Shen Dingli: Fishing for Moral Equivalence?

As I've learned from Joshua Stanton over at One Free Korea, Chinese security expert Shen Dingli has offered some fishy moral equivalence over South Korea's monthly, defensive military drill in the Yellow Sea near Pyeonyeong Island and North Korea's abrupt, offensive shelling of Yeonpyeong Island itself:

Shen Dingli, a security expert at Fudan University in Shanghai, was . . . direct in laying the blame on Seoul. "South Korea provoked the Yeonpyeong conflict first," he said. "The area where this incident happened is South Korean territory from a 'South Korean perspective'. But it is a disputed area from the 'North Korean perspective'. North Korea warned South Korea to stop the drills, but South Korea went ahead. And then the incident happened.

"It's South Korean provocation and North Korean over-reaction. South Korea's artillery killed fish. North Korean artillery killed civilians. If China should blame the party at fault, it should criticize both Koreas," Shen said. (Sunny Lee, "Fall guys in Beijing need better PR," Asia Times Online, November 30, 2010)

In other words, Shen Dingli not only sees no distinction between South Korea's longstanding claim to the waters around Yeonpyeong Island (since 1953) and North Korea's more recent claim to those same waters (since 1973), he also sees no distinction between that little fish from the Yellow Sea on the left (from Wikipedia) and that little girl refugee from Yeonpyeong Island on the right (from One Free Korea).

That's fishing truly hard for truly fishy moral equivalence, leaving no need for a fisking . . .