Trojan War
'China should take more Philippine territory'
NEW YORK – Surround a disputed area with all types of ships, enclose it like a cabbage and hold on to it.
That’s the so-called cabbage strategy that China is employing to stake its maritime territorial claims, and a ranking Chinese military officer says his country should take more disputed territory from the Philippines, The New York Times Magazine has reported.
Quoting Maj. Gen. Zhang Zhaozhong of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the Sunday magazine cover article said China began taking measures “to seal and control” areas around Panatag or Scarborough Shoal, which the Chinese call the Huangyan Islands, following a standoff with the Philippines last year.
The magazine article, quoting Zhang, reported that the cabbage strategy involved “surrounding a contested area with so many boats – fishermen, fishing administration ships, marine surveillance ships, navy warships.” The island “is thus wrapped layer by layer like a cabbage,” Zhang reportedly said in a television interview given in May.
In the story entitled “A Sea of Trouble,” with the second heading “A Game of Shark and Minnow,” the NYT described the old, rusting Sierra Madre ship that the Philippine government ran aground on Ayungin Shoal in 1999 as an unlikely battleground in a geopolitical struggle that will shape the future of the South China Sea and, to some extent, the rest of the world.
The magazine said it was hard to imagine how anyone could live in the Sierra Madre or how such a forsaken place could become a flash point in a geopolitical power struggle.
“There is no question” that the cabbage strategy is now being employed in Ayungin, called Ren’ai Shoal by the Chinese, the NYT reported.
Commenting on taking territory from the Philippines, the NYT quoted Zhang as saying, “We should do more such things in the future. For those small islands, only a few troopers are able to station on each of them, but there is no food or even drinking water
NEW YORK – Surround a disputed area with all types of ships, enclose it like a cabbage and hold on to it.
That’s the so-called cabbage strategy that China is employing to stake its maritime territorial claims, and a ranking Chinese military officer says his country should take more disputed territory from the Philippines, The New York Times Magazine has reported.
Quoting Maj. Gen. Zhang Zhaozhong of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the Sunday magazine cover article said China began taking measures “to seal and control” areas around Panatag or Scarborough Shoal, which the Chinese call the Huangyan Islands, following a standoff with the Philippines last year.
The magazine article, quoting Zhang, reported that the cabbage strategy involved “surrounding a contested area with so many boats – fishermen, fishing administration ships, marine surveillance ships, navy warships.” The island “is thus wrapped layer by layer like a cabbage,” Zhang reportedly said in a television interview given in May.
In the story entitled “A Sea of Trouble,” with the second heading “A Game of Shark and Minnow,” the NYT described the old, rusting Sierra Madre ship that the Philippine government ran aground on Ayungin Shoal in 1999 as an unlikely battleground in a geopolitical struggle that will shape the future of the South China Sea and, to some extent, the rest of the world.
The magazine said it was hard to imagine how anyone could live in the Sierra Madre or how such a forsaken place could become a flash point in a geopolitical power struggle.
“There is no question” that the cabbage strategy is now being employed in Ayungin, called Ren’ai Shoal by the Chinese, the NYT reported.
Commenting on taking territory from the Philippines, the NYT quoted Zhang as saying, “We should do more such things in the future. For those small islands, only a few troopers are able to station on each of them, but there is no food or even drinking water