Crazy Thoughts : Port Darwin for lease

Distance between Port Darwin and Robertson Barracks

Crazy thought of the day : Implications of leasing Port Darwin to the PRCs.

Australia signed a 99 year lease of the Port of Darwin to a subsidiary state own enterprise of China's "Temasek Holdings" equivalent.

In 2011 the USMC began unit rotation to Robertson barracks in Darwin (albeit a brigade-minus). Notice the distance between them, a mere 15 km apart ...

Solid ground intel to the Chinese. Well done. Any potential forward staging in Darwin in support of western pacific operations will be negated ?

On solid ground. Plug and play of ISO containerized powerful servers plugged into the grid from Darwin, direct hacked and download massive google-bytes of classified data.

Uncle Sam knows, the Japanese know, the Australians know the USA and the Japanese know and want them to know, the Chinese see what the Australians want them to see (and more).

A change of PM, who is not very keen to buy Japanese submarine**. But how to reject the later without souring the relationship and goodwill and friendship forged by Tony? Japanese state-of-the-art cutting edge offensive weapons are deem too provocative when one still need the Chinese market and trade. Unless you are Vietnam, Philippines, India, USA and maybe Taiwan* [Link], no GOV worth their salt would dare buy Made-in-Japan super duper offensive weapons.

Referring to above "on solid ground", which the Australians purposely allow the Chinese to camp there not for a day, not for a month, not for a year or even a decade, but a freaking century ! There is no guarantee classified Soryu submarine technology won't fall into communist hands. Not that the later don't know, but now they get to confirm and double confirm, can even photocopy the service manual at the Acme photo-printing shop at downtown Darwin flea market, next to the Chinese run sushi outlet.

It is a purely commercial transaction, they say. Yeah ... 

So maybe Temasek Holdings sold off the purposely loss-making NOL in anticipation of impending naval flashpoint and blockade and counter-blockade and targeting/sinking of national tanker carriers when the shit hits the fan, viola ! No worries because now that we have none :-)

Grand strategy at work? The former Lieutenant General took one for the team ?

This one is serious one [Link]

A few cut and paste of interest ...

SCS  1

SCS 2

SCS 3

SCS 4

* On second thought better not sell high tech stuff to ROC (Taiwan) - 有钱能使鬼推磨

Not only that, still got very real Chinese "jihadist" (not in the Islamic religious sense but really die-hard Chinese cultural "patriot" somehow cannot differentiate between the innocent Chinese culture/history/people from the Chinese Communist Party)

** IMHO - better for Australia to buy European. What is the probability of China going to war with France, Germany and Sweden ?

Is it time for my meds ?

18 December 2015