Hidden depths in South China Sea
tensions By Roberto Tofani
Disputes over the South China Sea must be
conducted and solved peacefully. This sentence
summarizes most statements released by government
officials after bilateral or multilateral meetings
on the issue, but also highlights the absence of a
real political will and the continuing
unpredictability and instability in the region.
Disputes related to sovereignty about land
and jurisdiction over maritime areas show that
tensions can only increase in the months ahead; or
at least until a new and more binding Code of
Conduct (COC) on the South China Sea is agreed
upon by China and the 10-member Association of
Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN). Lastly, the claim
to be looking for a "peaceful solution", as
expressed by the parties, has not prevented a new
arms race in the region.
The latest
incident this week saw the Philippines' largest
warship, the Gregorio Del Pilar engage in
an naval standoff with two
Chinese surveillance
craft after the latter intervened to prevent the
crew of eight Chinese fishing boats being detained
alleged illegal fishing in Scarborough Shoal,
which lies off the Philippines' northwest coast
but which is also claimed by China. As the crisis
reached its third day on Thursday, diplomats from
both countries were still scrambling to defuse
tensions.
As anticipated by some
observers, the South China Sea issue was not on
the agenda during the ASEAN summit held in
Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh at the beginning of
April. The association has a standard operating
procedure meant to disguise controversial issues,
however, Cambodia's decision as ASEAN chairman not
to discuss the issue also reveals China's
influence.
Cambodia has remained silent on
the issue since it was raised by US Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton during the ASEAN Regional
Forum in July 2010, and Cambodia and Myanmar were
the only two ASEAN members opposed to raising
maritime security concerns during the East Asia
Summit held last November in Bali in the presence
of US President Barack Obama. In recent years,
Phnom Penh has accumulated over $8 billion in
debts from Chinese loans.
"It appears
Cambodia first listed the South China Sea on the
formal agenda and then withdrew it. This is likely
to be because China expressed strong views. In any
event, ASEAN often masks contentious issues by not
referring to them directly. It is clear from the
final Chair's Statement that the South China Sea
was discussed," Emeritus Professor Carlyle A
Thayer, from thee University of New South Wales at
the Australian Defense Force Academy in Canberra,
explained to Asia Times Online.
At the end
of the two-day meeting, as reported in a press
statement, the 10 leaders "stressed the need to
intensify efforts to ensure the effective and full
implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct
of Parties (DOC) based on the guidelines for the
implementation of the DOC".
Sovereignty
over areas of the South China Sea is contested by
China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan
and Brunei. Many areas of the South China Sea are
believed to be rich in fossil fuels and are
important to regional navigation and trade. In the
past year, tensions have spiked through incidents
at sea, especially between two of the claimants,
China and Vietnam.
The two parties reached
an agreement last year to solve territorial
disputes bilaterally their, and the fact that - as
stated also by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign
Affairs - no country involved in the dispute
claims all of the South China Sea area, seems to
bode well for the future.
In February,
Hanoi and Beijing set up working groups at
department level to work on disputed issues in the
South China Sea, activating a telephone hotline
between the two foreign ministries at the
beginning of March. The new approach could also
help clarify what both parties claim in the
disputed zone.
In 2009, Vietnam outlined
its claims in its submission to the United Nations
Commission on the Limits of Continental Shelf.
"Vietnam appeared to shift from claiming the
waters to claiming those features - islands and
rocks - which it occupied. Vietnam hasn't yet
claimed which features are islands under
international law and therefore entitled to a 200
nautical miles [nm] EEZ and continental shelf, and
which features are rocks entitled to a territorial
sea of 12 nm," said Thayer.
Hence,
problems and unresolved issues still remain
because "China has not specified whether it is
claiming all the features including those occupied
by Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia or just
the features it occupies", underlines Thayer.
For example, when CNOOC Ltd - China's
biggest offshore oil explorer - decided in March
to develop the oil- and gas-rich northern areas of
the South China Sea, the Vietnamese Foreign
Ministry said that this violated Vietnam's
sovereignty.
Authorities in Hanoi singled
out Block 65/24, which it said sits one nautical
mile from one of the Paracel Islands, denouncing a
range of Chinese actions that violate its
territory. In reply, Chinese Foreign Ministry
spokesman Liu Weimin dismissed the allegations and
called on Vietnam to respect China's territorial
integrity.
Moreover, when a foreign
company operates in contested waters, like the
Indian ONGC Videsh, Chinese authorities contend
that they are plundering Chinese resources. In
this particular case, "China's claims to historic
rights overlap Vietnam's claimed Exclusive
Economic Zone (EEZ)-where India's ONGC has a
license. If China clarified the basis of its
claim, this would help resolve this particular
problem," explains Professor Thayer.
The
Chinese attempt to win back the trust of ASEAN and
claimants countries is therefore undermined by
Beijing's lack of transparency and by its
assertiveness on the issue. Two of the major
causes of a new arms race in the region that lead
also to the "proliferation of submarines,
anti-ship missiles and C4ISR-command, control,
communication and computing, intelligence,
surveillance and reconnaissance-capabilities," as
underlined by Thayer.
"Even if Vietnam has
been opening up to Western arms suppliers for
years, in the last period the requests from the
government have been growing very fast, especially
for defense systems, for which we are competing
with other suppliers," a European supplier
confirmed, to ATol on condition of anonymity. "The
move that has garnered the most attention,
however, was the recent US$1.8 billion order of
six diesel-powered Kilo-class submarines from
Russia," as underlined by "The Hanoist" in a
recent article (See Vietnam
builds naval muscle, Asia Times Online, March
29, 2012). But Vietnam is not the only country
eager to expand their capabilities, as "the
Philippines has made us a lot of requests that I
cannot specify," added the European arms merchant.
As ASEAN members are buying weapons, the
Chinese submarine fleet is on high alert.
According to the US Office of Naval Intelligence -
as reported by Asahi Shimbun - five Jin-class
nuclear submarines, equipped with JL-2 ballistic
missiles that boast a range of more than 8,000
kilometers, are deployed in Sanya, the
southernmost city in the People's Republic of
China and one of the two prefecture-level cities
in Hainan province.
In this context, the
risk is a proliferation of nuclear-weapons in the
area, despite the diplomatic effort that led the
ASEAN members in 1995 to sign the Southeast Asian
Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty (SEANWFZ), a
nuclear weapons moratorium treaty. In November
2011, "the Nuclear Weapons States (China, France,
Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United states)
and ASEAN agreed to take the necessary steps to
enable the signing of the Protocol and its entry
into force at the earliest opportunity," but none
of the five States actually signed the protocol.
With tensions rising, the possibility of
incidents in the one of the fastest-growing
commercial maritime areas in the world is also
increasing. For years, ASEAN has been unable to
work on a diplomatic and peaceful solution to the
SCS issue with China, itself concerned with
preventing the new US. engagement in the
Asia-Pacific region. US diplomacy succeeded in
isolating China during the last East Asia Summit
by putting maritime security issues on the agenda
of the summit and underlining the importance of
"freedom of navigation" for commercial purposes.
ASEAN exploited that result to
counterbalance China's expansionism. However, some
ASEAN members fear that a more significant
presence of the US could destabilize the region.
Indonesia, for example, fears the presence of US
warships in support of Australia. Thailand
believes that the rivalry between China and the US
would intrude in regional affairs. The military
relationship between Washington and Hanoi, too,
that for some observers has entered a "new phase",
seems to be more symbolic than practical.
At the moment, the only ASEAN member eager
to support a new American "pivot strategy" in the
region seems to be the Philippines. Not only for
historical reasons, but also because Manila cannot
rely solely on their own military force, designed
to defend their own borders more than face
international armies.
Most of all, Beijing
does not want any interference in the South China
Sea. In an editorial published in the People's
Daily online, demands to respect the freedom of
navigation and take responsible actions in the
South China Sea, made by Lieutenant General Burton
Field, the commander of US Forces Japan, were
labeled as "not responsible".
"The United
States is deliberately blurring the issue of the
freedom of navigation and the issue of territorial
sovereignty and is deliberately creating a type of
public opinion to pave the way for implementing
its strategy," as opined by the newspaper of the
Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.
In this context, diplomacy seems to have
taken center stage over South China Sea disputes.
With the decision to implement the DOC,
authorities in Beijing want to demonstrate that
China is not a threat to regional security and to
recover the prestige it has lost also due to its
assertive behavior. "But China also knows that
negotiating with ASEAN states cuts out any role
for the United States in facilitating a
settlement. It is in China's interest to draw out
negotiations with ASEAN in order to play on
differences among ASEAN states," added Thayer.
During the 18th ASEAN Regional Forum held
in July, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi and
his ASEAN counterparts signed a document setting
out agreed measures to make the Declaration of
Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea signed
10 years ago in Phnom Penh more binding.
The ASEAN summit scheduled in Phnom Penh
for November could be the last phase for a final
COC that the 10 members will submit to China, that
"wants a seat at the table to shape the COC in its
interests", added Thayer. But a self-imposed
deadline for drawing up a COC "may result in a
messy compromise and a document without teeth",
Thayer concluded.
Roberto Tofani
is a freelance journalist and analyst covering
Southeast Asia. He is also the co-founder of
PlanetNext (www.planetnext.net), an association of
journalists committed to the concept of
"information for change".
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