21st-Century Chinese "Cabbage" Warfare: Fake Maps And Water Cannon Supporting Military Threat

Austin Bay on Apr 3, 2024

Seizing Tibet, however, soured Indian and Chinese political relations and led to the 1962 Sino-Indian War, which China started and won.

That war is not officially over. An iffy, mountainous 3,500-kilometer ceasefire line, the Line of Actual Control, separates the two nuclear powers. In 2020, the Chinese and Indian armies clashed. Blood spilled.

Beijing thinks the name game is a valuable weapon in its frozen war with India. Repetitive falsehood creates a media narrative promoting Chinese claims, which Beijing's diplomats cite at the United Nations.

Beijing employs a famous fake map in its war to seize the South China Sea and Taiwan, the nine-dash line map.

China's 2012 nine-dash line map is a cartographic crime Beijing uses to claim 85% of the SCS's 2.2 million square miles. The nine-dash line encroaches on territory belonging to the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei. In 2016, the Hague's arbitration tribunal supported the Filipino accusation that China had stolen Filipino territory and sea resources. The tribunal relied heavily on the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which China signed.

UNCLOS codified the geophysical conditions and legal precedents establishing sovereign control of territorial waters and sovereign rights in maritime exclusive economic zones. It is an example of practical, peace-promoting diplomacy.

The tribunal ruled Beijing had illegally seized islets in the Spratly archipelago, constructed artificial islands on reefs inside long-recognized Filipino territory and conducted illegal fishing operations.

Lawless Beijing ignored the verdict -- and still does.

In 2023, Beijing added a very dangerous 10th dash. Dash-10 scars the Pacific Ocean east of Taiwan -- meaning Taiwan is mainland Chinese territory.

Day after day, Chinese aircraft probe Taiwan's airspace. On the Filipino front in spring 2024: Chinese troops occupy islets in Filipino territory as Chinese coast guard ships turn powerful water cannon on Filipino supply vessels.

The so-called cabbage strategy guides Beijing's gambits on all fronts. In May 2013, a Chinese general boasted China would eventually secure its South China Sea claims by wrapping them with coast guard ships, construction barges, fishing boats and military garrisons akin to protective cabbage leaves. Fake maps forward the strategy.

========

To find out more about Austin Bay and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

----