SINGAPORE — There is a saying in international diplomacy: Watch what countries do,
rather than what they say.
China's recent actions in asserting its
claims to ownership and other forms of jurisdiction over about 80 percent of
the South China Sea speak louder than its oft-repeated soothing words that it
is not seeking hegemony. Actions in the past month include:
• Offering oil and gas exploration and
production rights to Chinese and foreign partner companies in nine blocks
covering just over 160,000 square kilometers of waters off Vietnam's central
coast, despite protests from Hanoi that the area belongs to Vietnam and is
already under lease.
Dispatching an unusually large fishing fleet
of 30 boats, escorted by a 3,000-ton patrol vessel, to part of the disputed
Spratly Islands, also claimed by the Philippines.
Issuing a warning through China's Defense
Ministry that "combat-ready" Chinese naval and air patrols are ready
to "protect our maritime rights and interests" in the South China
Sea.
With ASEAN, the Association of South East
Asian Nations, divided over how to deal with China's sweeping South China Sea
claims and external powers evidently unwilling to constrain Beijing, the way is
clear for further Chinese expansion.
Beijing is taking advantage of what it sees
as the weakness of ASEAN, the United States, Japan and other potential sources
of opposition to push its control mechanisms southward and ever deeper into the
maritime heart of Southeast Asia.
Meanwhile, China has clarified the extent and
nature of its controversial claim to control a vast swath of the South China
Sea. The official Xinhua news agency said July 19 that China has
"sovereignty" over an area of 1.5 million square kilometers,
stretching as far south as James Shoal, about 80 kilometers north of the
coastline of Sarawak, in East Malaysia, and Brunei. The shoal is some 1,800
kilometers from the Chinese mainland.
Xinhua did not specify which areas of the
South China Sea Beijing's sovereignty covered. But they certainly include the
three largest disputed archipelagos: the Paracel Islands, which China occupies
despite counterclaims and protests from Vietnam; the Macclesfield Bank and
Scarborough Shoal contested with the Philippines and Taiwan; and the Spratly
Islands, which are claimed in full or part by Vietnam, the Philippines,
Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.
Xinhua said that in "another move to
assert sovereignty", China had last month announced it would set up a
prefectural-level city, Sansha in the Paracels, to administer more than 200
islets, sandbanks and reefs in the three main island groups of the South China
Sea.
On July 22, China said it would station
troops at Sansha, but did not say when or how many would be based there.
Beijing's announcement that it would establish a garrison came just days after
ASEAN called on all parties to resolve any conflicts in the South China Sea
peacefully.
ASEAN's statement of principles was a
compromise after divisions left the group without a communique for the first
time in its 45-year history at the end of a foreign ministers' meeting in Phnom
Penh earlier this month.
Although the Sansha-administered zone covers
a total of only 13 square km of island land, it encompasses 2 million square km
of surrounding waters, according to Xinhua. Presumably, the 2 million square km
of water is the full extent of Beijing's South China Sea claim and includes
territorial sea areas out to a distance of 22 km from land features, and
exclusive economic zones out to 370 km, as well as the underlying seabed on the
continental shelves.
This would give China authority over all the
fisheries, energy resources and minerals in this maritime domain.
China says that all its recent actions are in
response to moves by rival claimants, that its fishing boats are frequently
harassed or seized, that Vietnam had "illegally" extended its
administration over the Spratlys and Paracels and launched fighter patrols over
the former, and that Southeast Asian countries have been "stealing"
oil and gas in the South China Sea belonging to China since the 1970s.
After a big buildup in its military power in
recent years, China is now embarking on a muscular phase of asserting its South
China Sea claims. Its most recent action in sending a large fishing fleet with
a para-military escort ship seems designed to confront and intimidate the
Philippines and other Spratly claimants. The fleet arrived at Subi Reef on July
18 to start fishing. The reef is within the Spratly area claimed by the
Philippines.
"Big fleet fishing" by China is
likely to be become a key part of its extended presence in the South China Sea.
But He Jianbin, chief of the state-run Baosha Fishing Corp., based on Hainan
Island, wants to go further. He has urged the Chinese government to turn
fishermen into militiamen to serve as a spearhead to advance China's claims.
"If we put 5,000 Chinese fishing boats
in the South China Sea, there will be 100,000 fishermen," he said in the
Global Times, published by the ruling Communist Party, on June 28.
"And if we make all of them militiamen,
give them weapons, we will have a military force stronger than all the combined
forces of all the countries in the South China Sea."
This is gunboat diplomacy with Chinese
characteristics.
What the South China Sea needs is a cooling
off period in which rival claimants step back from confrontation and consider
how to manage and resolve disputes peacefully, based on international law.
Michael Richardson
Michael Richardson is a visiting senior
research fellow at the Institute of South East Asian Studies in Singapore.
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