The last ASEAN Regional Forum sent shockwaves through the region. A year on, have the US and China found a way of preventing an escalation in the region?
When I was a student in the Naval Officer Candidate School, learning to drive ships, I was taught about the hazards of the South China Sea, where our instructors told us to stay away from those dangerous islands and shoals. Today, it’s one of the most heavily trafficked waterways in the world. The islands and shoals are still there, but now more heavily contested amid territorial and maritime disputes. The watchword for the United States more than ever should be ‘caution, dangerous waters!’
This is a timely warning because the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) is about to hold its annual foreign ministers’ meeting in Bali. The previous meeting in Hanoi last July sent shockwaves through the region when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared US support for ‘a collaborative diplomatic process by all claimants for resolving the various territorial disputes without coercion,’ implying that Beijing departed from the Declaration of Conduct for the South China Sea (DOC) of 2002 and further suggesting that Beijing was muscling its outlandish territorial claims individually against the three other major claimant states in the area, in violation of the DOC. Clinton offered her ‘good offices’ to provide a forum for dealing collectively with issues among the claimants.
China reacted badly at first to Clinton’s engagement on the South China Sea and in some of the finer details—such as not giving Beijing prior warning—her intervention might have been handled more diplomatically. But in the end, it was timely and effective. She got Beijing’s attention and the support of most of the region for a common effort to resist China’s efforts to exploit the weaknesses of smaller counterparts through one-on-one confrontation.
Beijing hasn’t yet given up on its one-on-one approach, but it is encountering more unified resistance and adjusting its tactics. The history of the territorial claims issues in the South China Sea is long and extremely complicated. They involve overlapping tensions about control of islets and shoals, rights to territorial waters and exclusive economic zones (EEZs), and access to their fishing and mineral resources. There are also disputes about the meaning of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which is itself supposed to provide rules for the settlement of disputes about the control and use of the area.
China is caught between two forces. One is the political need to stick to broad and individually questionable claims for the islands and their adjacent waters based on history, formerly represented by Beijing’s nine-dashed line surrounding the islands of the sea and implying sovereignty over virtually the entire South China Sea. The other is the attractiveness of relying on existing international law and making narrower UNCLOS-based claims that stand a better chance of being respected, a path toward which Beijing seems to be moving. In today’s newly strong China, buoyed by nationalism, careers will not be advanced by denying plainly and publicly the legitimacy of the nine-dashed line inherited from the last days of the Kuomintang government in 1947. Outsiders’ calls for the Chinese to clarify the situation can be viewed by some in China as offering a choice of suicide or war. But when China has had to meet UNCLOS deadlines to file partial claims, it has mostly played cautiously by the rules of UNCLOS, as it interprets them, or sought to avoid confronting them.
For their part, the other major disputants (Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia) came to their legal claims fairly late in the game, mostly after soundings suggested in the 1970s that hydrocarbons may be present in commercially valuable quantities. But these are also complicated by colonial legacies and concessions, and patterns of customary use by fishermen and sailors over the centuries. Even a non-claimant, Singapore, was drawn into the diplomatic tussle when China sent a naval vessel through the South China Sea to Singapore last month and attempted to suggest the city state was legitimating China’s claims. Singapore’s foreign ministry spokesman was compelled to denounce the manoeuvre and call for China to clarify its oversized claims.
Photo Credit: US Navy
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Tom Tran
I just wonder why Chinese are so boastful about their country, their regime, military etc. Look, they are still a third world country with $3000 per capita GDP. Since when have they started thinking like the American, i.e. they are strong, they are superior to others? the foundation of China’s rise is not solid, as it is founded on cheap labors, PR theft and resource intensive growth. It happened to have the right scale of economy, ruled by an iron fist dictatorship regime. But those factors will get saturated very shortly when they want to move to quality instead of quantity growth. Let’s wait until they unravel that economic miracle by themselves.
Bose
Chinas troops numbers cannot defeat vietnam. the vietnamese guerillas have fought long wars imagine such a small number of North Vietnamese troops fought with america for more than 10years but what happened …………1979 china lost face could not do anything with china backed Pol pot regime….. china could not save them all fled away cambodia…… and now china will be economically collapsed if enters war at south china sea no chinese ships can pass through the south china sea which will be complete shut down of chinese businesses…… my friend china cannot do anything and fighting with USA/JAPAN/KOREA/AUSTRALIA/MALAYSIA/PHILLIPINESE/TAIWAN/CAMBODIA China is surely inviting Death forthem Welcome you chinese be ready for your own death.
Bose
China will be defeated again by Vietnam which happened way back in 1979…….. china invaded vietnam and claims Victory loosing 43000 chinese soldiers died in less than a month whereas 10000 vietnamese unarmed villagers of caobang and lanson. but finally vietnam won the crushing the cambodian regime what could china do ………..Coward chinese attacked vietnam when vietnam was busy with POL POT regime ….. and vietnamese have a taught a lesson to France , America and China already.. but if still china is interested to have another war vietnam will surely teach a great lesson to written in history. watch out china is willing to fight with half of the world finally China will loose………
Observer
@ Frank said “After the high speed rail is completed”.
You mean AFTER all the crashes? LOL.
Frank
Vietnam had been conquered by China before.It can be conquered again.
1) Sustained the war is bad. However, China fought sustained war against Japanese before. You should read Mao’s article “Sustained Warfare”. Chinese are master of sustained wars.
2) Guerilla war is bad for USA and French. China won many Guerilla wars before. China will win again. Vietnam is not that different than Guangxi province. They were the same province during Chinese 1000 years occupation of Vietnam. South Guangxi broke away during South Song while Chinese fought Mongols became today’s Vietnam. Same people, same terrain.
3) Regardless whatever China does, the so called international society, or in other words, white men’s club will not approve. When did you read that “international society” approves China’s action?
4) China is much stronger today than 1979.
5) Vietnam only has 80 million people, there is no way that they can have 30 million troops. If they do, China can easily assembly 30 million militias and move them into Vietnam.
6) There are also large numbers of Chinese Vietnamese, and Hmong (Miao) people can be tapped for militias and officials.
7) After the high speed rail is completed, Hanoi is only 2 hours away from China’s large city Nanning. Army’s can leave their family in Nanning and go to work in Hanoi. Da Nang is 15 minutes flight to Sanya. One of China’s large Navy base. So occupation is no longer as costly as in Song dynasty.
2000 years ago, it would take one or two months to travel from any large Chinese cities to Vietnam. China could keep Vietnam under control then, China can keep Vietnam under control now. Especially the north Vietnam. I think China will let South Vietnam go. It is too far and too costly to defend.
Proximity, ease of transportation, similar culture, language and people, resources for a very large army are the keys that China has over USA and French.
Conclusion is that China can win the war against Vietnam.
Nam Nguyen
Seriously, how young are you to speak of today international relations in such naive and ignorant tone?
luc
To Frank
You must be a day dreamer. Let’s think again on your Tibet and Urumqi areas. In those ares Han people are majority but you can not suppress the indigenous peoples.How many Han people do you want to bring to Vietnam to make Vietnam become a Chinese province? In fact you can not take two small Taiwanese islands near your mainland. Having a war with Vietnam is not good choice for China.
Crimsonleaf
Numbers alone do not win a war or even a battle.
Swiss vs HRE, Swedes vs Poles, Mongols vs Chinese, Mongols vs Khwarezm
Afghanistan vs Soviets, and Southern Sudan comes to mind as the most recent.
The underdog is never alone, generally there are advantages to being one and disadvantages. The most important thing is the will to fight.
Frank you do realize that if China ever actually did what you said, it wouldn’t work. Logistics and supplies to feed those 30 million + the disruption from not having Vietnamese rice imports which would collapse since it would be used for their own war effort would create an instant shortage of food in China proper. The price cringe would create so much instability that there would have to be even more troops to “stabilize” their own country.
China is doing a very wise thing, asking for the Moon and then “conciliating” for a much larger pie than would be offered in a actual negotiation. The problem with this is that the ‘appetite’ for getting what you want and not compromising grows stronger and strong, eventually the ideal and perception are very murky. This is where they will make a mistake, the push through a third party instead of getting reasonably more from actual negotiations will create a backlash. Once it starts, the U.S. will propose a unanimous “objective” and once it is agreed to by all parties (except China) it will be enforced. This will effectively strip ability to negotiate piecemeal by the Chinese. Thus far the attempt to make a quick claim, and enforce it tries to force the issue and create acquiescence to the existence of agreement where none exists, this failed and in the future it will unravel unless they get binding agreements at least from some of the parties (They won’t they are bargaining too hard where the counter party has nothing to gain by agreement).
Kowloon
You might want to see this clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gx1c_0itqjc&feature=player_embedded
The guy in white is one of the peaceful protestors near Chinese embassy in Hanoi. All he tried to do was to protest the china’s aggression in South China Sea. Jul 17.
Hu Jintao must be happy. NTD does the good job for China.
Zhou
We will take over the entire South China Sea in a few years and then shut the mouth of the poverty sticken Indians through Pakistan. With bankrupt Americans withdrawing from Pakistan, it is only a matter of time before Pakistan becomes our client state. Once our Western front, including oil supplies are secured, we will go after the Americans in the Pacific. So run now you bankrupt american beggars.
Frank
You are not a Chinese. You must be an Indian.
Pakistan is our friend.
If you read our history, China never ever attacked a friendly country.