China sending a message to Obama?
Five Chinese ships harassed a U.S. Navy surveillance ship over the weekend off the southern Chinese island of Hainan, where the Chinese have a major submarine base. The USS Impeccable was towing sophisticated sonar monitors, trying to pick up the signature of the Chinese subs, and the Chinese ships were apparently trying to snag some of those devices.
According to the Christian Science Monitor, “Sunday’s incident came after a week of what the Pentagon statement called ‘increasingly aggressive conduct by Chinese vessels’ aimed at the Impeccable and a sister ship, including low-altitude flybys by Chinese maritime surveillance planes.”
There seems to be a pattern here. On April 1, 2001, just a few months into the Bush administration, Chinese jets harassed an American EP-1 spy plane flying near Hainan Island. One jet collided with the U.S. plane; the Chinese pilot was killed and the badly damaged EP-1 was forced to land at Hainan Island. The 24 American crew members were held there by the Chinese for 11 days, and the plane wasn’t returned for months.
With this incident just a couple of months into the Obama administration, the Chinese again seem to sending a message.
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134 comments Add your comment
G
March 10th, 2009
11:45 am
I’m sure President Obama will respond in the best way for our country.
RW-(the original)
March 10th, 2009
11:47 am
With this incident just a couple of months into the Obama administration, the Chinese again seem to sending a message
DB,
Are you going to use your petty “Is our children learning” on that sentence from Jay B?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In other news I’m sure there’s a poll that shows 83% of the respondents say Obama is doing a bang up job handling Impeccablegate and we’ll have that poll thrown in our faces by 3:00.
Copyleft
March 10th, 2009
11:47 am
Here’s hoping he ignores the discredited neoconservative advisors that are probably still floating around Washington somewhere….
BDAtlanta
March 10th, 2009
11:49 am
Message:
“Buy more of our plastic junk for your McMansions”
BDAtlanta
March 10th, 2009
11:52 am
Hey, I have an idea: Let’s start another war AND lower taxes at the same time!
DB, Gwinnettian
March 10th, 2009
11:54 am
RW, sure.
The moment he issues forth something as imbecilic as, oh, say… The bigger issue is what has Obama done since he took over, along with Queen Pelosi. He has issued the most anti-business agenda in our history in the midst of what was already a global crisis.
ByteMe
March 10th, 2009
11:59 am
You remember Biden’s prescient — but politically stupid — remark about Obama being “tested” in the first few months. China just handed out their test. Multiple choice, 1 question.
Russia’s test was a bit more varied than this, concerning anti-missle batteries in Eastern Europe, getting us kicked out of Kyrgyzstan, and cutting off Europe’s supply of natural gas.
All in a day’s work at a job no sane person could possibly want.
RW-(the original)
March 10th, 2009
12:00 pm
DB,
That was pure subterfuge on your part. You know full well you took a cheap shot at someone downstairs simply for poor wording of a sentence just like the one Jay gave us here.
"The Corporal"
March 10th, 2009
12:02 pm
Yes, China has sent a message and so has North Korea, and Iran, and Iraq and there will be others to follow …………..
I’m holding my breath that the “Commander in Chief” will “have the right stuff”.
’sic vis pacum, para bellum’
Joe Matarotz
March 10th, 2009
12:07 pm
Jay, what do the polls say? Let me guess. 64% say they’re Bush’s Chinese and Obama inherited them. 8% say they’re Obama’s Chinese. 24% think the Chinese are acting under their own volition. And 4% blame Rush, even though he doesn’t know where China is.
"The Corporal"
March 10th, 2009
12:09 pm
P.S.
I meant “your” Commander in Chief.
getalife
March 10th, 2009
12:14 pm
Citi turns profit in Jan. and Feb.
Crisis over.
The ones that wanted him to fail lose.
The Chinese mooned them.
Just having a little fun.
Earl
March 10th, 2009
12:14 pm
I don’t trust a poll taken on MARTA bus.
Taxpayer
March 10th, 2009
12:20 pm
The President has the right stuff all right. He’s gonna give “The Corporal” a cowboy hat and a free ride on an H-bomb from 50,000 ft. YEE HAWwwwwwwwwww!
I Report/ You Whine
March 10th, 2009
12:23 pm
The Chinese moving ahead with building an aircraft carrier is the real message.
They know that OneTerm is a chump and won’t come to Taiwan’s rescue.
Mrs. Godzilla
March 10th, 2009
12:28 pm
All it takes is a little saber rattlin’ to scare some folks.
Chill. Obama’s got this.
ByteMe
March 10th, 2009
12:33 pm
getalife: “crisis” is soooo not over. Citi turned an “operating profit” which in business terms means that if you ignore all the assets that are further being devalued, they’re just fine.
Except the rules are that you can’t ignore devalued assets for long without an infusion of capital. Citi and BoA are zombies at this point; no one has told them they are dead and the government has shoved a 2-by-4 up their collective arses to keep them upright.
On the other hand, up markets like today are an excellent day to buy puts on C and BAC.
Bosch
March 10th, 2009
12:33 pm
Let’s just hope that message isn’t: Loan time is up! Give us back our money pronto……or………… [insert catastrophe of your choice here].
Bosch
March 10th, 2009
12:35 pm
Corporal,
Your Commander in Chief?
When did you change your citizenship? I thought you were an American. Oh well, too bad for you.
CommunistAJC
March 10th, 2009
12:38 pm
Bosch,
yes, that is exactly what is going on. China owns America thanks to Bush and Clinton, democrats and republicans. It’s time to pay up.
CommunistAJC
March 10th, 2009
12:38 pm
Mrs. Godzilla,
Obama’s got this? What’s he got, Mrs. Godzilla?
RW-(the original)
March 10th, 2009
12:40 pm
Bosch,
I’m not sure what the Corporal meant, but Obama is the President of all the citizens of the US, not the Commander in Chief. That’s just of the armed forces.
Later!
williebkind
March 10th, 2009
12:40 pm
Will King Obama sign the 400plus billion package that Prime Mistress Pelosi wrote or will the King veto it? I know the lock-in-step liberal senators and a few liberals labeling themselves as republicans will vote for it. Well, Obama lied, Obama lied!
Bosch
March 10th, 2009
12:41 pm
Commie,
For once I agree with you – that pretty much sucks huh? Not that I agree with you, but let’s just hope China isn’t coming to collect. That would be very, very bad.
Bosch
March 10th, 2009
12:43 pm
Commie,
Okay that 12:41 didn’t come out right. I don’t think it sucks that we agree with one another. I think it sucks that there is the possibility that China has come to collect.
DB, Gwinnettian
March 10th, 2009
12:49 pm
“You know full well you took a cheap shot at someone downstairs ”
…and so you’re dragging this teeny-tiny shot from a dead thread into this thread, why?
Bosch
March 10th, 2009
12:50 pm
I’m about to go out for a bit, but I’d like to post a line from a song that makes me laugh – Teen Angst by Cracker:
“What the world needs now, is a new kind of tension, ’cause the old one just bores me to death.”
Discuss.
DB, Gwinnettian
March 10th, 2009
12:53 pm
Bosch @ 12.50, I know that tune. and I know the third buzzcocks’ lp was entitled “A different kind of tension,” and I thought maybe Cracker was paying sly homage to it. I’d like to think so anyway.
Taxpayer
March 10th, 2009
12:54 pm
Bosch,
My daughter is the typical teenager in that she is “always” bored but I’ve never heard her yearn for a new kind of tension.
Hillbilly Deluxe
March 10th, 2009
12:55 pm
They’re probing to access strength. If they perceive a weak reaction they will probe further. It’s an age old strategy.
CommunistAJC
March 10th, 2009
12:58 pm
Bosch,
no, what sucks is our two political parties have forgotten what ingenuity means. What built this country was hard work, smart people and ideas. Money has RUINED life in this country. Kids coming out of college expect be making what their parents make. Athletes crying that they only make 55 million per year while cheating to get there. Credit Card use has ruined people. China is only doing what any country would do. They have bought up all our debt and sooner or later they will come to collect. How does the mob collect money? Well, if you don’t pay them they break your kneecap or simply kill you. Either way we are screwed.
DB, Gwinnettian
March 10th, 2009
1:00 pm
HD @ 12.55, if you meant “assess” then, per usual, you make a lot of sense.
AmVet
March 10th, 2009
1:01 pm
Hey, but BushCo decided they were worthy of extending their most favored nation status!
BTW as a devout hopelessly backslidden Christian, born of a Jew, quasi-Hindu new age philosopher, I think the Christian Science Monitor does exceptionally good work…
GodHatesTrash, Superstar
March 10th, 2009
1:01 pm
I know quite a bit about our surveillance technology from my work with that northern Virginia information gathering and competetive analysis firm that I work(ed) with, and that spy plane was state of the art. It should have never fallen into enemy hands.
Like the Plame incident, an example of the Dumbya’s administration poor handling of classified material.
GodHatesTrash, Superstar
March 10th, 2009
1:04 pm
Osama and Saddam both played a game of “Rope a Dope” with Dumbya, which was easy to do. Obama isn’t as dumb as Dumbya.
Nobody is, except for Sarah Palin, maybe.
thecitizen
March 10th, 2009
1:08 pm
Borrowing trillions from the chinese dont help.
CommunistAJC
March 10th, 2009
1:11 pm
GodHatesTrash, Superstar aka Jeffery Dahmer,
you may want to include Bubba Clinton in this category. He did sell US secrets to the Chinese. OH wait that’s right, in your feeble mind only Bush is an idiot.
Phillips
March 10th, 2009
1:12 pm
If no ship was sunk, then who cares?
AmVet
March 10th, 2009
1:18 pm
Not content to damn near ruin the greatest nation in the history of mankind, King George IV was reviled from one end of the planet to the other:
“Bush was a horrible global statesman. Bill Clinton filled that void. If you read Clinton’s book, Giving, you’d think it was written by Newt Gingrich. It’s all about the value of public/private partnerships, microfinance and entrepreneurship. These are things that any Republican would want.” ~ Christopher Ruddy, editor of Newsmax, whose 130,000 circulation eclipses political peers Weekly Standard (81,000) and New Republic (100,000).
Feng
March 10th, 2009
1:26 pm
Majority of articles i have seen on this suggest very little knowledge on this.
First of all, there was a spat because USN sent its quietest surface ships with one of the most advanced sonar to beside China’s newest submarine base to get accoustic signatures. This is connected to 2001’s EP-3 incident, because in that case, the plane was there to spy on the construction of the new Hainan naval base.
This kind of cat and mouse game happens all the time between major navies of the world. The question is why did they choose to release it to the media. It could be the navy trying to get more funding with the new administration coming in. It could be a lot of things.
As for the dispute itself, it comes down to really what each side views as the boundary of China. Clearly at this point, there is no agreement as such. If you ever look at the Chinese map, you’d see that they claim the entire South China Sea as part of their territory. And then there is the issue of EEZ and the ship was definitely in the EEZ, but uS never ratified that treaty. So, clearly the two sides have different definition of what international law are in this case. In their own eyes, they are both right.
Dad
March 10th, 2009
1:27 pm
Please fertilize the lawn and help your mother with the dishes when you get home.
Love,
Dad
Pat
March 10th, 2009
1:31 pm
The fact is, it doesn’t matter if a hard-A rightwing warmongering moron was President (Bush), a thoughtful, negotiation-inclined peacenik (Carter), or somewhere in between (my take on Obama) Facts are facts. The ugly truth is, the Chinese own our butts, and they want to be sure we remember that fact, even if a new Prez is in place and his new Sec ‘O State wants to make little (whispered) distressed sounds about “human rights,” right after kissing their behinds. China owns us lock stock and barrel, and they enjoy putting us in our place every now and then – bent over, hands grasped around the ankles.
Khruschev may have bragged that the Soviet communists would “bury” us, but give the Chinese credit – their smarts were such that they figured out they didn’t have to.
Eventually, our own greed would tempt us to give away the store in exchange for the chance to tap their vast markets, harnessing the power of capitalism to enrich them, while our amoral values would turn a blind eye to brutality as long as there was a buck to be made. They let us destroy our own manufacturing base and turn a country of trained industrial assemblers into low wage retail clerks peddling Chinese plastic crap. All that – and a Chinese population that allows them to shrug off a billion or more casualties in a war – puts us where we are today; firmly under China’s thumb, and not a damn thing we can do about it. As if we needed another reason to hate Nixon … but truth be told, if he hadn’t opened China’s Pandora’s Box, Reagan, Bush or even Clinton (especially Clinton!) would have.
Neighbor
March 10th, 2009
1:32 pm
Note to neighbor,
Dog fertilized lawn this morning.
CommunistAJC
March 10th, 2009
1:33 pm
Pat,
you’ve pretty much summed up our PREdicament.
test
March 10th, 2009
1:42 pm
and our forceful and respected reply to such “messages” — send Hilary….
CommunistAJC
March 10th, 2009
1:48 pm
test,
Yeah, Hillary sure is smart isn’t she. She is so smart that she just told a European audience that America’s democracy was older than Europe. Yep, that is sure one sharp woman.
Paul
March 10th, 2009
1:51 pm
Yeah, there’s a pattern. Just wondered how long the Chinese were going to take. Quite predictable in that regard.
Interesting, though – when they want to ‘test’ or make a play for respect, they resort to testosterone ‘mine’s bigger’ antics. Best thing the US Navy could do now is to take the videos of the Chinese in their underwear (they shucked their clothes after the Navy turned fire hoses on them) as they walked around their decks, speed up the video and add the Benny Hill music from the chase scenes at the end of the show.
Adolescent ridicule of a play for respect. Perfect for a country in which ’saving face’ means everything.
"The Corporal"
March 10th, 2009
1:52 pm
Can you say “Marines, standby to repel boarders” !!!
"The Corporal"
March 10th, 2009
1:57 pm
To Bosch:
RW is correct. Obama is my President (whether I like it or not) and the Commander in Chief of the armed forces of the Unites States (whether I like it or not) but he is NOT “my” Commander in Chief as I no longer fall under the military chain of commmand. So, he may or may not be yours (but I doubt he is yours) as your have probably never served beyond the cub scouts. But if you have ………. thank you for your service.
To Mrs. G. :
Now what dear ma’am do you know about saber rattlin’ ?
Taxpayer
March 10th, 2009
1:57 pm
Jay,
If I didn’t know better, I’d say that you just don’t want me pickin’ on some folks. I just be a pickin’ and a grinnin’.