From the Western blockade to the purchase of 4 tons of gold to second-hand goods to independent research and development, this process has been very difficult, from being suppressed to Jedi anti-killing, we have embarked on a "Made in China" road.
In recent years, there have been many cases of US sea vessels entering the South China Sea for so-called "routine training", for example, from January to February 2021, the US Navy has twice sent warships into the South China Sea. Entering China's sovereign xisha territorial waters without permission, the people's liberation army Chinese (PLA) was tracked and monitored and warned to leave the southern theater of operations of the People's Liberation Army. In March of the same year, the "Roosevelt" sailed into the South China Sea again, not to mention the so-called "right to freedom of navigation", and the US military repeatedly sailed into the waters of China's territorial sovereignty, with the intention of provoking disputes? Or pre-embolden china?
(South China Sea)
(China-North Korea 124 degree line)
What exactly does the United States care about in the waters under China's sovereignty? Is it legal or illegal for warships to sail into our territory? Let's take a look at the "Guidelines for the Classification of Land and Sea use for Land Spatial Survey, Planning and Use Control (Trial)" issued by the Ministry of Natural Resources. China's land and space use control is divided into two categories: land and sea areas, which are relatively independent of each other. In the "Guidelines for the Classification of Land and Sea Use for Land Spatial Survey, Planning and Use Control (Trial)" issued by the Ministry of Natural Resources of the People's Republic of China, the relevant uses of the resource utilization of sea areas and islands are divided into 6 first-level categories of "fishery sea", "industrial and mining communication sea", "transportation sea", "recreational sea", "special sea" and "other sea areas", and further subdivided into 16 second-level categories; for land formed around the reclamation, the main methods of conservation and protection are retained according to the main functions of surface land use or resources. It is also clearly pointed out that the land formed by reclamation in coastal areas is mainly classified according to various types of land in the land area, which further strengthens the connection between the management of land use. Judging from the legal effect, the national land space in the waters of the South China Sea is state-owned, and whether or not it causes losses to the residents in the reclaimed area, it is illegal for the navies of other countries to sail into China's territory without permission.
In the past 20 years, land resources have been in short supply, and the international community has turned its attention to the ocean, and the development and utilization of the ocean has become an important factor in rapid economic growth. With the substantial increase in the scale of marine utilization, the problems of marine resources and environment have become increasingly prominent, and have begun to restrict the high-quality development of the region.
China has a vast territory and a long coastline, and during this period, it is also full of large and small islands, especially some islands and reefs. However, because the South China Sea has been far away from the mainland coastline for many years, the South China Sea islands have been illegally occupied by some countries, and almost all of the larger areas have been occupied by Vietnam, the Philippines and other countries. And we control only a smaller part of it ourselves. However, because of the long distance from the coastline of the mainland, it is very difficult to maintain sovereignty, and a relatively passive situation has been formed over the years.
In the open use of islands and reefs in the South China Sea, give full play to the role of science and technology, and the operation of the "Sky Whale" sand-blowing dredging vessel in the South China Sea has changed the previous passive situation. We have built such as Mischief Island and Fiery Cross Island (Note: The area of Fiery Cross Island also exceeds that of Taiping Island controlled by Taiwan, becoming the largest island in Nansha. ), multiple islands including Subi Island. Such a situation is just a small test, the use of space in the South China Sea is still very large, and the technology of dredging and island building has been continuously improved.
(Sky Whale)
In ancient times, there was Jingwei reclamation, and now there is the "Tiankun" island. The Tiankun is currently the largest "island-making artifact" in Asia. In June 2018, after nearly four days of sea voyage, the first self-propelled suction dredger in Asia, the Tiankun, the largest self-propelled suction dredger in Asia, successfully completed its first sea trial.
As China's first heavy-duty self-propelled suction dredger with completely independent intellectual property rights from design to construction, the excavation system of "Tiankun" is the strongest in Asia and the long-distance transportation capacity is the first in the world. The investment and design unit of the "Tiankun" suction dredger is CCCC Tianjin Waterway Bureau Co., Ltd., and the construction unit is Shanghai Zhenhua Qidong Shipyard. The dredger is 140 meters long, 27.8 meters wide, 6.5 meters draught, the maximum digging depth is 35 meters, the design speed is 12 knots, and the total installed power is 25,800 kilowatts. Mixtures such as crushed rock, sediment and seawater can be transported up to designated locations up to 15 km away via a conveyor line attached to the hull. The 15-kilometer transport distance is currently the highest in the world. Taking the maximum working conditions that the "Tiankun" can achieve as an example, it can transport a solid mixture of up to 6000 m³ per hour. This huge amount of work translates into 600 large load trucks with a load of 10 square meters working continuously for 1 hour. In addition, it is equipped with a double positioning system for steel pile trolley positioning and triple cable positioning as a double insurance for stable positioning. And the bridge adopts a wave compensation system to ensure the safety of construction under high wind and wave conditions.
It is understood that the "Tiankun" dredger is a key project approved by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China, the layout of the whole ship, flexible steel pile trolley system and other technologies are internationally advanced, and the technology of three-cable positioning system and the solution of the problem of general vision is internationally leading, representing the construction level of China's dredging ships.
(Tiankun)
The name "Tiankun" depends on the meaning of "there is a fish in the north, and its name is Kun" in Zhuangzi's famous article "Getaway", just as Zhuangzi described it, "The kun is so big that it is not known for thousands of miles." The ship was once the largest "suction dredger" in Asia.
Why is it called the first in Asia? The main basis is still the ability to excavate. The power of the "Tiankun" is 6600 kilowatts, and the power of the "Predecessor", the "Tian whale", is 4200 kilowatts. The "Tiankun" is more ferocious at work, equipped with a suction pipe with a suction knife channel inserted into the sea, it is easy to cut through the hard rock, and through the mud pipe, the sediment and rubble can be piled up at a predetermined location to complete the task of suction and dredging.
According to expert statistics, the "Tiankun" can dig a football field one meter deep in an hour, and a pit similar to the size of the White House can be dug in one day. And because it is equipped with an intelligent dredging system, it can realize unmanned automatic dredging and realize manual automation. That would be tantamount to saying that the Tiankun could erect a sand pile the size of a water cube on a reef in the South China Sea in less than a week. In contrast, the "Sky Whale" that previously operated on the South China Sea Island was much inferior. The maximum excavation depth of the "Sky Whale" can reach 30 meters, and 4500 cubic meters of seawater, gravel, sediment and other mixtures can be transported through the mud pipeline to 6000 meters in one hour.
However, the birth of the "Tiankun" has never been an accidental event, both the change of strategic vision and practical reasons. Within the nine-dash line of the South China Sea, it has always been China's undisputed territorial territorial waters. However, in the past three decades, several countries around the South China Sea have secretly seized dozens of islands and reefs in China, and have been carrying out reclamation activities. The United States has never accused these countries of changing the status quo in the South China Sea and threatening the ecological environment. The Strait of Malacca, the outlet to the South China Sea, has always been full of pirates, threatening merchant ships, and violent robberies and murders, but the United States has never said that freedom of navigation is threatened.
(South China Sea Islands)
(Area Diagram)
In addition to the development vision and territorial inviolability, what are the visual factors in the South China Sea that are being looked at by other countries?
The South China Sea is about 1,200 kilometers away from the Chinese mainland, and according to research, there are a large number of seabed resources such as oil, combustible ice on the seabed, and rare mineral manganese nodules on the seabed. Neighboring countries have taken the opportunity to secretly occupy dozens of islands and reefs in china, seriously infringing on China's rights and interests. However, in recent years, China's military strength has been continuously enhanced, and warships have served like dumplings. However, the cost of defense of large areas of territorial waters in the South China Sea is still very high, and military responses cannot be made in time in the face of harassment, so the strategy of reclamation and island reclamation came into being.
In the front, there is the "Sky Whale" to open the way, and the "Sky Whale" in the back. Take the adjustment project of the first phase of the East Channel Expansion Project of Qinzhou Port as an example, and look at the operation method of the "Tiankun" that shocked the world.
On October 21, 2020, the Tiankun arrived in Qinzhou, Guangxi Province, carrying a construction section of about 820,000 square meters, a total length of 4 kilometers, containing a large number of hard weathered rocks and strongly weathered rocks, an average strength of 20 MPa, and a hardest point of 104 MPa. As of March 28, 2021, the "Tiankun" completed the construction task 32 days earlier than originally planned, once again verifying the hard core function of "being able to dig hard rock, ultra-long transportation, environmental protection operation, and intelligent operation".
("Tiankun" in the sea)
This kind of reclamation and island reclamation is not the first of Its kind in China, and as early as World War II, there were cases of using islands and reefs as a theater defense line. As we all know, Japan is a country with scarce resources and a small land area, and during World War II, Japan hoped to build the Mariana Islands, the Indonesian Islands, and the New Guinea Islands into an aviation base for its use. In this way, once the U.S. fleet attacks a certain location, the aviation on other islands and reefs can collectively attack the U.S. fleet. However, Japan's extravagant expectations were not successful, mainly because the Japanese navy during World War II was insufficient and technologically backward, and it was difficult to form a strong attack force.
Compared with Japan, China has a vast territory, a vast land, a narrow coastline, and the land is not tight enough to reclaim the sea to build an island, but the island plays a huge role in the military, and a certain area of the island can be used as a small military base, and even as the first choice for helicopter emergency landing. In recent history, the island has had many battles, such as the attack on Pearl Harbor, the bloody battle of Iwo Jima, the Battle of Okinawa, etc., and the island plays a major role in military strategy. However, there are a huge number of islands in the South China Sea, and with a large sand dredger of its own, we can better manage the islands in the South China Sea, and China can also gain a military opportunity.
A big factor in China's construction of islands and reefs in the South China Sea is to defend against external harassment, followed by its unique advantages. The South China Sea is very close to the mainland, coupled with advanced anti-aircraft missiles, the protection of islands and reefs is very strong. It became difficult for the U.S. military to destroy its defenses with bombers.
But don't look at the current "Tiankun" running so fiercely, all this is not easy to come by. People who understand China's modern history know that at the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the development of science and technology and economic development was very slow, industrial development was once stagnant, high and new technology could not be carried out for a time, and the road of seeking "the heavy weapon of the country" was very difficult for us. First of all, Western countries monopolize shipbuilding technology, and Chinese cannot learn the high and new technologies in it, and can only be forced to spend high prices to buy. However, even then we were unable to buy ships as we wished, because Western countries listed such ships as a commodity that was strictly forbidden to be exported, and the road to purchase was difficult. In addition, the purchase price remains high, beyond imagination, and the frequent appearance of moths during the purchase period is even more overwhelming.
In 1966, the Dutch side sold a dredger in China for nearly 2 million pounds (2 million pounds was equivalent to the price of 4 tons of gold at that time), and the dredger was a second-hand ship, and the rest of the supporting facilities, drivers, maintenance personnel did not have any. Ship problems or routine overhauls in our country also have to spend another price to hire engineers from the Netherlands to Come to China, which has long exceeded the funds required for manufacturing, and is technically subject to people. The former chief engineer of the Tianjin Aviation Bureau once said that during his working years, Li, China's main dredging ships were mainly to transform and introduce international equipment, of which the Netherlands was the most powerful. The "102-wheeler of Tianjin Hangjun", introduced in 1964 alone, cost £1.7 million.
(102 rounds of Jinhangjun)
Not only is the price high, but there are also moths accompanying the purchase of equipment. In order to adapt to the wider conditions for port construction, Gu Ming, chief engineer of the Tianjin Navigation Bureau, recalled that he had wanted to import a suction dredger from a Dutch dredger manufacturing company, but who knew that the other party's offer was as high as 300 million yuan. When the Tianjin Aviation Bureau accepted the sky-high price and then initialed the contract, the company found an excuse to raise the price by 5%, the price was unacceptable for a while, and the technology was also constrained by foreign companies.
In the face of this unfavorable scene, China's technical craftsmen have only one idea, that is, to have independently developed suction dredgers, so that the development of their own islands and the use of islands are no longer constrained. Since the 1960s, generations of scientific and technological talents have independently developed and made breakthroughs, breaking the Western blockade. In 2007, "Tiens" broke out of the siege, and China's first independently developed large dredging boat was born.
Tiens
In order to adapt to the development of military and diplomatic affairs, the "Tiankun" was launched in 2016, and the successful launch of the sea trial in 2017 officially announced to the world that China has entered the series of internationally independent large dredgers, and its birth allows China to actively deploy strategies on the issue of territorial sovereignty. It has not only deterred neighboring countries and anti-China forces, but also consolidated China's territory and sovereignty, ensured security in the South China Sea, and achieved both economic and military blossoms.
In order to ensure the core technology and consider international security as a whole, as soon as the "Tiankun" came out, China announced that the large dredgers we independently developed would be listed as prohibited export products. Announcement No. 28 of 2017 issued by the Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China shows that since June 1, 2017, in order to safeguard national security, export controls have been imposed on large dredgers, and no unit or individual may export to the outside world without permission.
As soon as this statement came out, it heralded that China had completed the transformation from the blockade of Western science and technology since the last century to China's initiative to restrict the West. With the emergence and continuous improvement of large dredgers, the neighboring countries in the South China Sea have felt the pressure brought about by "Made in China", and the area of artificial islands that have lasted for decades with their meager strength is not worth mentioning in front of the "Tiankun", and some Western countries have gradually unveiled their false masks, showed their ugly side, and went shirtless to openly oppose China and insult China, bluff in the international arena, and spread the so-called "Chinese pressure" and "China threat". Although the situation in the South China Sea is full of clouds and strange clouds, and maritime conflicts are still frequent, with the support of a series of "Made in China", other countries still have to measure their own strength when creating contradictions and disputes.
Nowadays, the new Chinese series of suction dredgers represented by the "Tiankun" are now the main force of rapid blowing towns and land reclamation in the South China Sea, and have long been famous, and the subsequent construction of China's suction dredgers will also help the "Belt and Road" and marine development and construction step by step.
The "New Haixu", which will be launched in 2019, will soon replace the "Tiankun" as the largest suction dredger in Asia. The "New Haixu" is equipped with 3 mud pumps, and the flow rate can be as large as 20,000 cubic meters per hour, which is equivalent to filling a standard football field by 3 meters in one hour. The "New Haixu" has a total length of 138 meters, a total installed power of 26,100 kilowatts, and a standard dredging capacity of 6,500 cubic meters per hour. China's shipbuilding industry will continue to spread its wings and continue to enhance the international competitiveness of China's dredging industry.
"New Haixu"
To conclude with the evaluation of dredgers in the "History of Chinese Equipment", that is: with the intensification of territorial disputes, especially the prominence of land reclamation functions, giant excavation ships have increasingly the nature of military facilities and have become the national heavy weapons for building China's maritime frontiers. The development of dredgers in China has experienced a process of innovation and research and development from scratch, from introduction to absorption, and then innovation and research and development, catching up with the international level and carrying the banner of "Made in China". (Note: He Xiaogang edited the "History of Chinese Equipment") The country's heavy equipment has surpassed the international level, and the country's youth must strive to lead the times.