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Chinese coast guard ram and puncture Philippine military boats in disputed shoal

https://apnews.com/video/philippines-government-china-china-government-beijing-philippines-453422267d844ef2be89c3e60edf01b8

The Philippine military chief demanded Wednesday that China return rifles and other equipment seized by the Chinese coast guard in a disputed shoal and pay for damage in an assault he likened to an act of piracy in the South China Sea.

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the_kung_fu_emu

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It reminds me of this tradition. Especially this quote from a modern incident "Successfully counting coup disgraces your opponent. It’s a way of publicly shaming them. We believe that if you are shamed, you must admit defeat." It makes me wonder how much of the motivation for the incidents is internal consumption. Acting aggresively, but in a carefully crafted way to avoid an escalated response. The message sent internally that the other side restrains themselaee not out of reason, but fear.

mozz

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Acting aggresively, but in a carefully crafted way to avoid an escalated response. The message sent internally that the other side restrains themselaee not out of reason, but fear.

That actually might be it. We can't look to people in our own government / own country like we're anything other than the boss and everyone knows it, but also, we definitely don't want to pick a massive fight with another nuclear armed power and our biggest trading partner for literally no reason at all. And so, let's play this stupid fighter-plane-chicken game with them and spin it at home like we're out there telling them what's what.

IDK if I buy it. It sorta makes sense.

It's hard to square that, though, with actually fucking up the sailors on Filipino ships in a way that seems like it should demand some kind of response. Maybe the orders were to just be pushy in a non-escalational way and things got out of hand on the ground in a way that for-real wasn't intended?

kautau

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Right, they’re pushing the boundaries as much as they can with plausible deniability, because they want the west to make the first move so they can point at it and go, “we were never hostile, they started it”