Nick G.
Australia’s role as a subservient partner of US imperialism is on display once again.
According to notorious comprador journalist Greg Sheridan, Australia will despatch an RAAF plane to the South China Sea to the twelve nautical mile limit surrounding an island on which Chinese dredging activity is occurring.
This comes within weeks of the US sending a plane to engage in exactly the same provocative and irritating gesture. The plane was escorted from the area by Chinese jets.
Australia knows what the Chinese reaction will be - a repeat of the same reception accorded the US plane.
So it is simply an unnecessary provocation which will do nothing more than display to the world our inability to have an independent and peaceful foreign policy.
Australians would be rightly outraged if Chinese fighter planes repeatedly circled Christmas Island or Norfolk Island at the 12 nautical mile limit just to “test” our territorial claims to these islands which are as far – or further – from us than are the Nansha Islands from the Chinese mainland.
What is the background to the disputes in the South China Sea?
The South China Sea is a vast area in which neighbouring countries have competing claims to a series of islands and coral reefs.
The Western media frames the discussion around the disputes in terms of China’s “territorial ambitions”, its “aggressive expansion” and its “threats to its neighbours” and to “freedom of the seas”.
It is true that China has adopted a more assertive posture in the South China Sea than it had during the socialist era of Mao Zedong. This is in part explained by the post-Mao policy of engaging with the imperialist global economy and of having, as a recent White Paper on China’s Military Strategy put it, a need to protect and secure China’s global “development interests”.
However, it is also true that China has an historical claim to the islands of the South China Sea that predates its recent activities there. Chinese fishermen used the islands as a base two thousand years ago. In 200 AD, Chinese monks settled on the Nansha Islands (the Spratlys) and built a monastery. The Tang Dynasty included the Nansha Islands in its administrative map and the twelfth century Yuan Dynasty exercised control of the islands. However, the last Chinese dynasty, the Qing, was severely weakened by colonial expansion and the British, Germans and French all nibbled away at islands in the South China Seas.
Following Japan’s defeat in WW2, the Chiang Kai-shek Nationalist regime declared its sovereignty over the Nansha Islands, a sovereignty inherited by the Communists on their accession to power in 1949.
It is therefore somewhat disingenuous of the Western media to portray China’s activities in the Nansha Islands as evidence of recent territorial expansion.
The US “pivot” may cause it to overbalance
The US “pivot to Asia” is a direct interference in the affairs of our region. The previous Labor government was a cheerleader for the pivot and readily agreed to station US marines at Darwin and to facilitate further deployment of US forces to Australia. Not to be outdone, the Abbott government is doing the bidding of its US masters and agreeing to the “rotation” of US B-1 bombers through Tindal Air Base in the NT.
There is the danger for the US, however, that the pivot may cause it to overbalance. Its economy cannot sustain the ambition to exercise “full spectrum dominance” and is struggling to contain the growing economic power of the BRIC nations. It cannot simultaneously take on Russia in Europe and China in Asia. Until it decides which of its rivals to try and take out first, it will have to confine itself to encirclement and containment efforts short of full-scale war. It will flex its own muscles but also require its subordinates such as Australia to act on its behalf and at their cost – financially and politically.
Our interests lie in having an independent and peaceful foreign policy.
Australia must extricate itself from its “dangerous alliance” with US imperialism.
That means winning the political battle to exist as an independent and peaceful nation.
It means building ties of friendship, equality and mutual benefit with all nations and peoples.
It means opposing imperialist exploitation, interference, bullying and control of our people and our country by any other country, and assisting other peoples and nations to do the same.
In the case of the South China Sea disputes, it means supporting a peaceful resolution of disputes between neighbours.
It means telling the US imperialists to get the hell out of our region and not to pick fights with our neighbours and trading partners.
And it means telling our government, and our Labor and Coalition politicians, that we do not wish to be used as a cat’s paw to scratch at the face of China for the benefit of their US masters.
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Latest Chinese comment: http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/925069.shtml
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