GOP minds are at sea — but not the right one

The event reported in the news article, GOP minds are at sea — but not the right one, by WashingtonPost was one of the major pieces of news that involves U.S. and Asia that we talked about a lot in Taiwan, but I have found many people in America do not know of, the South China sea conflict.

China has claimed the South China Sea when Philippines and the U.S. believe it is a public ocean territory. In 2013, the Philippines took its case to the Court of Arbitration. The result of the Arbitration said that China does not own the South China Sea, which irritated China, and China still did not want to give up on controlling South China Sea. Therefore, there are a lot of military wrestling going on between America and China, as well as Philippines. The Defense Secretary of the United States, Ash Carter, decided to adopt the strategy of “a long campaign of firmness, and gentle but strong pushback” to fight against China. At the end of the news article, the author even said that “if the next president does not conduct such operations with steady, measured skill, the result could be the collapse of the United States’ position in the world’s most populous, dynamic and perhaps dangerous region, or war.”

The reason I recommend this news article is to bring one of the major events to American classmates’ attention, so more people here will be more aware of what is going on between America and several other Asian country. The major impact of this event on Taiwan is that one of our “island” in South China Sea is now defined as a “rock”. Therefore, our ocean territory of that “location” is now reduced from 200 nautical miles to 20 nautical miles. However, the news report from a different perspective in Taiwan also said that the change of the ocean territory of that location does not really affect the fishing area of our fishermen; moreover, it can give Taiwan more protection from China since China owns even more “rocks” in South China Sea. Another point that is worth mentioning in this news article is that, it contains an embedded link that takes you to my favorite English Newspaper in Taiwan, Taipei Times, which is also the newspaper that is pro Taiwan Independence.