China is raising the stakes in its resolute effort to claim sovereignty over the international waters of the South and East China Seas. For nearly a year Beijing has used dredging ships to pull up muck from the shallow seafloor and transform reefs into islands in the area of the long-disputed Spratly Islands. The Spratly Islands are a multitude of tiny land dots in the South China Sea closer to the Philippines than to Vietnam. They lie approximately 600 miles south-by-southeast of the large Chinese island, Hainan. A similar assertion by the U.S. would place the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos Islands, Cuba, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands under American sovereignty.
On May 29, Reuters reported that China has placed mobile artillery weapons systems on one of the reefs it has dredged into a small island. In military terms, this is insignificant. Most of the world’s small navies have the firepower to destroy such systems from a safe distance. Politically, this is an important escalation that continues the transformation of what has been a decades-old diplomatic spat into a question of force.
Chinese defend actions
As the issue continues to cause concerns, China's ambassador to the United States has strongly defended its actions in the region. Cui Tiankai has attempted to dampen down the situation, while at the same time suggesting that the United States is in the wrong.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Tiankai suggested that the United States had significantly over-reacted to the situation, and that its reconnaissance missions were escalating what is already a tense situation. Tiankai stated that the recent behaviour in the South China Sea, coupled with the rhetoric from the Obama Administration, was souring US-China relations, which he painted as being the most important bilateral relationship in the world. Tiankai cited understanding with trade, global terrorism and climate change as evidence of a positive relationship between the nations, and hoped that regional stability could be achieved in the foreseeable future.
The Stakes in the South China Sea
While it is tempting to see the activity in the South China Sea region in terms of right and wrong, the reality is that two powerful nations are effectively engaged in sabre rattling. This is pretty much an inevitability, as geopolitical analysts have predicted for many years that the United States and China would eventually come to blows as the world's two most powerful nations and economic forces.
This latest incident is merely a manifestation of this process, and probably shouldn't lead to an escalated conflict in the region, or in wider theaters. But considering the military might of both nations and the potential consequences of any military conflict, we can only hope that a diplomatic solution is successfully sought.
China enhances offensive potential
The Chinese government has indicated that it is now focusing less on the defensive capabilities and more in stepping up its offensive potential, as it becomes increasingly irritated by US manoeuvres in the region. At present, China is significantly building armed force, with the intention of developing the ability to utilize it beyond its own borders.
Central to this process has been the construction of artificial islands in the disputed Spratly Islands. Despite warnings from the Chinese government, United States military planes last week flew reconnaissance missions over these disputed islands with the aim of better understanding Chinese intentions. Construction in the area includes runways and port facilities that have the potential to house military planes and warships.
China’s actions are, however, consistent with its strategy. Beijing published a 20-pagepublic document the last week of May that it describes as “the first public Chinese Military Strategy white paper outlining a new policy of “active defense.” References to “maritime interests” and/or “maritime rights” appear well over a dozen times in the document.
“Maritime rights and interests” is the Chinese government’s thinly veiled reference to its claim of sovereignty over the South and East China Seas, an area of ocean, as Arthur Waldron recently noted, that is one-and-a-half times larger than the entire Mediterranean. The islands, shoals, reefs, and proximate territorial are claimed with justification based on their geographic position and history by such others as Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea, and Vietnam. But the largest part of the area is, by every internationally accepted treaty and convention, open sea—no different according to accepted international norms than the middle of the North Pacific.
China is interested in asserting sovereignty over this immense area because it is the gateway to the chain of islands—for example, Japan and the Philippines—that separate China’s long east coast from the Pacific. Through these same waters pass huge vessels arriving from the Middle East with oil and the fleet of outbound merchant ships that carry Chinese manufactures to Europe, Latin America, and the U.S. China’s control of the same waters adds to their ability to disrupt seaborne communications between the U.S. and its Asian allies.
Most important, Chinese success in asserting national control over international waters is a long stride toward establishing regional hegemony in Southeast Asia and a direct challenge to the principle of untrammeled transit of international waters that American presidents beginning with Thomas Jefferson have defended with force.
Chinese ambitions do not stop with the South and East China Seas. The above-mentioned strategy that Beijing released late in May is clear about this. It repeatedly underscores China’s interest in “overseas interests.” It speaks clearly about the Chinese navy’s in “gradually shift(ing) its focus from ‘offshore waters defense’ to the combination of ‘offshore waters defense’ with ‘open seas protection.’” It liberally uses such terms as “strategic protection” and its like. These are buzzwords for a trans-oceanic navy, like ours. The rest of the Chinese strategic white paper is sprinkled with the modifier “with Chinese characteristics,” another buzzword for the international order that a regnant Chinese blue water navy would establish.
The Obama administration’s responses to China’s actions in the Spratly Island and to the publication of its strategic white paper are inconsistent. To the former a naval reconnaissance plane was sent to fly over the emerging island. To the latter a Defense Department spokesman said, “we have repeatedly called on the Chinese for transparency, and frankly, this is an example of transparency.”
This is like complimenting someone who is about to do mischief for having announced his intent in advance. Building, occupying, and arming islands in international waters for the purpose of extending national sovereignty by force violates international accords, established custom, and one of the most fundamental of America’s foreign and security policies. China’s strategic white paper announces that it will do this. To compliment China for its forthright declaration of intent neutralizes the effect of dispatching the naval reconnaissance aircraft whose passage over the manmade island was meant to deny China’s claim.
Redoubling diplomacy, coalition building, and assistance to our friends and allies will all help to contest China’s illegal claims. So would a reversal of current trends toward a U.S. Navy that is even smaller than today’s, which has fewer ships that we had before World War I.
But nothing is likely to have a greater, more beneficial, or immediate effect than a demonstration of what China respects, strength. President Clinton sent the aircraft carriers USS Nimitz and USS Independence along with their escorts to the area in March 1996 when China conducted missile tests aimed at influencing elections in Taiwan. China’s attempt to intimidate came to naught.
United States rhetoric
In response to the warnings from Beijing, that United States secretary of defence, Ashton Carter, was adamant that the US administration would not recognize the artificial islands as no-fly zones controlled by a nation. Carter underlined the determination of the United States to protect the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, and that the United States was acting under international convention.
It is debatable whether this particular argument stands up to scrutiny, or whether the United States was really protecting its own interests. Those with a keen interest in geopolitics increasingly see it as inevitable that that United States and China will clash in the coming years. China is part of the increasingly influential BRICS group, a commingled organization of supportive nations which intends to challenge the traditional Anglo-American / EU-NATO political and economic consensus.
BRICS in the wall
The BRICS have already announced plans to develop their own central bank, which would operate outside of the existing Bank for International Settlements superstructure. It is this which could perhaps be cited as the central reason for US interest in the behaviour of China, along with other strategic interests related to the development of the nation as a genuine superpower, as opposed to supposed concern of the sovereignty of the South China Sea region.
Spratly Islands stand-off intensifies
Regardless of this, it would be fair to assert that China's actions in the South Sea region could be interpreted as inflammatory. According to sources close to China, the nation has no intention of ceasing its construction of the artificial islands in this region, and will similarly not tolerate any interference by what it considers to be external actors. With neither the United States nor China seemingly willing to back down over this issue, there have been suggestions that even a minor incident around these artificial islands could escalate rapidly into full-scale conflict.
Considering the tension in the region, and between the two nations, it is perhaps not surprising that other news stories have emerged which will only add to this diplomatic situation. Considering the South China Sea stand-off, the recent extradition of a Chinese fugitive from the United States is an interesting and valid footnote in the situation.
Chinese extradition
The individual in question has been named as the most wanted fugitive in China, and is accused of embezzling more than $40 million. According to Chinese state media, Yang Xiuzhu was able to amass a vast fortune in relation to numerous construction projects when operating as a deputy mayor of Wenzhou in east China in the 1990s.
Yang had left China in 2003, but had been detained in the United States after entering the nation with an illegitimate Dutch passport just last year. Yang tops a list of 100 suspects that China wishes to extradite from other nations, and had evidently gone into hiding after learning that she was being pursued by anti-corruption investigators in the world's most populous nation.
The issue will strengthen Chinese efforts to push for talks on an extradition treaty, which would enable China to boost its prosecution efforts for fugitives across the world. China claims that there are more than 150 economic fugitives currently resident in the United States, and it seeks an agreement on advancing the justice process related to these individuals.
Refusal of the United States to cooperate could naturally increase tensions between the nations. And this would seem to be a fairly likely prospect considering that the US will not wish to appear weak in the face of what it deems to be provocation in the South China Sea. However, its position could be relatively weak with regard to this issue, as the US policy of extradition during both the Bush and Obama administrations - related, of course, to the War on Terror - is extremely well publicized.
Chinese student expulsions and FIFA corruption
Meanwhile, as the highly public story of 15 Chinese students being expelled from a United States University for cheating reaches mass circulation, it has emerged that some 8,000 Chinese students were expelled from American universities last year alone. The enthusiasm that the Chinese government has displayed for advancing higher education in the nation is well-documented, but evidently Chinese students still have some way to go to match their American counterparts.
And relations between the BRICS nations and the United States will hardly be improved by the recent revelationsrelated to the soccer governing body FIFA. With the selection process for both the Russian and Qatari World Cups now open to corruption investigations, the issue has provoked a strong response from the Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Russian supremo has suggested the United States has illegally persecuted people in relation to this investigation, and that the response to an issue was “an obvious attempt [by the United States] to spread their jurisdiction to other countries”.
Chinese defend actions
As the issue continues to cause concerns, China's ambassador to the United States has strongly defended its actions in the region. Cui Tiankai has attempted to dampen down the situation, while at the same time suggesting that the United States is in the wrong.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Tiankai suggested that the United States had significantly over-reacted to the situation, and that its reconnaissance missions were escalating what is already a tense situation. Tiankai stated that the recent behaviour in the South China Sea, coupled with the rhetoric from the Obama Administration, was souring US-China relations, which he painted as being the most important bilateral relationship in the world. Tiankai cited understanding with trade, global terrorism and climate change as evidence of a positive relationship between the nations, and hoped that regional stability could be achieved in the foreseeable future.
A similar demonstration of American resolve today followed by more constant U.S. naval patrols in the area would put a lid on current tensions and diminish the likelihood of future escalation.
