China is a rising power and it is only natural that it would seek to expand its areas of naval operations and political influence. However, arriving late to the geopolitical game, China does not want to play by the rules that have long been established but which Beijing did not help to formulate.
China seems to think that, because it was once the center of its world, more respect for its exalted status is needed. And Beijing wants to unilaterally change the rules for international engagement for its own benefit. But that doesn’t work and neither does being a maritime bully.
There are rising indications, however, that China intends to be just that. Beijing is likely thinking that it can get away with naval confrontations in nearby seas, due largely to a lack of effective counter responses to its current aggression in the East and South China Seas.
History as context
Beginning in 2010, Beijing upped its assertiveness in claiming ownership to much of the South China Sea, eventually putting forward a claim that the waters within a ‘Nine Dash Line’ map have been Chinese since historical times.
That sweeping claim intersects waters and territories claimed by Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. Some readings of the broad map also put China in conflict with Indonesia over the gas-rich Natuna Sea.
Beijing has since been building military outposts on reefs and man-made islets in that area – pieces of land that are not recognized as sovereign territory by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
Some of those manufactured islets have recently been outfitted with landing strips capable of accommodating transport aircraft and jet fighters for even greater projection of power.
Moreover, China in recent years has not been averse to using force in asserting its claim to territory in the seas around it. In its dispute with Japan over the Diaoyu Islands (to China) – the Senkaku Islands (to Japan) – in the East China Sea, Beijing has rammed one Japanese vessel.
In a confrontation with Vietnam, China sunk a Vietnamese fishing boat. Beijing also threatened to use force against Philippine vessels in a 2012 standoff it won in seizing control of the fisheries rich Scarborough Shoal.
In December 2016, during the final days of US President Barack Obama’s administration and in an act possibly aimed at assessing then President-elect Donald Trump, China snatched a US Navy undersea drone just 50 miles from Subic Bay in the Philippine in an outrageously bold act.
The legal ramifications of this occurring on the high seas and whether UNCLOS applies have yet to be sorted out. What is clear, however, is that China’s seizure of the US drone went unpunished, as Washington offered no response other than a weak diplomatic protest.
Five weeks after taking office, Trump was powerless to react beyond casually opining that China could keep the drone. The likely conclusion that Beijing drew from the incident was that Washington is weak and that with all his bluster about withdrawing from engagement with the world, Trump would likely not pursue the matter further once in power.
Beyond the South China Sea
Interestingly, just as the Quad – Australia, India, Japan, and the US – alliance is girding up to challenge China with Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOP) sailings in the South China Sea, China has extended its focus to the Indian Ocean through patrols in waters close to the Maldives.
The Maldives are 1,200 small coral islands within a chain of 26 atolls running 520 nautical miles (960 kilometers) north to south. Starting just 185 nautical miles (385 kilometers) south-southwest of India, they form a natural barrier to deep-water vessels.
The only safe east-west passage through the area is at the southern end of this shallow seas nation in the Indian Ocean.
Beijing fears being hemmed in by Washington and its allies, and it is through these waters leading to the Straits of Malacca chokepoint that China’s energy supplies from the Middle East pass.
China clearly worries that Sea Lines of Communications (SLOC) could be interdicted with a subsequent loss of greatly needed energy. And Beijing fully intends to keep those SLOCs open by controlling waters contiguous to seafaring bottlenecks.
Lessons of inaction
Since Washington did nothing in response to the 2016 China drone heist, and despite American statements that it intends to ramp up FONOPs in the South China Sea, China seems to be confidently expanding its naval reach.
Besides intending to control the eastern approach to the Straits of Malacca by claiming much of the South China Sea, Beijing is now gearing up to dominate the western approach in the Indian Ocean to command SLOCs there as well.
It thus seems likely that China will force a naval confrontation with the US or one of its allies in the near future. If Beijing does militarily challenge Washington in the South China Sea, how will the US and its emerging Quad alliance react? What if the challenge occurs instead or simultaneously in the Indian Ocean?
It will be interesting, to understate the escalating situation, to see how China plays on any belief that America’s lack of a meaningful response over the 2016 drone incident shows the US is a paper tiger in the region.
If Washington backs off or otherwise acquiesces during any naval clash with Beijing, the remaining members of the Quad will likely fold as well. China would then have won nearly all of the Asian waters it needs for controlling vital SLOCs.
Is the rest of the world prepared to live with that?
You don’t pick a quarrel with your banker. China is USA biggest banker.
If the US is on "its" side of the world, what’s the problem? Those looking for trouble far and wide will find it. The "rest of the world," as you term it, will play their parts predictably. Vietnam made it clear, the east will repel the west as it can. And it can.
The rest of the world is perfectly happy to live with the idea that China has the right to insure that its access to ITS vital shipping lanes is secure. I am not sure of the motivation of other actors, other then to insure that China can be blocked from having access to its vital shipping lanes. I did not hear any one, lest US, that its only motivation for operating thousands of miles away from its shores, is to SECURE Chinese right to commercial traffic. What a hypocrisy. However, I would not count on this, so lovingly called Quad. Because India has no intentions of being involved in beligerant actions against China. For as long as everyone plays nicely, India is on board. Otherwise, listen to Modi past Davos. The first priority is economy, not geopolitical games. I would not count on Australia, as its vital economic interests are linked to China, not US. Japan, Inc. is likewise, paying more atttention to its own needs. Sorting out its relationship with Russia, China and South Korea — are much higher on their priority list, then trying to figure out how to "contain" China. Time for delusions is over.
PS. UNCLOS. US cannot comment on UNCLOS as it is not a signatory. This takes it out of taking advantage of UNCLOS mechanisms for bilateral negotiations on UNCLOS bounaries between neighboring countries, a step one in resolving disputes between parties. Next step is UNCLOS body to manage arbitration, including providing the necessary evidence to the body by the claimants. This is why the desion of Hague Court of Arbitration in favor of Phylippines in an UNCLOS matter was so bizzare, that ASEAN did not touch it with a ten foot pole. There is no way a Hague court of arbitration can decide on the matter, especially since both parties did not agree to arbitration. And especially, since UNCLOS convention was not followed in the matter of diverging claims. Seriously, that is treating adults as children. Keeping up with the same kind of disregard for the processes that need to start in the region, and between the neighboring states on the impact UNCLOS has on their borders, is hard to believe. If there are claims, those with UNCLOS rights will take it up with the right bodies, in due course. Who is to hurry or harras them? The "world"?
If western experts on Asia are all self righteous and condescending marbleass like this one…then i am all in favour of any asian country getting their own nukes and China better churn out nukes like sausages because the present few hundreds wont be nearly enough for the fireworks competition .
This article was full of misinformation. This doofus actually claimed that China has only claimed its 9-dash line since sometime after 2010. Seriously, read the article again! The 11-dash line was filed with the U.N. with no objections by the Republic of China in 1946 and was reduced to the 9-dash line during the U.S.-Vietnam War.
Also, the Vietnamese fishing boat, which supposedly the Chinese "sunk", actually sunk because it was ramming a Chinese boat and the Vietnamese managed to flip it while doing so.
As for the Diaoyu island "dispute." Think it through! The Japanese "nationalized" the islands in 2012! This means that they didn’t own them! Who did? China. Did China cede the islands to Japan? No. Apparently China is "aggressive" in the East China Sea because it is unwilling to allow Japan to unilaterally annex its territory.
When western analysits have to resort to this amount of misinformation to paint China as being problematic, you can really see just how full of crap they are.
This author, like many western writers, tries to frame the issue as disputed islands but the truth is ASEAN countries like the Philippines comes to understand it is an US problem and China’s solution to the Malaka Dillemma.
Wrong on the facts. Wrong on reasoning. And oblivious to the lack of credibility. Mr. McCoy is putting himself out to be ridiculed for ignorance and hypocrisy. But then I guess he has no choice as a propaganda writer hired to stoke tension in Asia.
At this very moment, the US military is in Syria in violation of the nation’s sovereignty and international laws!! And that’s not the only illegal activity the US government is conducting right now.
Does Mr McCoy really think that intelligence services of other countries know nothing about America’s illegal activities around the world? or that anyone with a brain would take hypocritical lectures from propagandists of a mafia government?
I’ll skip my usual quotes of Kissinger this time.
Robert McCoy,
You are either a very convenient outright liar or you are fraudulent in the legal sense by gross misrepresentation in leaving out the inconvenient truth.
Let us stick to that part of your article that deals with the East China Sea and the South China Sea. And it is truly insidious and deceitful that you play on the vacant or unknowing minds of an audience in the sense that most have never been to the Orient or have any idea of the history of China and some of the nations involved in the South China Sea dispute that have arisen from what used to be former colonies of European powers like Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia.
Before I continue let us agree to leave aside the Westphalian International Law or Diplomatic Law circa 1648 AD and also the UNCLOS or Law of the Sea effective 1994 for in factual and historical terms we are shall I say dealing with time before 1648AD.
Paracels and Spratleys
Until the white man came as colonisers in the Orient it happened that China ‘controlled’ the East China Sea and the South China Sea. Unlike the Europeans China did not believe in conquering people that were not Chinese. This was because only the Chinese can belong to the Middle Kingdom (whose boundaries were delineated by the geographics of the Himalayas, the Northern and Western deserts and the Seas to the East) and therefore the people and the lands of ‘foreign devils’ (I do not mean to be offensive but this is translation of an ancient language) can never be part of the Middle Kingdom. It is like not everyone can be a Jew nor any land be Israel! The Chinese solved this problem however through a tribute state system called ‘suzerainty’ where the ‘foreign devils’ neighbours retained their sovereignty but they would pay a token homage or tribute, which in ancient times, was an annual ‘gold leaf’ or ‘daun emas’ in Bahasa. Sometimes the local kings were forced to marry a Chinese princess (sort of to make them foreign in-laws). But China mainly just policed the peace by controlling the seas or the maritime trade routes.
Then the European colonisers came and took whatever they wanted. Even China itself was close to being colonised or ‘sliced up like a water melon’. It could have ended up like British India. But India was a divided sub-continent with people divided into different religions, castes, languages, and even under different kings. China was however the Middle Kingdom, and you guessed right, only the homogenous Chinese can belong to the Middle Kingdom!
(to be contd)
Who is the real bully. China has not sent its troops abroad to kill and occupyt. It has not sent its jets to bomb and kill and destroy. The US has and over decades and on numerous sovereign countries. The world is not blind and deaf to the all the killings and sufferings on so many people in so many countries.
(contd from earlier) The European Colonisers with their God-anointed superiority complex against pagans and heathens would unilaterally draw up its borders with China (like the British unilaterally drawing up the MacMahon Line through the Himalayas) or others would have treaties just to be civil.
The French in the Chinese-Vietnamese Boundary Convention 1887 excluded the Paracels and Spratleys from Vietnam. But in 1932, under a more imperialistic and different party in Government France declared the South China Sea ‘terra nullis’ and in 1933 seized the Paracels and Spratleys. China and Japan protested. Japan was then in occupation of Chinese Taiwan. Japan forcefully in 1938 seized the Paracels and Spratleys from the French and incorporated them into Taiwan. But Japan lost in WW2. Under Article 2 of the Treaty of Peace which Japan signed in San Francisco on 8/9/51 (the San Francisco Treaty), Japan renounced all right, title, and claim to Taiwan (Formosa) and Penghu (the Pescadores) as well as the Paracels and Spratleys. Under the Treaty of Taipeh in 28/4/52 the above Japanese occupied territories were released to the Republic of China (that is China under Kuomintang control as distinct from the Mainland under Communist control). And this is the obvious blatant omission by you – not divulging the fact that China whether Communist or Democratic both claim the same ‘9 dotted Lines’ in the South China Sea. The false impression given by you is that it is only a containment of the excesses of Communist China!
Now the other major claimant in relation to the Paracels and Spratleys is the Philippines. When Spain ceded Philippines to the U.S. after losing in the Spanish-American War under the Treaty of Paris 1898 it did not include the Paracels and Spratleys. When the U.S. granted Philippines independence under Treaty Of Manila on 4/7/46, it limited Phillipines territory to east of Longitude 116.9 only.
As to China’s historical claim please read for yourself –
https://www.quora.com/What-evidence-does-China-offer-to-substantiate-its-claims-of-sovereignty-in-the-South-China-Sea/answer/Pengcheng-Zhang-2?share=9579c6ec&srid=YlBl
https://www.quora.com/What-evidence-does-China-offer-to-substantiate-its-claims-of-sovereignty-in-the-South-China-Sea/answer/Xiao-Chen-32?share=60507f11&srid=YlBl
To sum up – this is what the former U.S. Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.) said at a Seminar on 10/4/15 at the Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University on ‘Diplomacy on the Rocks: China and Other Claimants in the South China Sea’
"In practice, as some in the region recall, long before the United States turned against them as part of its “pivot to Asia” in 2010, America had supported China’s claims in the Paracels and Spratlys. The U.S. Navy facilitated China’s replacement of Japan’s military presence in both island groups in 1945 because it considered that they were either part of Taiwan, as Japan had declared, or – in the words of the Cairo Declaration – among other “territories Japan [had] stolen from the Chinese” to “be restored to the Republic of China.” From 1969 to 1971, the United States operated a radar station in the Spratlys at Taiping Island, under the flag of the Republic of China.."
Read the full lecture on –
http://chasfreeman.net/diplomacy-on-the-rocks-china-and-other-claimants-in-the-south-china-sea/.
As to the Diaoyu Islands (to China) – the Senkaku Islands (to Japan) – in the East China Sea – read this articles for yourself and find out for yourselves the historical facts
https://www.quora.com/Which-country-do-you-think-the-Diaoyu-Senkaku-Islands-belong-to-China-or-Japan/answer/Li-Jianxi-%E9%BB%8E%E5%BB%BA%E7%86%99?share=ee712bef&srid=YlBl
https://www.quora.com/Which-country-do-you-think-the-Diaoyu-Senkaku-Islands-belong-to-China-or-Japan/answer/Darryl-Snow-1?share=3146d35f&srid=YlBl
As to the ‘Building of Artificial Islands’ read for yourself who started it all.
The Philippines and the Vietnamese – refer – http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-philippines-making-big-mistake-the-south-china-sea-13480. Remember the historical background explained earlier!
How Japan made an island out of a very very tiny rock to show the way to China how to do it – refer – https://www.quora.com/What-do-the-Americans-think-of-Chinas-reclamation-activities-in-the-South-China-Sea-and-their-governments-stance/answer/Robin-Daverman?share=f8c02e20&srid=YlBl
And of course, before Japan it was the United States who showed Japan how to do it – refer – https://www.quora.com/Has-the-US-built-artificial-islands-for-military-purposes-like-China-has-been-doing-in-the-South-China-Sea/answers/25512824?share=0ae9d52f&srid=YlBl – Johnston Atoll
If Mr McCoy is correct in his assumption then WHY didn’t Mr Smarty comment on the how the Chinese treated (are dissed) the Presidency’s of Barack Hussein Obama and George Walker Bush?? What about the U.S. intelligence gathering plane the Chinese forced down in Southern China( during the Bush Administration) resulting in the death of a Chinese pilot and detaining the American crew for more then a month and taken apart the American spy plane piece by piece———-when the Americans didn’t demand back the crew and the plane are else——–the Chinese knew the Americans were a paper tiger———Mr McCoy———give us a break with this foolish article———the Asian Times audience knows a dummy with a lame, eyes closed piece of journalism like this!!
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just copy and past this…..
China’s behaviour is nothing new for millennia. It demanded and bullied if necessary from weaker states that they be tributary states" it has worked. Phillippines is already said it would rather be a province of China!
America’s options are limited and diminishing daily.
Militarily, China is much stronger than America in its Near Seas and much better armed.
Finanically, America’s much smaller, weaker economy cannot sustain a conflict with China’s dynamic industrial base and, though fleets may win battles, economies win wars.
If one is trying to promote US geopolitical interests in the SCS, the LAST thing which should be done is to make reference to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The US refuses to be a party to this Convention, as it will not be a party to many other UN conventions as it worries that they make illegal routine US actions.
Hahaha..can we get a article written with intelligent perspective and academic based analysis please.
Not an article written by a US service man with prejudicial views. A.T, youn are becoming a tabloid.
Once he states that China is a maritime bully I lost all interest in continuing with the article.
Talk about a kettle calling the pot back. If his assessment is true, it seems like China keeps beating the US at his own game.
US feels they have a divine right to rule the world forever.
So according to this writer China is practicing "Gunboat Diplomacy." I wonder where they learned how and the why to do that. I mean Great Briton and the USA would never practice a scurrilous strategy like that would they. Sniffle sniffle.How utterly outrages for them to think they can do what we have been doing for the last 500 years.
Would this bear any resemblance to the "Monroe Doctrine" ? Or being an American you may not know that this is the US tyranny over alll of Latin America Oh thats right under International Norms and Laws the US can do what it wants, but hypocritically complains when any other nation claims the same privelege.
Oh and the difference between China and the USA? The US brings military dominance, war, and regeime change. The Chinese bring economic prosperity, highspeed rail, highways. schools, hospitals and does not interfere with soveriegn governments. The Chinese system lifts all boats, . The US system sinks all boats except their own.
Jaime,
Your thoughts are all over the place. I cannot understand your muddled writing. What exactly are you trying to say? If you want to talk about Chinese thought or karmic retribution it should be – ‘every action has its corresponding deserving consequence’. Rewrite with that as the opening line and let us evaluate your reasoning on its logical merits. Maybe do a comparative study with the United States in terms of karmic retribution. Maybe also illustrate why China and the U.S. are respectively being punished for past wrongs like killing of innocent Indian tribes, slavery, forcing pagan children to convert to Christianity etc
Whoever wants to claim.ownership of the entire world by testing if one or all will fight back is a devil worshipper no fear of the One who created them.
Leave a last will and testament that your body be cut into.pieces when you die and scattered on all the territories you claim to be yours.
The author’s talking for talking’s sake, he does not know the real rule of games. It’s power and might, stupid! Take US itself. Why it accepted a divided Germany after WWII? Because Russia had the might to take Berlin first. Then the cold war. Why US came to talk friendly with China? Because USSR was strong in military competition , US could not won over and had to negotiate a Detente with its Communist rivalries. During the past years, US dispatched heavy forces to SCS to confront China, why it had not fired even one shot? Obviously, US figured out it had no chance to win China. That’s why Japan and other Asean nations never agreed to form a united naval fleet to fight with PLA, even with US promising that it would provide full support, at the back . Asians all remember the late Mr Li of Singapore ‘s warning: US does not have the will and power to overwhelm China, because its supply line is much longer and more difficult than China’s, and its national interests are far less in SCS than China is , to strengthen its soldiers’ fighting spirits. The same is true for the competition in whole pacific ocean, as China continues its rising of power, US would have to accept the dividing line in the middle of Pacific.
Japan, India, Australia, could they forget US president bypassed its allies and went to set up political ties with China secretly? Just see Abe published another article to welcome and drag Xi Jin Pin to visit Japan? Qud is Qud only.
Just read the comments given. Logical, rational and sensible comments without personal attacks with sometimes rude words used as I saw in some comments on some other articles. I suppose wrong choice of words have been used due to the "heat" of the moment with arguments and counter arguments.
You seem to lack the depth of knowledge on how a macroeconomy works.
Speaking of illegal activities, I like your Caucasian name that goes with the Chinese mentality.
Fröit Mi – define "Chinese mentality" first.
… and the US senses and acts on every body’s weaknesses everywhere in the world with its drone assassinaton campaigns in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somali, Suden and Yemen.
You are a moron, right?