A specter
is haunting Asia—the specter of full Chinese domination in the South China Sea.
Latest reports suggest that China could soon move ahead
with building military facilities on the Scarborough Shoal, a contested land
feature it has occupied since 2012. This would allow China, according to a
Mainland source, to “further perfect” its aerial superiority across the
contested waters. By building a sprawling network
of dual-purposes facilities, and more recently deploying
advanced military assets to its artificially created islands, China is inching
closer to establishing a de facto Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ)
in the area. Integrating the Scarborough Shoal into its burgeoning defensive
perimeter across the South China Sea will not only give it an upper hand in the
contested waters, but also allow China to place the Philippines’ capital and
industrialized regions within its strategic reach.
This is nothing short of a nightmare for the Philippines, which is
already struggling to protect its supply lines in the
Spratly chain of islands due to growing Chinese military assertiveness in
contested waters. Unlike most of Chinese occupied features, which lie well
beyond the immediate shores of other claimant states, the Scarborough Shoal is
located just about 120 nautical miles off the coast of the Philippines, well
within the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)—and also its continental
shelf. To put things into perspective, the shoal lies nine hundred kilometers
away from the closest Chinese coastline. For Manila, the contested land feature
is arguably what James Shoal is to Malaysia and Hainan is to Mainland China.
Manila lost control over the shoal after a tense standoff with Chinese coast guard forces in
the middle of 2012. But for more than a century, the Philippines has treated
Scarborough Shoal as its northernmost outpost in the South China Sea. In fact, as far back as the Spanish colonial era, the
Southeast Asian country has treated the shoal as the natural extension of its
national territory. During Cold War years, it was a gunnery range and regular
area of naval exercises for American forces, which accessed military bases in
the Philippines.
As a leading Filipino maritime-law expert, Jay Batongbacal, explains, it was only after the departure of American
military bases (1991) that China began to “take concrete action to assert its long-dormant paper
claim to the shoal, beginning with the issuance of amateur-radio
licenses to hobbyists in 1994,” the year China wrested control of the
Philippine-claimed Mischief Reef. In short, China’s assertion of its
(supposedly) historical claim on the land feature was hinged on coldblooded
balance-of-power calculations. Cognizant of the Philippines’ minimal-to-nonexistent deterrence capability and
the Obama administration’s equivocations on the extent of its defense
obligations to Manila, China felt confident enough to usurp control over the
shoal.
Meanwhile, the Philippines has been drenched in the ecstasy of
presidential elections, with growing indications that the next government could
be on a much more friendly footing with China, which giddily expressed its hope that the “new [Philippine]
government can adopt positive and well-thought policies towards China, properly
deal with relevant disputes, and improve bilateral relations with concrete
actions."
Yet it’s far from assured that the next Filipino president will continue
the incumbent administration’s alignment with America
as well as its tough posturing against China. With the Arbitral Tribunal at The Hague expected to
issue its final verdict on the Philippines’ case against China in coming months,
the predisposition of the incoming Filipino president has gained greater
salience. Above all, however, everyone is wondering about the United States’
next move: Will it stand by its ally and try to prevent China’s prospective
militarization of the Scarborough Shoal, or, alternatively, will it continue
its futile—if not counterproductive—policy of strategic ambiguity on the issue?
Time is of essence.
Tightening
Noose
China is beginning to feel the heat. Earlier this year, the usually meek
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), after a retreat with U.S.
president Barack Obama at Sunnylands, released a joint statement, which can be interpreted as a
collective support for the Philippines’ arbitration case and, more explicitly,
growing regional worry over China’s revanchist activities in the South China
Sea.
Both American and ASEAN leaders expressed their shared "commitment
to peaceful resolution of disputes, including full respect for legal [author’s
emphasis] and diplomatic processes, without resorting to threat or use of
force, in accordance with universally recognized principles of international
law,” specifically the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
They also reiterated the centrality of "non-militarization and
self-restraint" in the disputed waters, in accordance to the 2002
Declaration on the Conduct of Parties (DOC) in the South China Sea, which (Paragraph V)
discourages China and ASEAN claimant states from “inhabiting on the presently
uninhabited islands, reefs, shoals, cays, and other features.”
Shortly after the Sunnyland Summit, the ASEAN foreign ministers reiterated their earlier joint statement with
America, expressing how they have “remained seriously concerned over the recent
and ongoing developments [in the South China Sea] and took note of the concern
expressed by some ministers on the land reclamations and escalation of
activities in the area." During the recently concluded Group of 7 (G7)
summit, the world’s leading Western powers and Japan were even more specific in
supporting the Philippines’ arbitration case against China.
In their joint statement, foreign ministers of the leading
industrialized countries expressed their vigorous opposition to “intimidating,
coercive or provocative unilateral actions that could alter the status quo and
increase tensions,” an unmistakable jab against China’s activities in the South
China Sea. They also emphasized the centrality of the “peaceful management and
settlement of maritime disputes . . . through applicable
internationally recognized legal dispute settlement mechanisms, including
arbitration,” an unmistakable endorsement of the Philippines’ arbitration case
against China, which has boycotted the whole proceeding.
A besieged China lashed back, urging “the G7 member states to honor their
commitment of not taking sides on issues involving territorial disputes."
Worried about isolation in the region, China has also stepped up its efforts to
divide-and-conquer ASEAN, urging Brunei, Laos (the current ASEAN chair) and
Cambodia to decouple the South China Sea disputes from the regional agenda.
China’s continued foray into Malaysian and Indonesian
fishing grounds has also provoked a massive diplomatic backlash, with Jakarta
threatening to revisit its relations with Beijing in light of what it views as
a direct assault on its territorial integrity and sovereign rights within its
EEZ. Malaysia may follow suit. China has practically alienated
all key ASEAN states, including (ethnic-Chinese-majority) Singapore,
which has openly accused Beijing of undermining regional unity on the South
China Sea issue.
Though China’s plans for dominating the so-called First Island Chain go back decades—mainly based on
the strategic vision of Beijing’s Mahan, Liu Huaqing,
who was the commander of the Chinese navy from 1982-88—it is only in
recent years that China has developed the requisite capabilities and mustered
sufficient political will to push across its adjacent waters. But China is also
beginning to realize that it can’t dominate its adjacent waters without losing
the good will of its smaller neighbors. Relations with the Philippines have
been particularly toxic in recent years. In fact, under
the Aquino administration, the Southeast Asian country has been on the
forefront of efforts to build international pressure on China.
Great
Uncertainty
The leaders in Beijing, however, seem optimistic that the upcoming
elections in the Philippines may lead to some favorable recalibrations. And it
has a lot of cards to play. For one, the shadow of an impending Chinese
military base just 120 nautical miles off the coast of the Philippines is
hovering above the Filipino presidential elections. One can’t rule out the
possibility that China is trying to coax the Filipino presidential candidates
into compromise by raising the prospect of militarizing the Scarborough Shoal.
More specifically, with the arbitration
verdict expected soon, Beijing may be trying to intimidate the incoming
Filipino administration against fully using the likely favorable outcome for
the Philippines. Many legal experts expect the Arbitral Tribunal to nullify
China’s claims over low-tide-elevations (LTEs) such as Mischief Reef and Subi
Reef, providing a perfect legal pretext for expansive American-led Freedom of
Navigation Operations (FONOPs) against China. The arbitration panel may even go
so far as deciding on the validity of China’s notorious nine-dashed-line
claims, which covers much of the South China Sea, as well as the validity and
legal basis of its ‘historical rights/waters’ claims.
At the very least, China may be seeking to
cajole the next Filipino president into keeping mum on the arbitration outcome,
that is to say, to treat it as an advisory opinion and a relic of the past
administration’s strategy rather than a binding legal decision under the aegis
of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Interestingly,
both leading presidential (Rodrigo Duterte) and vice-presidential (Ferdinand Marcos Jr.) candidates have signaled
their interest in engagement rather than confrontation with China.
Asia Times
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