Normal for China to fight 27 neighbors

China aggresses 27 neighboring states. Beijing’s embassy in Manila claims that “it is only natural for neighbors to have differences.”

China’s disregard of neighbors’ rights under international laws cause those troubles.

China has built 11 dams on the Upper Mekong River within its borders. Those choke waterflow to downstream Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand. The last three formally have protested since 2018. Their rice, vegetables and fish farms are drying up. Mekong Delta harvests are dwindling.

In diverting river flow from neighbors, China violates the 1997 UN Convention on the Law of Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses. The treaty requires member-states to share and protect surface and groundwater. Harm must be avoided by diversion dams, pollution or input of alien fish species.

Under Article 7, countries that cause damage must compensate those that share the watercourse. Beijing has refused to recompense Southeast Asian farmers it has bankrupted.

China claims to own the Mekong, one of five great rivers that spring from Tibetan lakes. Its claim is as false as its reference to Tibet as a province. Tibet was an independent kingdom until Communist China annexed it in 1950. In the process it disturbed its border with Nepal.

More Chinese dams choke river flow to India, Bhutan and Pakistan. A 1962 China-India border war ended with a status quo agreement. But Chinese army incursions up to ten miles into India in the past two years have led to unarmed yet deadly skirmishes.

China continues to grab territory from tiny Bhutan. In 2020 it laid claim to a wildlife sanctuary in Central Bhutan far from their borders. China victimizes Pakistan with opaque loans, including one that onerously guarantees Chinese power plants 34 percent profit.

Despite truce terms from their 1969 border war, China continues to poach in Russian seas. Disputes rage as China desires expansion of inner Mongolia as a province grabbed from its northern neighbor in 1949. China’s suppression of Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang upsets Islamic neighbors Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

Chinese fishers trespass Korea and Japan waters. Beijing baselessly claims Japan’s Senkaku isles and Okinawa. It threatens to retake independent Taiwan as a “renegade province.”

China claims the entire South China Sea via a “nine-dash line.” The concocted border violates the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. UNCLOS grants each coastal state a 200-mile exclusive economic zone. But Beijing encompasses the EEZs of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Vietnam.

Beijing has grabbed 25 reefs and isles from those countries. Nine are from the Philippines: Kagitingan (Fiery Cross), Zamora (Subi), McKennan (Hughes), Calderon (Cuarteron), Mabini (Johnson South), Burgos (Gaven), Panganiban (Mischief), Panatag (Scarborough), Sandy Cay.

Two weeks ago, Chinese maritime militia trawlers swarmed Del Pilar (Iroquois) and Escoda (Sabina) Shoals near Palawan. It was a repeat of its 2020 blockade of Julian Felipe (Whitsun) Reef in Pagkakaisa (Union) Bank. Chinese warships prevent Philippine exploration vessels gas drilling in Recto (Reed) Bank. All those are within the 200-mile EEZ, West Philippine Sea but 650 miles distant from China.

China boycotted Australian mutton, wine and other exports in 2020 when the latter sought a UN inquiry on how SARS-COV2 broke out in Wuhan. China’s payola through its businessmen to three New Zealand political parties has sparked controversy. Chinese trawlers poach in Papua New Guinea and tiny Palau.

China bothers even non-neighbors. Consisting of 3,500 trawlers, its distant-water fleet engage in illegal, unreported, unregulated fishing in Ecuador across the Pacific. Costa Rica and Peru coast guards had to come to the rescue when 600 Chinese trawlers trespassed Ecuador’s Galapagos EEZ in 2020.

Chinese fleets overfish in West Africa’s Atlantic Ocean. Artisanal fishermen’s protest remain unheeded in Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal and Sierra Leone. While poaching, Chinese trawlers shut off automatic identification systems to avoid satellite detection, in breach of international rules.

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