One
of the most worrisome scenarios of recent years has been that China
might use its growing might to simply take territory claimed by other
nations, daring them to stop it.
That
has now happened. In recent months China's government has built
airstrips and bases on islands claimed by four of its neighbours in
South-East Asia.
The islands are mostly small,
sandy reefs strategically located – they are astride the world's most
important shipping channels and atop highly prospective seabed
resources.
The effect has been to build
a "Great Wall of Sand" to enforce China's claim to ownership of
90 per cent of the South China Sea, in the words of the commander of the
US Seventh Fleet, Admiral Harry Harris.
China's neighbours have asked
it to stop. The US has asked it to stop. It has not stopped. Barack Obama
said three weeks ago that China was "using its sheer size and muscle
to force countries into subordinate positions.
"Just because the
Philippines or Vietnam are not as large as China doesn't mean that they
can just be elbowed aside," said the US president. China's response?
In effect, "yes we
can". And that has become clear in the last few days. Aerial
photography shows that China is using land reclamation to expand
two islands in the Paracel Islands chain and to build or expand seven
others in the Spratly group.
Both island groups are in the
South China Sea where China has drawn a so-called "nine dash line"
that lolls like a great tongue dipping down and across the sea. Beijing's
claims clash with those of the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei.
"The bottom line",
says Alan Dupont, a professor of international security at NSW University,
"is that China is terraforming its way to control of the South China
Sea by creating artificial islands and then militarising them."
Dupont says "it's pretty
clear-cut" that Beijing is seeking to "control the South China
Sea and the eastern approaches to the Malacca Straits, which is the
key choke point for global shipping given that 50 per cent of global
trade goes through there."
This is terribly awkward for
governments around the world. Few will defend China's relentless
expansionism, yet no one is prepared to stand in its way. Beijing's
behaviour is in breach of an agreement it signed in 2002 with the ten-nation
ASEAN group, the Association of South East Asian Nations.
Under the pact, all
governments forswore any destabilising action such as building new
structures on the disputed islands.
But the deal was non-binding.
China has waged a years-long go-slow on negotiating a binding code of
conduct for the region.
Last week the Philippines
asked its fellow ASEAN members to say something about it. China was
"poised to consolidate de facto control of the South China Sea,"
the country's Foreign Affairs Secretary, Albert Del Rosario, told
his counterparts.
"ASEAN should assert its
leadership, centrality and solidarity," he said. "ASEAN must
show the world that it has the resolve to act in the
common interest."
Instead ASEAN showed that it
was weak, divided, and unwilling to confront China. It issued a communique
expressing concern that land reclamation "may undermine peace,
security and stability in the South China Sea" yet it failed to name
China as the culprit.
So ASEAN won't even talk
about the problem openly, much less act. Three of the ASEAN countries were
reportedly keen to take a tougher line with China – the Philippines,
Vietnam and Indonesia – but were overruled by the majority.
The Foreign Affairs Minister
of the host country for the meeting, Malaysia's Anifah Aman said:
"ASEAN's stand is that we want to engage with China." He added,
"In short, we are not confrontational." That suits Beijing just fine.
A few days later, a top
Chinese military commander sought to reassure the US about its reef
expansions. In a video hookup, China's chief of navy, Admiral Wu Shengli,
told his US counterpart, Admiral Jonathan Greenert, that
China's reclamation would not affect freedom of navigation or overflight.
According to China's Defence
Ministry, Admiral Wu told the American: "We welcome international
organisations, the US and relevant countries to use these facilities, when
conditions are ripe, to conduct co-operation on humanitarian rescue and
disaster relief."
So China is now setting the
terms of access to territories which are not, under international law,
even Chinese. In sum, it seems China has gotten away with it.
As Alan Dupont says, this is
"part of China's strategy for becoming the pre-eminent nation in
Asia, and perhaps eventually the pre-eminent nation in the world. This
creates a very difficult problem for the Australian government to deal
with."
So far Australia has dealt
with it the same way almost all countries have – by pretending that it's
not really happening. The benefits of trade and investment with China are
lucrative. Governments do not want to put trade relations at risk by
confronting Beijing over its bad behaviour in taking territory from
weaker states.
In the US there is a growing
realisation that American forbearance is failing.
"Washington needs a new
grand strategy toward China that centres on balancing the rise of Chinese
power rather than continuing to assist its ascendancy," writes a
distinguished American strategist, Bob Blackwill, in a new report for the
establishment Council on Foreign Relations.
The question is no longer
whether China will forcibly take territory claimed by other nations. The
question is what the rest of the world is going to do about it.
Peter
Hartcher is the international editor for SMH
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