China Has Tempered Its Expansion In The Disputed South China Sea - Forbes

NOV 27, 2017 @ 05:00 AM

Opinion: China Has Tempered Its Expansion In The Disputed South China Sea

Ralph Jennings , CONTRIBUTOR

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi (R) signs the guestbook as Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano looks on in Manila on July 25, 2017. (NOEL CELIS/AFP/Getty Images)

The government in Beijing has made no official statement to this effect, but connect the dots and here’s a picture: It has mothballed for now a quest to landfill new islands in Asia’s major disputed waterway, the South China Sea. Land reclamation had alarmed five other Asian governments that vie with China for sovereignty over the sea, which is packed with valuable fisheries as well as fossil fuel reserves, because the resulting new islets can support military installations.

China has put any new, controversial reclamation work on hold under a rising tide of foreign pressure, at least two veteran Asian geopolitics analysts believe. The last time you heard about it was in June, when an American think tank called China's work on three of the sea's Spratly Islands "near completion." The construction began at least a year earlier.

Wall of pressure

The pressure began in July 2016 with a world arbitration court ruling against the legal basis for China’s claim to about 90% of the sea. China rejected the verdict but began talks individually with other claimants. The most recent factor: China’s agreement November 13 to talk over the next year with a bloc of 10 Southeast Asian countries on a maritime code of conduct aimed at accident prevention. Beijing had resisted those negotiations for the past half decade.

Between those landmarks, outside powers Australia, India and Japan -- following a lead by the United States -- have started to send naval vessels to or near the South China Sea as backup for what they all advocate: leave the waterway open to freedom of navigation. When heads of state from Japan and Australia met U.S. President Donald Trump on the sidelines of Association of Southeast Asian Nations summits earlier in the month, they vented at least indirectly about China’s maritime clout. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, at a news conference a day later, repeated his government’s call for a “rules-based” order in the South China Sea, where it vies with China for political and economic influence over coastal countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines. Abe also pledged more than 55 billion yen ($494 million) to improve “maritime law enforcement,” per this report.

Australia urged separately this month in a government white paper a “rules-based order” for the South China Sea, prompting a rebuke from Beijing as “irresponsible.”

Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines all claim part of what China calls its own, usually economic zones within 229 miles (370 kilometers) from their coastlines. None come near China’s military power or global economic clout. China cites historical records to prove its fishermen have used the sea for decades.

China can proceed but probably won’t

These moves don’t physically stop China from marching on with landfill work that has helped it get a stronger foothold on seven Spratly Island features, some for fighter jets and radar systems, or in the Paracel Islands that Vietnam bitterly disputes despite decades of effective Chinese control. But pressure from abroad has reached a critical mass to stop China from starting visible new projects (except on turf it already controls). Mindful of other countries, China is unlikely now to take over any more islets bitterly contested by another country as it did in nabbing the Paracel chain in 1974 or even to create an island on top of unused submerged reefs, per its practice over the past decade through the world court verdict.

China risks a stronger intrusion -- which is exactly how it would perceive things -- from outside powers if it builds new islets for its own use despite the will of other countries. An outside power could sail through to show the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea is still open to all or sell more arms to one of the Southeast Asian claimants. The United States under ex-president Barack Obama did both and Beijing hated it. China wants the Australia-India-Japan-U.S. crowd to see that it can work things out with other claimants, meaning it fears those powers will step in if things don't work out, said Collin Koh, maritime security research fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. China's aim "at this point in time is to ride on the momentum of goodwill," Koh says.

As a clue to Beijing's thinking, a senior Chinese official “reassured” Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in a mid-November meeting in Manila that China would neither use military force nor block freedom of navigation, presidential spokesman Harry Roque told a news conference November 13. The code of conduct, though it won't touch on sovereignty, will be seen as a monument to all sides getting along. You'd lose friends by testing it with new islands.

“The code of conduct is this form of peculiar compromise that will in a sense confirm the existing holding pattern in the South China Sea,” says Alan Chong, associate professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. “It’s an indirect way of saying ‘all right, let’s normalize the situation for what it is.’”