Author: Yoichi Kato
Publication: Jiia.or.jp
Date: September 14, 2011
URL: http://www.jiia.or.jp/en_commentary/201109/14-1.html
The territorial disputes in the South China
Sea between China and the other littoral states, including Vietnam and the
Philippines, are gaining more strategic significance for the entire Asia-Pacific
region and beyond. Japan cannot discount this issue as an isolated phenomenon
in the remote region because it reflects China's regional strategy, which
is based on its growing economy and national confidence.
The more fundamental challenge is how the
regional countries, including Japan, should deal with the emerging strategic
ambivalence, which is caused by both the growing economic interdependence
with China and the continuing dependence on the regional security order guaranteed
by the United States.
The territorial disputes in the South China
Sea seem to have reached a certain equilibrium at the ASEAN-China Ministerial
Meeting and the following ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in July in Bali, Indonesia.
The 10 member states of ASEAN and China agreed upon new guidelines, which
stipulate a path to the implementation of the long-standing Declaration of
Conduct (DOC) for peaceful resolution of the disputes in the South China Sea.
Japan's then foreign minister, Takeaki Matsumoto,
who participated in this round of ASEAN-related meetings, welcomed the development.
He stated in the Diet, "I regard it as a step forward."
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also
praised it as "an important step," and at the same time urged ASEAN
and China to move quickly to achieve the next step: the establishment of a
legally binding code of conduct to prevent conflicts. Clinton added, "Every
claimant must make their claim publicly and specifically known so that we
know where there is any dispute."
But the equilibrium seems to be fast collapsing.
Less than two weeks after the conference in Bali, the People's Daily, the
official newspaper of China's Communist Party, published a front-page commentary
that accused the Philippines of violating China's territorial sovereignty
by building a military shelter on one of the disputed Spratly Islands. The
article ended with a harsh warning: "Those who make serious strategic
misjudgments on this issue will pay the appropriate price."
The Xinhua News Agency immediately carried
an English summary of this story. It was clear that the party and the Chinese
government intended to send this message to all the parties concerned. And,
in fact, it created quite a stir in the region.
The governments of Japan and the United States
still regard this past round of ASEAN-related ministerial meetings as a success
because they managed to include "maritime security" in the agenda
for the upcoming East Asia Summit in November. With this decision, the South
China Sea issue can be further discussed in a larger multilateral context
at EAS in addition to ASEAN-related meetings. This will guarantee an opportunity
for the non-claimant, user-states of the South China Sea, such as Japan and
the United States, to keep engaged in the discussion.
On a more sensitive front, it was also regarded
as a success because there was a tacit agreement formed among the claimant
states and the major user-states of the South China Sea to keep questioning
the legal legitimacy of China's claim of so called "9-dotted line"
or "9-dashed line" for the South China Sea. The discreet strategy
seems to steer China into a new multilateral agreement, a code of conduct
to solve the disputes in a peaceful manner by collectively applying pressure
through continuously challenging the legitimacy of the "9-dotted line"
claim.
China uses this U-shaped, 9-dotted line along
the coastal line and the island chains in the South China Sea as the basis
for their claim of sovereignty. The encircled area extends to the almost entire
South China Sea. According to the official document that Chinese government
submitted to the United Nations in 2009 along with a map, Beijing claims to
have "indisputable sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea
and the adjacent waters." It is not clear, however, whether China claims
the entire South China Sea inside of the 9-dotted line as its territorial
waters or whether their claim of sovereignty extends only to the islands and
the adjacent waters.
On Aug. 24, about a month after the ARF conference,
two patrol boats of the Chinese Fishery Administration entered Japan's territorial
waters around one of the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. It was the
first time for Chinese government ships to violate Japan's territorial waters
around the Senkakus since 2008, when two China Marine Surveillance (CMS) patrol
boats entered and stayed in Japan's territorial waters for more than nine
hours. This time, the duration of the violation was much shorter. But the
Japanese government took the incident very seriously because even when a Chinese
trawler collided into a Japan Coast Guard cutter last September near the Senkakus,
all of the Chinese government vessels, including the Fishery Administration
and CMS, stayed clear of Japan's territorial waters.
In response to the formal protest from the
Japanese government, a spokesperson of China's Foreign Ministry said: "The
Diaoyu (Senkaku) island and its affiliated islands have been China's inherent
territory since ancient times. Chinese Fishery Administration Vessels patrolled
the waters to maintain normal orders of fishery production."
This position was nothing new, but the intensified
action by one of the maritime law enforcement agencies was. There is some
speculation on the part of the Japanese government that China's intention
might have been to check the firmness of the position of the Japanese government
on its territorial claims after the ARF meeting, and especially when Japan
was going through the power transition from the Kan administration to the
next.
The prevailing view within the Japanese government
is that what is happening in the East China Sea is closely connected with
the disputes in the South China Sea. Foreign Minister Matsumoto stated in
the Diet, "Japan has a great interest in the territorial disputes in
the South China Sea because they could have an impact on peace and security
of the Asia-Pacific region, and they are also closely related to safeguarding
the security of maritime traffic."
The territorial disputes are not limited
to the maritime domain. There are some signs of intensification in the Sino-Indian
land border area as well. Among Indian scholars is a view that China is engaged
in the redefinition of both its land and maritime borders in its pursuit of
the great power status. And such a series of redefinition actions has been
carried out at the expense of territorial integrity and security of China's
neighbors. India pays close attention to the situation in the South China
Sea because they see it as an indication for what might happen in their border
disputes with China.
The more fundamental challenge that the entire
Indo-Pacific region faces is perhaps the newly emerging strategic ambivalence.
Most of the countries in the region have China as their major trading partner,
if not the largest, while they depend on the United States for the maintenance
of the regional security order, including freedom of navigation. This dual
dependency, however, makes it harder for the regional states to decide what
course of action to take, if and when China challenges the US primacy. This
seems to be what is happening in the South China Sea now.
Last year, Hugh White, former deputy secretary
of Australian Department of Defense, published a paper, titled "Power
Shift--Australia's Future between Washington and Beijing." In it, he
points out that the era of "uncontested American primacy" is over
and that a peaceful new order in Asia can be built "if America is willing
to allow China some political and strategic space."
The very core of his argument is that the
United States should refrain from competing primacy with China but instead
share power with it. He also suggests that it is time to rethink the hedging
strategy. This is one possible answer to deal with the dilemma of "dual
dependency."
What is emerging through the debate over
the South China Sea issue is a recognition that the territorial disputes take
on the nature of Sino-US competition for influence and that the United States
alone cannot dominate the region any more in spite of its enormous military
capabilities. The majority view among the ASEAN states may not be as clear-cut
and extreme as White's. But if in fact "the rise of China and the relative
decline of the United States" further proceeds, as it is often mentioned
as a cliché, this shift from "US primacy" to a "Sino-US
power share" construct may gain more traction and relevance among the
regional countries and the people. That would be a great challenge for Japan,
which builds its security strategy based on a premise that the US primacy
is unshakable.
What is happening in the South China Sea
can be a harbinger of the potential shift of the strategic thinking among
the regional states and eventually the regional strategic order itself.
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Yoichi Kato is National Security Correspondent
of The Asahi Shimbun. This article was originally carried by The Asahi Shimbun
AJW, the English-language digital version of The Asahi Shimbun, on September
10, 2011.
