TAIPEI - As China's state media threatens
Vietnam with war and its diplomats warn the United
States to keep out of tensions brewing in the
South China Sea in the past weeks, another major
player in the region - Taiwan - has been standing
inconspicuously on the sidelines.
There
has been talk in Taiwan, which has its foothold in
the resource-rich waters, about deployment of
combat troops and allegations that the Kuomintang
(KMT) government wants to side with China against
its US-backed southern neighbors over the
territorial disputes.
Taiwan's Republic
of China (ROC) flag flies over two areas in the
South China Sea. In the northern part, there are
the Dongsha Islands, which in English are
commonly called Pratas,
850 kilometers southwest
of Taipei; and there is Taiping Island, or Itu
Aba, the largest island in the Spratlys archipelago
and the only one with a freshwater supply,
about 1,600 km southwest from Taiwan proper's most
southern tip.
As the People's Republic of
China (PRC) claims not only the whole of the ROC
as its territory but also views the entire South
China Sea as its internal waters, it's almost
needless to say that to Beijing, both
Taiwan-controlled Dongsha and Taiping are PRC
possessions.
Apart from Taipei
and Beijing, the Philippines and Vietnam also
claim sovereignty over Taiping, whose only occupants
are members of Taiwan's coastguard and the Taiwanese
staff of a weather station. As competing
territorial claims over the area have been made in
ever shorter intervals, from earlier this year on,
Taiwan's political cast has increasingly been
talking about the need to strengthen Taiping's
defense.
The punchless coastguard
stationed there ought to be replaced by marines
and military-grade weapons systems should be
deployed in order to deter aggression by the other
claimants and to gain a better position in future
negotiations, so run demands by lawmakers from
the ruling KMT party. In a move obviously going
in the same direction, a Taiwan navy fleet in
late April stopped by Taiping Island with several
fleet officials disembarking for a chat with coastguard
officials.
Unsurprisingly, regional
media attached importance to the matter, indulging
in wild speculation. There were reports on
the deployment of Hai-Ou class missile boats,
M41A3 Walker Bulldog light tanks, 40mm automatic guns
as well as mortars, all of which have been squarely denied by Taiwan's Ministry of
National Defense (MND). In mid-June, when tensions
between China and Vietnam and the Philippines
started becoming particularly worrisome as rhetoric from
all sides turned somewhat ugly, the MND felt
compelled to deny that it would stage war games in
response.
Up to this day, the
only Taiwanese measure to strengthen Taiping is
that coastguard members have undergone training in
defending their positions against assaults and
making arrests.
Strategically,
pocketing the South China Sea is extremely important, if
not crucial, for the PRC. Western military
literature has suggested that Chinese President Hu Jintao
has spent many sleepless nights as he frets that
in the case of an outbreak of conflict with the
US, the US could overnight block sea lines of
communication (SLOC) vital to China.
The
maritime routes Beijing overwhelmingly depends on
to transport raw materials and oil from Africa and
the Middle East to feed the Chinese economy
precariously all run through waters that the US
Navy's firepower can reach relatively easily.
There is Naval Support Activity Bahrain, home to
US Naval Forces Central Command and United States
Fifth Fleet, right in the middle of the Persian
Gulf. And there are Sunda and Lombok, belonging to
Indonesia, and the Strait of Malacca, in which
Singapore is located. Both countries are US
allies, with the city-state formally granting the
US military access to an air base, a naval base
and wharves.
As a boycott of
these SLOCs would directly affect China's
economic growth, on which the very survival of the
Chinese Communist Party's (CCP's) rule depends, it comes as
little surprise that Beijing naturally looks for
alternative resources. To China's strategic
planners, the South China Sea on their doorstep
with its estimated 28 billion barrels of oil in
addition to natural gas reserves, therefore comes
as at least part of the solution.
It is
just that Vietnamese and Philippine claims once
and for all must be shoved aside in order to give
Hu, and certainly even much more so his
successors, a good night's sleep.
In terms
of Taiwan's role, the indicators are that the
island will make for a more useful than hindering
factor in Beijing's calculus. Whereas the military
deployment on Taiping that KMT lawmakers have been
pushing for would lack all meaning militarily, the
Taiwanese presence there fits well into Chinese
strategic planning.
"In recent years,
China has urged Taiwan many times to jointly
protect what it calls 'common ancestral rights'.
This has openly been promoted by researchers at
the People's Liberation Army Academy such as Major
General Luo Yuan, the academy's deputy
secretary-general", said Wang Jyh-perng, an
associate research fellow at the Association for
Managing Defense and Strategies and reserve
captain of the Taiwan Navy, in an interview with
Asia Times Online.
Wang dismissed the
notion that military-grade weaponry or marines on
Taiping would be of use in deterring Vietnam or
the Philippines, the other two claimants.
"Presently, from a purely military
perspective, both Vietnam and the Philippines are
no match for Taiwan. But its distance to Taiwan
proper is farther compared to Vietnam and
Philippines, so that the Taiwanese air force would
find it difficult providing air superiority
support, neither Vietnam nor the Philippines would
calculate they can easily put up with a Taiwanese
naval task force", Wang said.
In case of
conflict, China wouldn't watch idly but would
instead jump on the opportunity to come to
Taiwan's defense, even uninvited. "China would
directly support Taiwan with no prior negotiations
needed, for example by providing air support from
nearby Hainan Island", Wang said.
Lai
I-chung, an executive committee member of the
Taiwan Thinktank, a public policy research
institution based in Taipei, goes much farther.
Whereas Wang brought into account that Beijing
invited Taipei to jointly face neighboring nations
and would come to Taiwan's help, Lai indicated
that the KMT government has long ago made up its
mind to side with the Chinese.
"Due to the
action Ma Ying-jeou's KMT government took after
the Senkaku [called Diaoyutai in Taiwan and Diaoyu
island in China] incident in September 2010, and
Taiwan's National Security Council saying there is
no such thing as sovereignty disputes between
Taiwan and China, people are suspecting the move
of military deployment on Itu Aba [Taiping] is
Taiwan's attempt to flank China toward Vietnam,"
Lai said.
The Senakaku incident Lai
referred to occurred on September 7, 2010 when a
Chinese trawler operating in the disputed waters
collided with Japanese Coast Guard's patrol boats,
first leading to a major Beijing-Tokyo spat and
consequently to Tokyo shifting the focus of its
defense policy away from Russia toward China.
Lai argued that back then, the
Ma administration during the high point of
Sino-Japan tensions sent a coastguard fleet to protest
against Japan, thereby putting additional pressure
on Tokyo as opposed to trying to calm things down.
Therefore a military deployment on Taiping now
would somewhat resemble that decision, only this
time, Hanoi and not Tokyo would be on the
receiving end of the joint China-Taiwan effort.
Lai described a pincer movement on Vietnam
jointly carried out by Beijing and Taipei and
furthermore brought into account that in late 2009
a publication belonging to a KMT think tank had
indeed proposed that Taipei should cooperate with
Beijing in the South China Sea to pave way for
cross-strait military confidence building measures
(CBMs). Oil and gas recovery and the joint use of
Taiwan's facilities on Taiping island were
included among other measures in that proposal.
"Some senior KMT officials believe the
South China Sea issue can provide great
opportunity to enhance cross-strait relations,"
Lai said.
He nonetheless acknowledged
that for now, Ma wouldn't risk irking Washington
by bringing forward cooperation with China in
the disputed waters, but "taking Ma's
'cross-strait policy trumps all other foreign
policy initiatives' together, it can be seen
where the KMT might be heading in South China Sea
issue", Lai concluded.
Unconfirmed
reports have it that clandestine Beijing-Taipei
cooperation on the South China Sea sovereignty
dispute may not be historically unprecedented. In
the 1970s, KMT's Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek
allegedly turned a blind eye on the People's
Liberation Army Navy sailing through
KMT-controlled waters to seize the Paracels, which
were then occupied by South Vietnam.
It is
furthermore alleged that even the present-day PRC
mainly relies on naval maps drawn up by the KMT
government many decades ago when it ruled China as
proof that Beijing is the one and only rightful
owner of the entire South China Sea.
Yet
there are also voices that don't subscribe to the
notion that Taipei wants to pocket an extremely
significant body of water together with Beijing
and would consider military deployment on Taiping
island in order to put pressure on other
claimants.
Oliver Braeuner, a China and
security expert at the Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute, told Asia Times Online
that although Taiwan has considerable military
capabilities, it's not going to use them in
disputed waters against Vietnam, the Philippines
or whoever.
"As Taiwan's armed forces'
main priority is [still] to defend Taiwan against
a Chinese invasion, these forces are not easily
available for deployment in the South China Sea,"
Brauner said. He added that for Taipei, defending
territorial claims does not seem to be a political
priority, except perhaps for a very small portion
of an ultra-hawkish KMT-leaning, Chinese
nationalist fringe of Taiwanese politics.
"I would see any talk by the KMT
government about defending these claims as an
effort to placate that part of the electorate," Braeuner said.
Jens Kastner is a
Taipei-based journalist.
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2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights
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