March 8, 2009–Five Chinese vessels
harassed and obstructed the USNS Impeccable in the South
China Sea, 70 mile from the coast of the Chineses island
of Hainan. The Chinese ships surrounded the Impeccable
and two of the ships closed to within 50 feet of the
American ship. The Chinese ships included a Chinese navy
intelligence collection ship, a Bureau of Maritime
Fisheries patrol vessel, a State Oceanographic
Administration patrol vessel and two small
Chinese-flagged trawlers.

Crewmen aboard the Impeccable used fire hoses to spray
one of the harassiing Chinese ships as a protective
measure. The Chinese crewmembers stripped to their
underwear and continued manning their posts, closing to
within 25 feet of the Americans.

The Chinese also dropped pieces of wood into the water
directly in the Impeccable’s path, and two of the
ships halted directly in the U.S. vessel’s path,
forcing it to stop.

There is a new web page on the historyguy.com site detailing some of these Sino-Tibetan Wars and Conflicts.  It is at: http://www.historyguy.com/tibet_china_wars_conflicts.html

While normally I take as neutral a position as possible while explaining world conflicts on the main historyguy.com website, and leaving my more opinionated commentary for this blog, I come down against the continued repression by the Chinese Communist Party in Tibet.  I see a distinction in identifying the brutality and evil of the occupation as sourced in the Communist ideology than in any innately Chinese cultural aspects.  When an authoritarian, dictatorial regime conquers a smaller, basically defenseless nation, it can never be justified.  I liken the Chinese occupation of Tibet with the other evil occupations of history, such as the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, or the Soviet conquest of the Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia).

Those once-captive nations eventually regained their freedom, and one day too, Tibet may once again see the back-end of the Communist occupying forces, just as, after the 1911 Revolution, Tibet saw the last of the Manchu Imperial occupation army.