, one of just 14 parliamentarians to vote against the amendment, told The Diplomat “this will make the country a Chinese colony.”  [The National Interest]

You can read the rest at the link, but it seems it would easier for them just to continue to use bases in Pakistan instead of building their own island.

Excellent presentation https://t.co/r690eDLfpL & substantial paper on China-DPRK relations http://t.co/nEqox9ZlaY pic.twitter.com/qSCM6PnS88

— Adam Cathcart (@adamcathcart) July 23, 2015

It will be interesting to see what terms the Japanese government agrees to, but I would love to see South Korea makes the same demands of the Chinese government to apologize for their aggression during the Korean War and continued division of the peninsula:

Beijing has reportedly demanded the government and ruling party of Japan include the words “colonialism,” “aggression” and apology” in the so-called “Abe statement,” set to be released next month.

The Japanese daily Sankei Shimbun reported on Tuesday that Chinese foreign ministry officials are trying to persuade Japanese officials regarding Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s planned statement marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.

The newspaper said that Chinese officials are also demanding Tokyo inherit the apologetic Murayama statement that included the words “colonial rule,” “aggression,” “apology” and “remorse.”  [KBS World Radio]

I always figured the Chinese would just reduce their oil exports to North Korea to make them feel a little pain and show their displeasure with North Korea.  I never believed they would cut off the exports entirely because of the effect it would have on regime stability:

WASHINGTON, July 10 (Yonhap) — North Korea’s sole-operating oil refinery has been up and running despite a series of media reports that China halted crude exports to the impoverished communist neighbor amid strained relations last year, a U.S. expert said Friday.

Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., chief analytics officer of AllSource Analysis, said in a report carried by the website 38 North of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies that the North’s Ponghwa Chemical Factory would not have been running if Beijing had halted crude exports.

Bermudez cited satellite imagery showing the refinery operational.

“Numerous reports during 2014-2015 have stated that China, North Korea’s largest crude oil supplier, did not sell it crude oil during 2014, a development that would force North Korea’s single operating oil refinery into caretaker status,” Bermudez said in the report.

“Satellite imagery from 2014 and 2015, however, reveals that the facility has remained operational, though perhaps at somewhat lower levels than in the immediately preceding years, calling into question media reports of an oil cutoff from China,” he said.

Imagery indicates activity at the factory’s rail loading and unloading facility, and construction activity within the factory, such as the building and maintenance of storage tanks and additions to several buildings, provides another indication that the facility remained operational, the expert said.  [Yonhap]

You can read the rest at the link.

This NK News article makes a really good argument that the Chinese government has no creditability to complain about Japanese World War II historical revisionism when they themselves have made laughable historical revisionist claims about their involvement in the Korean War.  Here is an excerpt, but I recommend reading the whole thing:

Finally, there is a museum titled the “Commemorative Museum of the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid North Korea.” It has exhibits on how South Korea, in collusion with the United States, started the war, how the U.S. made use of germ warfare, and how American POWs held by the Chinese and North Koreans were treated humanely according to the Geneva Convention – including photos of a “Santa Claus” handing out care packages to POWs from the Red Cross. (This contrasts sharply to the reports of POWs repatriated after the war concerning their brutal and inhumane treatment, as documented in U.S. Senate Report No. 848, 83^rd Congress, Second Session – Korean War Atrocities.)

Xi Jinping, in his 2010 speech, repeated the dubious claim presented at the museum of the use of germ warfare by U.S forces when he said: “Thereafter, the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army constructed an impregnable defense bastion and crushed the enemy’s multiple attacks and their germ warfare.”

In conclusion, the assertion by Xi Jinping in his 2010 remarks that Harry Truman started the Korean War is directly contradicted by the Yeltsin documents. It is thus as controversial as the claim of non-coercion of Comfort Women made in the past by Japanese Prime Minister Abe. Yet, while Abe’s intemperate remarks have caused criticism throughout South Korean society, there is almost no public outcry over Xi’s condemnation of the American president. Yet Truman was one of the leaders of the UN coalition which laid the groundwork for a viable and independent South Korean state.  [NK News]

Read the rest at the link.

This file photo, taken during the 1950-53 Korean War and obtained on June 23, 2015, from the Beijing-based International Committee of the Red Cross Regional Delegation for East Asia, shows a South Korean soldier giving a cigarette to a Chinese prisoner of war at a prison camp on the southeastern island of Geoje. This and other rare photos, which Red Cross officials and U.S. soldiers took during the three-year conflict, give a glimpse at how the inter-Korean war drove people into terrible situations, on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the start of the war, which falls on June 25. (Yonhap)

You can see pictures of the Geoje POW Camp today at the below link:

• Places in Korea: The Geoje POW Camp

You can read my prior posting about the POW camp during the Korean War at the below link:

• Heroes of the Korean War: Brigadier General Haydon Boatner