Page 1 of 2 US goes fishing for trouble
By Peter Lee
United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton roiled China at the recent
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers' meeting in
Hanoi by stating that the United States had "a national interest in freedom of
navigation, open access to Asia's maritime commons, and respect for
international law in the South China Sea".
She also expressed support for a "collaborative diplomatic process" on the
matter of disputes in the South China Sea - anathema to China, which is
committed to a series of separate bilateral negotiations with the various
nations with claims on the
Spratly (called Nansha by Chinese) and Paracel (Called Xisha by Chinese)
Islands.
A certain amount of media energy was expended to frame Clinton's remarks as a
response to a "disturbing" expansion of China's definition of its core
interests beyond Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan to include the South China Sea.
There is a good deal of evidence to indicate that China is not trying to
ratchet up tensions in the South China Sea, at least not vis-a-vis its southern
neighbors.
Rather, it appears that the United States is once again using a contentious
issue to exacerbate a problem, isolate China diplomatically, and to make room
for an expanded role for Washington as the protector of the interests of
China's smaller and more anxious neighbors - while diverting attention from
certain provocative US actions.
Kyodo News on June 3 cited unnamed officials to allege that China asserted that
the South China Sea was a "core interest" during the visit of the US National
Security Council's Jeffrey Bader and the State Department's James Steinberg to
Beijing in March. The rest of the media - including the Chinese papers - seem
to have picked it up from there.
The purpose of the March meeting was to gain America's recommitment to
non-interference in China's internal affairs, particularly as it pertained to
Tibet and Taiwan, as the price China demanded for joining the United Nations
sanctions vote against Iran over Tehran's nuclear program.
The issue was resolved to China's satisfaction with a reaffirmation of the
one-China policy. The mini-reset in Sino-US relations was marked by a statement
by China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs valuing "the US side's reiteration of
its principled commitment on issues concerning Taiwan and Tibet".
A senior Chinese diplomat declared that President Barack Obama and President Hu
Jintao had "reached an important new consensus" during a phone call. "China has
an understanding with the United States for each to respect the core interests
of the other." [1]
China thereupon participated in Obama's Nuclear Security Summit and joined the
sanctions-writing effort against Iran at the UN Security Council.
Given the outcome, it would appear unlikely that China would have used this
meeting to make new and provocative claims concerning the South China Sea that
the United States would have found unacceptable but ignored in March and waited
until July to challenge.
In any case, China's treatment of the South China Sea disputes is fundamentally
different from its attitude toward "core interests" of Taiwan, Tibet and
Xinjiang. These are defined as China's internal affairs and Beijing accepts no
third-party involvement in its dealings.
Unambiguously, China treats the conflicts in the South China Sea as an
international issue.
The main point of contention is not whether China will discuss South China Sea
disputes with neighboring countries; it is whether discussions will be held
bilaterally or multilaterally.
What is most likely is that China raised the issue of the South China Sea with
Bader and Steinberg, not in the context of its myriad disputes with Vietnam,
the Philippines, Taiwan and Malaysia, but in the context of intensive US
intelligence-gathering in the region.
The United States is very interested in intelligence-gathering to monitor
movements of submarines from the massive new People's Liberation Army Navy
(PLAN) base near Sanya in Hainan, and to map the South China Sea floor to make
the task of detecting and (in event of conflict) destroying Chinese subs more
easily.
The primary point of friction is the surveillance vessel Impeccable,
which lumbers across the South China Sea inside China's Economic Exclusion Zone
(EEZ) towing sonar gear listening for Chinese subs and, apparently, employing
active sonar to map the sea bottom.
The United States exploits a loophole in the Law of the Sea Treaty (a treaty
that the US has not ratified) which, while restricting unauthorized economic
exploitation, permits peacetime military transit through EEZs by other
countries.
In America's opinion, sending the Impeccable on extended cruises through
China's EEZ to degrade China's submarine warfare capabilities is completely
legal.
China stations its ballistic-missile submarines - a key element in modernizing
its nuclear deterrent - at Hainan, so American efforts to diminish the
effectiveness of this deterrent could, indeed, be construed as a matter of
China's "core interest".
However, to this date China has not mustered the geopolitical determination to
respond to the US's shenanigans in the South China Sea as an existential
threat. The US naval presence in the South China Sea is addressed with a
certain lack of superpower gravitas.
In a widely publicized incident, Chinese vessels approached the Impeccable
in 2009 and harassed it, forcing the ship to deploy its fire hoses and to be
exposed to the spectacle of Chinese sailors stripped to their underwear in
retaliation.
In an apparently less-publicized incident this year, Chinese ships hassled the Impeccable
in March.
The Chinese government also vented its displeasure on the issue of intensive
surveillance at the recent Shangri-La defense ministers' conference in
Singapore. However, the Chinese delegation characterized the surveillance as an
obstacle to a resumption of Sino-US military exchanges, not an infringement of
China's "core interests".
If there is truly a new Chinese doctrine declaring the South China Sea as a
"core interest", as Kyodo News reported - and China has yet to officially take
that position, despite discussion in the Chinese media - then it appears to be
recent, partial and fatally ambiguous.
It would appear that China wants to draw a conditional red line around the
South China Sea - as opposed to the absolute red lines around Tibet, Xinjiang
and Taiwan - that would not be crossed in the case of local atoll-grabbing by
its neighbors, but would be violated if any nation clubbed together with the
United States to challenge China's strategic freedom of action in the South
China Sea.
In a recent Global Times editorial "American shadow over the South China Seas",
China's "core interests" in the South China Sea were referenced, but in the
context of competition with the United States.
With growing economic
power, China and the US may encounter more clashes in China's adjacent sea. Few
Southeast Asian countries would like to get in the middle of Sino-US tensions,
but like many other regions, they are caught in a dilemma: economically close
to China yet militarily guarded against China.
Southeast Asian countries need to understand any attempt to maximize gains by
playing a balancing game between China and the US is risky.
China's tolerance was sometimes taken advantage of by neighboring countries to
seize unoccupied islands and grab natural resources under China's sovereignty.
China's long-term strategic plan should never be taken as a weak stand. It is
clear that military clashes would bring bad results to all countries in the
region involved, but China will never waive its right to protect its core
interest with military means. [2]
This is a distinction that
China has a certain amount of difficulty in conveying to ASEAN countries, and
the United States has shown little interest in accepting it.
In this context, it would appear that Clinton's statement at the ASEAN meeting
declaring the US's national interest in the resolution of the South China Sea
disputes was a piece of diplomatic mischief-making designed to highlight the
hollowness of Chinese pretensions to military and diplomatic eminence in the
South China Sea, and to retaliate for Chinese intransigence on the joint
US-South Korea exercises off the coasts of the Korean Peninsula.
With the assistance of the Western media, Clinton successfully diverted the
focus from US monitoring to the severe but by no means critical issue of
disputes between China and the maritime nations of Southeast Asia over the
scattered rocks and reefs of the South China Sea.
The Japanese Asahi Shimbun newspaper provided a classic example. The headline
read "China ratcheting up regional tension". The text, however, would confuse
readers attempting to learn how China was ratcheting up tensions.
The
latest nervousness felt by rival claimants to the Spratly Islands, which are
strategically located near several primary shipping lanes, was highlighted by
an incident in late April when a fleet of Chinese fishing boats was operating
near Layang Layang island, one of dozens of islands in the Spratly group.
A Malaysian warship and a spotter plane approached to within 300 meters of the
boats.
The fishermen repeatedly yelled through their communications equipment: "This
area is part of our economic sea zone. We are engaged in routine work. We have
traditionally always fished here. Do not obstruct our business."
Chinese media reported that sailors on the Malaysian warship removed the cover
of a cannon mounted on the stern to show that they meant business and continued
to shadow the fishing boats.
More than 900 Chinese fishing boats routinely operate in these waters. The
boats, along with their crews and fishing hauls, are routinely seized by
neighboring countries. [3]
America's willingness to fish in
the troubled waters of the South China Sea was encouraged by other countries'
frustrations in dealing with China over the islands issue.
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