HAIKOU, China -- New rules announced
by a Chinese province last week to allow interceptions of ships in the South
China Sea are raising concerns in the region, and in Washington, that simmering
disputes with Southeast Asian countries over the waters will escalate.
The move by Hainan Province, which
administers China's South China Sea claims, is being seen by some analysts
outside the country as another step in its bid to solidify its control of much
of the sea, which includes crucial international shipping lanes through which
more than a third of global trade is carried.
As foreign governments scrambled for
clarification of the rules, which appeared vague and open to interpretation, a
top Chinese policy maker on matters related to the South China Sea tried to
calm worries inspired by the announcement.
Wu Shicun, the director general of
the foreign affairs office of Hainan Province, said Saturday that Chinese ships
would be allowed to search and repel foreign ships only if they were engaged in
illegal activities (though these were not defined) and only if the ships were
within the 12-nautical-mile zone surrounding islands that China claims.
While Mr. Wu's assertions may calm
some fears about possible disruptions of shipping lanes, they nonetheless
suggest that China is continuing to actively press its claim to wide swaths of
the sea, which includes dozens of islands that other countries say are theirs.
And top Chinese officials have not yet clarified their intent, leaving room for
speculation.
The laws, passed by the provincial
legislature, come less than a month after China named its new leader, Xi
Jinping, and as China remains embroiled in a serious dispute with Japan in the
East China Sea over islands known in China as the Diaoyu and as the Senkaku in
Japan.
The laws appear to have little to do
with Mr. Xi directly, but they reinforce fears that China, now the owner of an
aircraft carrier and a growing navy, is plowing ahead with plans to enforce its
claims that it has sovereign rights over much of the sea.
If China were to enforce these new
rules fully beyond the 12-mile zones, naval experts say, freedom of navigation
would be at stake, a principle that benefits not only the United States and
other Western powers but also China, a big importer of Middle Eastern oil.
An incomplete list of the laws
passed in Hainan was announced in the state-run news agency, Xinhua, last week.
In an interview here Saturday, Mr.
Wu said the new regulations applied to all of the hundreds of islands scattered
across the sea, and their surrounding waters, including islands claimed by
several other countries, like Vietnam and the Philippines.
"It covers all the land
features inside the nine-dash line and adjacent waters," Mr. Wu said. The
nine-dash line refers to a map that China drew up in the late 1940s that
demarcates its territorial claims -- about 80 percent of the South China Sea.
That map forms the basis for China's
current claims. Some neighboring countries were outraged when China recently
placed the nine-dash map on its new passports. Vietnam has refused to place its
visa stamps in the passports as they are, insisting a separate piece of paper
be added for the stamp.
Mr. Wu, who also heads a
government-sponsored institute devoted to the study of the South China Sea, said
the immediate intention of the new laws was to deal with what he called illegal
Vietnamese fishing vessels that operate in the waters around Yongxing Island,
where China recently established an expanded army garrison.
The island, which has a long airstrip,
is part of a group known internationally as the Paracels that is also claimed
by Vietnam. China is using Yongxing Island, and its tiny city of Sansha, as a
kind of forward presence in a bid for more control of the South China Sea,
neighboring countries say.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said
last week that China was within its rights to allow the coast guard to board
vessels in the South China Sea. "Management of the seas according to the
law is a sovereign nation's legitimate right," the ministry spokesman,
Hong Lei, said at a briefing.
The new rules go into effect on Jan.
1. According to a report in an English-language state-run newspaper, China
Daily, the police and coast guard will be allowed to board and seize control of
foreign ships that "illegally enter" Chinese waters and order them to
change course.
Mr. Wu acknowledged that the new
rules had aroused alarm in Asia, and the United States, because they could be
interpreted as a power grab by China.
"A big worry for neighboring
countries and countries outside the region is that China is growing so rapidly,
and they see it is possible China taking over the islands by force," he
said. "I think China needs to convince neighboring countries that this is
not the case." Essentially, he said, countries had to trust that
China would not use force in the sea.
The Philippines, an ally of the
United States and one of the most vociferous critics of China's claims in the
South China Sea, reacted strongly to the new rules.
In a statement, the Foreign Ministry
in Manila said Saturday: "This planned action by China is illegal and will
validate the continuous and repeated pronouncements by the Philippines that
China's claim of indisputable sovereignty over virtually the entire South China
Sea is not only an excessive claim but a threat to all countries."
In order to dispel the dismay about
the new rules, China needed to explain more, an American expert on the South
China Sea, M. Taylor Fravel, an associate professor of political science at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said.
The United States and Asian nations
may be overreacting to the legislation, Mr. Fravel said. "It was not
passed down by Beijing as far as I can tell," he said.
"The U.S. should seek to
clarify with China the intent of the regulations and whether they will be used
in and around disputed islands, a move that would clearly escalate
tensions," Mr. Fravel said.
At a summit meeting of Asian leaders
last month in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, President Obama raised the issue of the
South China Sea with Premier Wen Jiabao of China, senior administration
officials said. Mr. Obama asked the Chinese to resolve disputes peacefully, and
to allow freedom of navigation, a repetition of the administration's policy of
the past year, they said.
But this quiet approach, encouraged
by smaller Asian nations that are friendly with the United States but
economically dependent on China, will no longer work, said Bonnie Glaser, an
expert on Asian security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"I don't see a strategy on the
U.S. side," Ms. Glaser said.
She said China was confident that it
could outmaneuver the 10 countries of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations, or Asean, the group that has so far unsuccessfully tried to find ways
to resolve territorial disputes with China. "In Asean, there is an
unwillingness to confront China, they are hopelessly divided," she said.
Until now, some Asian countries had
believed that China did not want to have simultaneous conflicts on two maritime
fronts: in the East China Sea with Japan and the South China Sea with other
countries. With the passage of the new laws in Hainan, that assumption has now
proved incorrect, Ms. Glaser said.
By JANE PERLEZ / The New
York Times. Bree Feng contributed reporting.
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