Waters roil in the South China
Sea By Joel D Adriano
MANILA - Escalating tensions between China
and Southeast Asian claimants to the Spratly
Islands threaten to spill over into a full-blown
conflict. The Philippines and Vietnam are at
particular loggerheads with Beijing after a series
of provocations that some believe show China is
taking a more assertive stance on its claims in
the potentially oil and gas rich maritime area.
Vietnam last week accused China of
"intentionally" attacking one of its survey ships
in an area inside its exclusive economic zone. It
represented the second a Chinese vessel confronted
a Vietnamese one in the area over the last two
weeks. On Thursday, China sent patrol ships into
the sea to "protect maritime security," according
to the official Beijing Daily.
The tension
has fueled anti-Chinese sentiment across Vietnam,
with thousands taking to the streets in Hanoi and
Ho Chi Minh
City to protest Chinese naval
operations in the disputed waters and Vietnamese
hackers launching cyberspace attacks on official
Chinese websites.
China has also crossed
swords with the Philippines through repeated
intrusions on Philippine-claimed islands in the
Spratlys. China has dismissed the accusations as
"rumors" even as Chinese ambassador to the
Philippines Liu Jinchao during a news conference
warned Asian neighbors to stop oil and gas
explorations in areas Beijing considers as part of
its sovereign territory.
The two countries
have swapped high-level diplomatic protests to
stake their claims. The Philippines cited six
Chinese intrusions from February to May in a
protest filed with the United Nations earlier this
month. The incidents include the Chinese navy
firing on Filipino fishermen, a Chinese vessel
intimidating a Philippine oil exploration ship and
Beijing putting posts and buoys in waters claimed
by Manila.
Manila is also protesting
China's construction of new structures on islands
it claims. Senator Francis Pangilinan criticized
China's actions as "unbecoming of a world power".
For its part, China submitted a diplomatic note to
the United Nations claiming that the Philippines
invaded the Spratlys in the 1970s - a claim that
security analysts consider ridiculous given the
pathetic state of the Philippine navy.
Ambassador Liu said that the
Chinese ships took action to keep Filipino
fishermen from its "jurisdiction" despite the fact
the areas claimed by China are geographically very
close to the Philippines. For instance, the Reed Bank
area where one incident took place is just 80
nautical miles (148 kilometers) from Palawan, the
Philippines' western-most province, but is nearly
500 miles (800 kilometers) from China.
The
Kalayaan islands and the Scarborough Shoal are
both closer to Palawan than to any of the other
claimants and lie within its archipelagic
baselines - the only claimant who can make such a
geological claim.
United States Defense
Secretary Robert Gates, who was in the Philippines
on May 30 for talks related to bilateral defense
ties, warned the competing claims could cause
instability in the region and that clashes could
erupt unless nations with conflicting claims adopt
a mechanism to settle disputes peacefully.
The Spratly islands, named after English
mariner Richard Spratly, are part of a group of
more than 650 islands, islets, reefs, cays and
atolls in the South China Sea. They comprise less
than five square kilometers of land area spread
over more than 400,000 square kilometers of sea.
The disputed islands are largely
uninhabited but include important shipping lanes
and are believed by some to hold major reserves of
oil and gas. They are claimed in whole or in part
by Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines,
Taiwan and Vietnam . The area is considered by US
intelligence as one of the eight top flashpoint
areas in the world, according to reports.
Tensions could escalate further after a
live ammunition military exercise earlier this
week by Vietnam and an earlier joint US-Philippine
exercise in the disputed waters. The Philippines
is also upping the ante against China with plans
in congress to formally rename the South China Sea
to the West Philippine Sea.
In filing the
resolution, Akbayan party-list representative
Walden Bello said the South China Sea name is a
misnomer which China is using and which has given
it undue advantage in its territorial claim. By
renaming it "we are taking a proactive move that
strengthens our claim", Bello said.
The
Philippine government used the new name officially
for the first time last Friday during a news
briefing on the issue. Department of Foreign
Affairs spokesperson Eduardo Malaya explained that
the name West Philippine Sea is reflective of its
proper geographic location. Media organizations in
the Philippines have also started using the new
name.
Political analyst Ed Dagdag of the
University of the Philippines' Asian Center
suggested that government officials including the
presidential spokesperson should refrain from
making inflammatory statements if they want to
settle the dispute peacefully.
Dagdag
believes that if a military confrontation breaks
out that the US, a key Philippine military ally,
would be unlikely to side with the Philippines due
to the risk of being dragged into a potential
major conflict with China. Gates stressed during
his Philippines visit that the US has "no
position" on the competing Spratly claims.
Despite the posturing and rhetoric, the
Philippines will be hard-pressed to prevent future
Chinese incursions and construction in the
contested area. Philippine President Benigno
Aquino, along with other claimant Southeast Asian
states, has said they prefer to strike a
multilateral solution to the dispute - in stark
contrast to China's position of insisting on
bilateral negotiations. But because China has
balked at suggestions the US play a mediating
role, tensions in the South China Sea are set to
get hotter before cooler.
Joel D
Adriano is an independent consultant and
award-winning freelance journalist. He was a
sub-editor for the business section of The Manila
Times and writes for ASEAN BizTimes, Safe
Democracy and People's Tonight.
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