Relations between China and South Korea have deteriorated sharply recently, and the Chinese ambassador to South Korea bluntly pointed out when talking about China-South Korea relations that the United States is going all out to suppress China, while some countries are wrongly "betting" that China will be "defeated" by the United States.
The Chinese ambassador asked South Korea to respect China's core interests, especially not to interfere in the Taiwan issue. However, South Korea deliberately interpreted China's statement as "interference in South Korea's internal affairs", summoned the Chinese ambassador to issue a "stern warning", and criticized China's statement as "violating the Vienna Convention". South Korea** also claimed that the Chinese ambassador's statement was to "shift" the responsibility for the deterioration of China-South Korea relations to South Korea and to "deliberately provoke" Japan-South Korea relations.
In addition, the ruling party of the ROK also refused the invitation to meet with the Chinese ambassador, and it is said that after the ROK received the invitation from the Chinese side, the remarks made by the ambassador were unacceptable to the ROK, causing the leader of the ruling party, Kim Ki-hyun, to refuse the invitation of the Chinese side.
Finally, Cho Tae-yong, the head of South Korea's National Security Office, also made remarks, emphasizing the importance of Japan-South Korea cooperation, declaring that South Korea-China relations will be established based on South Korea's strength. In other words, it is to have an equal dialogue with China in the international arena and not to appear in front of China as a weak and small country.
South Korea's current tough attitude has directly lowered Sino-South Korean relations to a freezing point, and in recent days, China has also directly counterattacked South Korea, making South Korea a wake-up call.
According to the AIS signal, China's 10,000-ton coast guard ship 2901 cruised in the waters near Suyan Reef, less than 20 kilometers from Suyan Reef. The 2901 ship had a displacement of 12000 tons and was armed with the domestic H PJ-26 Type 762 mm rapid-fire gun. H PJ-26 type 76The 2-mm naval gun was made in the Soviet-made AK-176M type 76Improved on the basis of the 2-mm naval gun. The rate of fire is adjustable, which is 120 rounds per shot and 120 rounds (some sources say it can reach 130 rounds).It can fire fragmentation anti-personnel blasting grenades, and the projectile mass is 59 kg, 048 kg of explosives, muzzle velocity 780 meters per second, maximum range to the sea 16,500 meters (some sources say up to 17,000 meters), maximum altitude to the air 11,500 meters, can be equipped with a fuse or radio proximity fuse. In addition, China has also developed an axial field detonation anti-aircraft grenade for this gun, which has effectively improved the gun's air defense and anti-missile capabilities.
Located at the junction of the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea, Suyan Reef is an underwater reef in the extension of the continental shelf of the East China Sea, which is geologically part of the Yangtze River Delta and is the "submarine hills" of the East China Sea, with elliptical hillsIt forms the outer island chain of the East China Sea together with Ma Cailuo, Waijiaojiao Liangshazhou Island off the coast of Jiangsu, Yushan Island and Jigu Reef on the east side of the Xiasi Islands, and Tong Island on the northeast side of the Zhoushan Islands, and its nearby waters are also the fishing grounds where fishermen from Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian and Taiwan provinces of China have been active since ancient times.
Its precise position is 125 degrees 10 minutes 45 seconds east longitude and 32 degrees 7 minutes 42 seconds north latitude. It is roughly located in a straight line between Jeju Island in South Korea and Shanghai in China, and this line is the dividing line between the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea in China. As a result, Suyan Reef is almost located on the dividing line between the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea, and has just fallen to the side of the East China Sea.
As the only outpost of the Yangtze River estuary, Suyan Reef in the northern part of the East China Sea and its waters play a pivotal role in China's maritime transportation, resource extraction, and national defense and military.
Because Suyan Reef is also underwater at low tide, it can be said to be an undersea reef. The highest peak of the reef is 4At 6 meters, the average depth of the surrounding sea is 50 meters. The reef is 1,800 meters long from north to south and 1,400 meters wide from east to west, with an area of about two square kilometers, which is equivalent to the size of half of the Diaoyu Islands.
According to the Korea Petroleum Development Corporation, the East China Sea continental shelf has 7.7 billion tons of oil resources, making it likely to be the world's third-largest oil producing area after the Caspian Sea. If the ROK can successfully occupy the Suyan Reef, the ROK will have the first opportunity to explore and exploit oil and gas resources in the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea in the future, and will be able to add important weight to the competition with China for the oil and gas resources in the East China Sea.
In addition, for China, Suyan Reef is located at the confluence of the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea, that is, the southern Yellow Sea and the northern part of the East China Sea, in the center of the entire East China Sea, with the Taiwan Strait in the south and the Yellow and Bohai Seas in the northwest of Japan in the east. We can use Suyan Reef to observe South Korea's maritime movements, pay attention to Japan's maritime behavior, and find a favorable opportunity for the Chinese Navy to break through the blockade of the first island chain and move towards the Pacific Ocean, so as to safeguard China's maritime rights and interests.
For South Korea, the Soam Reef to the west can not only defend the western part of South Korea, but also contain China and North Korea: in the east, it can contain Japan, and in the south, it enjoys important strategic significance, because in the event of war in the Taiwan Strait, Soam Reef can become an outpost for South Korea to pay attention to the situation in the Taiwan Strait. In peacetime, because the Taiwan Strait is called a maritime lifeline by Northeast Asian countries, especially South Korea and Japan, it is a necessary transportation channel for them, and the favorable location of Suyan Reef plays an irreplaceable role in safeguarding South Korea's interests in the Pacific Ocean.
China argues that Suyan Reef is actually a reef and cannot be considered territory, so there is no "territorial dispute", and that Suyan Reef is located in China's territorial waters and within its 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone. So it should be Chinese.
In the initial negotiations, China and South Korea reached a consensus that Suyan Reef is only an underwater reef and there is no sovereignty dispute. China advocates that the principle of fairness in international law should be used as a guide and that the delimitation should be carried out in accordance with the principle of natural extension of the continental shelf.
South Korea, on the other hand, advocates demarcation through the principle of the middle line in an attempt to legally occupy the reef, which makes it necessary for China and South Korea to peacefully resolve the dispute over the reef through consultations between the two sides and the two sides to retreat.
At the beginning of the 21st century, with the covert support of the United States, South Korea gained an inch, believing that Suyan Reef belonged to South Korea's territory and was therefore "undisputed".
South Korea is doing everything possible to turn Suam Reef from a reef into an artificial reef, so that according to the international law of the sea, South Korea will enclose a large area of sea the size of France in the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea. At the end of the 20th century, Suyan Reef was still under the de facto control of China.
That all changed with a spy in China. This spy is Li Bin, the ambassador to South Korea, who participated in the Sino-South Korean maritime demarcation negotiations, and every time China and South Korea negotiated, Li Bin would tell South Korea in advance the content, bargaining chips, and bottom line of China's first negotiations, which put China in a very passive situation.
It is also because of Li Bin's leakage and assistance that South Korea illegally built a 76-meter-high (40 meters underwater, 36 meters above water) weighing 3,600 tons, equivalent to a 15-storey huge steel building (large offshore platform) at 65 meters south of the highest peak of Suyan Reef, with an area of 1,320 square meters, built with a lighthouse, a tarmac, a satellite radar and a small port (the large offshore platform is a permanent building and a symbol of sovereignty).
On January 26, 2001, Suyan Reef was illegally named Liyu Island (Island in quotation marks). With this large platform, South Korea claims that Suam Reef is not an underwater reef, but South Korean territory.
The exclusive economic zone (EEZ) is also based on the fact that Suyan Reef is its territory, but South Korea's way of demarcating it has not been recognized by the international community.
In addition, the biggest controversy over the delimitation of the "air defense identification zone" between China and South Korea is also at Suyan Reef, which is the airspace that a country has set up over land or sea to require foreign aircraft to report their identity and location in advance. There is no international law or international treaty that explicitly defines an "air defense identification zone".
South Korea's air defense identification zone was established by the U.S. Air Force in March 1951 during the Korean War. In 2013, South Korea announced that it would expand its ADIZ to cover China's Suam Reef by overlapping China's East China Sea ADIZ with an increased area.
During this period of time, South Korea has repeatedly provoked China, even breached China's red line, and arbitrarily discussed the Taiwan Strait issue, and Sino-South Korean relations have dropped to a freezing point.
As early as 2016, when South Korea announced the deployment of THAAD, China sent more than a dozen military aircraft into South Korea's air defense identification zone near Soam Reef for four to five hours.
However, South Korea turned a deaf ear, and after China proposed a series of countermeasures, South Korea suffered serious economic losses, so after Moon Jae-in took office, he made three no-commitments: not to deploy the THAAD system, not to join the US anti-missile network, and not to form a military alliance with Japan and the United States.
China has always advocated that disputes should be shelved, joint development should be carried out, and sovereignty should rest with China. It can be said that the Chinese 10,000-ton coast guard ship patrolling Suyan Reef and approaching Suyan Reef within 20 kilometers is a heavy warning to South Korea, and South Korea is advised to recognize its position and not challenge China's bottom line.