Based on a dialogue between Seki Hei and Ko Bunyu, this article examines China’s “make noise in the east, strike in the west” strategy: provoking tensions in the East China Sea while seeking strategic control and a nuclear-missile submarine base in the South China Sea.

2020-06-27
China’s “Make Noise in the East, Strike in the West”—Using the East China Sea as a Decoy to Build a Nuclear-Missile Submarine Base in the South China Sea
I am republishing, after correcting the paragraph structure and making other adjustments, a chapter originally published on November 23, 2015, under the title, “That Is Why China Is Trying to Build an Undersea Submarine Base in the South China Sea for Launching Nuclear Missiles.”
The following passage is taken from pages 77–78 of The Real Nightmare for China Is About to Begin, a dialogue between Seki Hei and Ko Bunyu, published by Tokuma Shoten on September 30, 2015.
The passages enclosed by asterisks and all emphasis within the text are mine.
Why Is China Rushing to Control the South China Sea?
Ko
In any event, we agree that both the New Silk Road initiative and the AIIB, which is intended to form its backbone, will ultimately end in failure.
I would now like to turn to the subject of China’s maritime expansion.
Over the past several years, China’s attempt to dominate the South China Sea has become an extremely serious problem.
China has, of course, repeatedly intruded into Japan’s territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, and its unilateral development of gas and oil fields has also become major news.
Which is more important to China, the South China Sea or the East China Sea?
It is the South China Sea.
Conversely, which is easier for China to handle?
It is the East China Sea.
Whenever China does something in the South China Sea, it faces opposition not only from the United States but also from the Philippines and Vietnam.
The East China Sea is easier to deal with because Japan is the only country directly confronting China there.
Strategically, moreover, the South China Sea is far more important to China.
According to a military expert with whom I spoke, China intends to establish a submarine base there so that nuclear missiles can be launched from beneath the sea.
China is said to possess between 200 and 300 nuclear missiles on the mainland.
It is also said that, if the United States struck them, it could destroy all of them within ten minutes.
China would then be unable to retaliate.
That is why China is trying to build an undersea submarine base in the South China Sea for launching nuclear missiles.
China is also carrying out seabed resource exploration in both the South China Sea and the East China Sea.
However, according to specialist papers on energy development, the seabed contains so many geological faults that such development would not be economically viable.
In other words, it is a dummy operation.
The East China Sea, in particular, serves as a decoy intended to help China strengthen its control over the South China Sea.
China wants to create disturbances there and draw the attention of the world toward the East China Sea.
In Chinese, this is called “sheng dong ji xi”—“make noise in the east and strike in the west.”
The Xia people, regarded as the earliest dominant people of the Central Plains of China, are most widely believed to have been of Malayo-Polynesian origin.
For approximately four thousand years, however, with the exception of the Mongol-led Great Yuan Empire, China intermittently imposed maritime prohibitions restricting its people from privately travelling overseas or engaging in foreign trade.
Having avoided and rejected the sea for so long, China suddenly developed the ambition to advance onto the oceans.
Consequently, its global strategy is filled with fantasies and delusions and continues to drift without direction.
Some time ago, while watching TV Asahi’s Hodo Station, I immediately recalled a scene in which Nakajima, a quintessentially second-rate figure, offered a truly astonishing explanation.
He is the typical product of someone who grew up reading the Asahi Shimbun, was only slightly good at studying for entrance examinations, lacked the courage and energy to work in the real world, became a university professor and lived on taxpayers’ money, and then appeared on television to collect handsomely paid appearance fees.
This man—or rather, this foolish young upstart, as he should now be called—turned a map upside down and declared that, when the South China Sea was viewed from China’s side, China possessed an overwhelmingly larger coastline facing the sea.
It was an unbelievable comment.
As usual, Furutachi nodded in agreement.
There must have been more than a few discerning viewers who were appalled and wondered which country this television station was supposed to represent.
The Real Nightmare for China Is About to Begin: Economic Collapse, Regime Division, and Domestic Chaos Closing In on Xi Jinping
Seki Hei
Tokuma Shoten