The recent arbitration ruling on the South China
Sea will go down as a textbook example of the limitations of international
justice. Even if the vast majority of countries swung behind the tribunal in
The Hague, China just told them to get lost. The resumption of so-called
freedom of navigation patrols by the American navy will not change this. They
could even be strategically convenient to Beijing and create a misplaced sense
of security among its neighbours. As America flexes its muscle, China will work
unswervingly to gain effective control over the South China Sea and use it as a
stronghold to challenge American primacy in the Western Pacific.
China has many reasons to
expand its influence and military clout on the maritime margins of Asia. The
main aim remains strategic. China reckons that it can only be secure if it gets
itself a maritime sphere of influence. This calculation resembles the incipient
naval strategy of the United States in the nineteenth century, when it first
sought to keep rival powers out of its neighbourhood and, subsequently, to
deter them in the two oceans bordering the continent. Genuine mistrust of the
US as well as decades of propaganda make it impossible today for the Chinese
leadership to back down without damaging its status as protector of the
nation’s sovereignty and pride.
And why should China back
down? Since the ruling, the response of the international community has been
limited to statements. Beijing might actually have gained more confidence.
Vietnam, another claimant, rounded up anti-Chinese demonstrators and vowed to
strengthen its partnership with Beijing on the sidelines of an Asia-Europe
Meeting. Indonesia eagerly embraced a Chinese proposal to develop a US$100
million investment zone. Singapore showed itself keen on more cooperation in
banking and high-speed railway building. The Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (Asean) failed once more to issue a summit statement on the issue of
the territorial claims.
Let the good times roll, the
leaders must have thought. And so, the state news agency, Xinhua, announced
that air patrols above the Spratly Islands and the Scarborough Shoal would be
stepped up, thanks undoubtedly to the newly-built landing strip at Fiery Cross
Reef.
The question remains whether
these patrols herald the imposing of an air defence and identification zone
over the South China Sea. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs gave stern
warnings to countries like Japan to back off. The chief of the Chinese navy
asserted that the resumption of American freedom of navigation patrols could
end in disaster.
There is of course some
grandstanding in all this, but it surely does confirm China’s growing might.
The overflights of American planes and the patrols of navy ships might be
disturbing, but they are not at all a threat to China’s long-term designs, as
long as they do not lead to a confrontation in the short term. In these times
of economic uncertainty, American muscle flexing helps the Chinese leadership
rally popular support against an external adversary. But this is just a
political expedient.
American flag waving also
confirms its neighbours in the illusion that they can have it both ways: to get
American protection and to support China’s rise by selling their raw materials
or buying Chinese-made goods. This in turn gives China the opportunity to spend
more on modern military equipment that alters the balance of power. The pace of
China’s military modernisation is staggering. Since the turn of the century, it
has commissioned 30 modern conventional submarines, 14 destroyers, 22 frigates,
and about 26 corvettes, assets that are supported by satellites, radars, air
defence systems, ballistic missiles and cyber capabilities.
The time of the “floating
junkyard”, as many American colleagues once called the Chinese navy, lies
definitely behind us. In the next decades, China wants to go beyond the South
China Sea. It wants to become a resident power in the Western Pacific, so that
it can deter long-range strikes from American nuclear attack submarines, its
facilities in Japan and Guam, or its aircraft carriers. However much the US
might mock that prospect, given the supremacy of its Seventh Fleet, China’s
ultimate goal is not only to deny access to the South China Sea, but also to
become so powerful in the Pacific Ocean that the presence of other navies is no
longer to be feared.
China readies for what it
calls an ocean-going century, economically, scientifically and militarily. This
is indeed the privilege enjoyed today by the US as the world’s leading naval
power. As America’s own rise in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
revealed, the tragedy is that such privilege cannot be enjoyed by two great
powers at the same time. The rise of the one maritime power, however slow,
inevitably portends a loss of influence for the other.
Jonathan Holslag teaches
international politics at the Free University Brussels.
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