The South China Sea PT. 2

PART 2: The South China Sea Paradox: A Dilemma of Chinese Security and Realism Versus International Peace and Law

You can read Part 1 linked here.

International Rulings of the South China Sea and Chinese Regional Claims

The geopolitical tension of the South China Sea is continually in flux, and this uncertainty spreads an outward anxiety to the international sphere of potential conflict.

"China's assertion of its right to a vast stretch of the South China Sea has directly set it against the Philippines and Vietnam, while Brunei, Malaysia, and Taiwan also have overlapping claims with China—especially over their rights to exploit the region's possibly extensive underwater oil and gas resources in addition to rich fisheries. The traditional high seas freedoms are also at stake, making the issue even more complex and extraregional (Kim, J., 2015)."

While the nature of regional relationships might share varying historical complexities, with "all parties, overwhelmed with patriotic sentiment (Raditio, K., 2015)" and who "firmly believe that they must abide by the paramount imperative to defend the territorial sovereignty inherited from their ancestors (Raditio, K., 2015)," a direct core of the current pressures can be found.

The most significant of SCS disputes directly stems from one key feature, "China perceives the South China Sea dispute as a matter of sovereignty (Rosyidin, M., 2017)" versus the agreed-upon international borders ratified by the South China Sea community (Raditio, K., 2015). 

China holds firm to its 9-dash line of blue border, which from the PRC's perspective, provides Chinese sovereignty over the SCS and believes that its sovereign claims are based on historical boundaries dating to the first of the Chinese dynastic tradition.

While the remaining states of the SCS, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, hold to the belief that international rulings have delineated exclusive economic zones or EEZs, of their coastlines through an internationally ratified treaty, The Law of the Sea.

Although ratified by China as well, Chinese fishers have become notorious for crossing into these EEZ's. Entirely ignoring international law and attacking non-Chinese fishers, sometimes with the help of the Chinese Coast Guard (Denyer, S., 2016, April 12) or the Peoples Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) itself seizing fishing boats and arresting fishermen (Blazevic, J. J., 2012).

It is not uncommon for these encounters to devolved into the destruction of fishing vessels or even death, akin to a "war" when described by some.

In one instance, a Vietnamese fishing captain recalls having his shipped rammed repeatedly and their fishing catch left at sea as part of larger "increasingly aggressive tactics to deter rival nations and stake control over the strategic waterway (Bengali, S., & Uyen, V. K. B., 2020, December 23)" by China. Whether the attacks are from civilian fishers or official Chinese government vessels, China is unfazed by global criticism, and "China's navy, coast guard and paramilitary fleet have rammed fishing boats, harassed oil exploration vessels, held combat drills and shadowed U.S. naval patrols. The escalating show of force has overwhelmed smaller Southeast Asian states that also claim parts of the sea (Bengali, S., & Uyen, V. K. B., 2020, December 23)."

In 2013, the Philippines filed a complaint against China under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, after the Philippines had reached their limit of Chinese power projection and repeated attacks on Filipino fishers.

The Philippines government accused China of "violating international law by interfering with fishing, endangering ships and failing to protect the marine environment at the reef, known as Scarborough Shoal (Perlez, J., 2016, August 11)". The Philippines asked "an international tribunal to reject China's claim to sovereignty over waters within a "nine-dash line" that appears on official Chinese maps. The dashes encircle as much as 90 percent of the South China Sea (Perlez, J., 2016, August 11)."

The Law of the Sea, which came into being in 1994, states "a country has sovereignty over waters extending 12 nautical miles from its coast, and control over economic activities in waters on its continental shelf and up to 200 nautical miles from its coast, including fishing, mining, oil exploration and the construction of artificial islands...The treaty sets out detailed rules for defining these zones, what to do when two nations' zones overlap and how to resolve disputes (Perlez, J., 2016, August 11)."

China refuted this ruling extensively, outright ignoring it and asserting their nine-dash line and the waters within it are part of the PRC's overall sovereign borders and that Chinese domestic laws outweigh the legality of these EEZs.

"We do not claim an inch of land that does not belong to us, but we won't give up any patch that is ours," insisted one Communist Party mouthpiece (SCHUMAN, M. I. C. H. A. E. L., 2021)."

With China's stance toward its Southeast neighbors maintaining it will not bow to other countries' "unreasonable demands," with statements from state officials ranging from "there is no room for compromise" to "China would never accept unreasonable demands from smaller countries (Raditio, K., 2015)." Even going as far as alleging Vietnam and the Philippines to be the provocateurs in these instances and that they are within Chinese sovereign borders, making their actions "illegal and should be condemned by international law (Rosyidin, M. (2017)" and "China has the right under international law to defend themselves (Rosyidin, M. (2017)." 

China's belief in historical boundaries concludes, "China discovered, and has exploited the islands in the South China Sea for over two thousand years. Since the Chinese settled in these islands prior to any other people, China's claim of sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea islands predates that of other nations (Teh-Kuang Chang, 1991)."

However, China lost these islands and its SCS claims during the Japanese occupation of the 1900s; but, following the defeat of Japan in World World 2 and Tokyo's surrender, "China, under the rule of the nationalist Kuomintang party, demarcates its territorial claims in the South China Sea with an eleven-dash line on a map. The claim covers the majority of the area, including the Pratas Islands, the Macclesfield Bank, and the Paracel and Spratly Islands, which China regained from Japan after World War II. In 1953, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-led government removes the portion encompassing the Gulf of Tonkin, simplifying the border to nine dashes. To this day, China invokes the nine-dash line as the historical basis for its territorial claims in the South China Sea (Xu, B., 2020, July 15)."

The international tribunal held at The Hague still rejected China's argument Chinese historical claim stating, "any historic rights that China enjoyed previously "were extinguished" by the treaty (Perlez, J., 2016, August 11)." This ruling has set a precedent for the rest of the region in handling borders and international "free zones," nonetheless, the PRC has rebuffed the ruling and continued to use its nine-dash line as its territorial and sovereign boundary lines.

"From the Western perspective, the claim is against international law, since the international law of the sea (UNCLOS) does not recognize a claim based on that history. However, China insists that the claim is legitimate. This antagonistic perception reflects the contrast between the Chinese and the West on how they define sovereignty. The Chinese define sovereignty based on Asian values or Eastphalia while the West defines the concept based on the Westphalian system that gave birth to the international law. For the Chinese sovereignty lies in the principle of "one civilization, many systems."

While the West rests on the principle of "one country, one system" and "one system, many nation-states." Chinese legal experts based their claims over the South China Sea on the law applicable in a millennia-old Chinese tradition rather than the international law (Rosyidin, M., 2017)."

A Realist Examination: The Chinese Perspective of Regional Security Needs

While China's claims of the SCS stand in direct opposition to international peace and cooperation, the PRC's stance is not without merit, logic, or even principle.

When viewed from the perspective of the theoretical framework of Realism, power politics, or Realpolitik, Chinese actions accurately fit within this theory, in the same function that American or Russian activities would.

China's goals are for the betterment of China, and the SCS is crucial to their economic growth and stability, such as fishing reserves or energy (Kaplan, R. D., 2014). China's focus remains on its "territorial sovereignty and desperate to have enough energy to support its economy (Raditio, K., 2015)."

Through the SCS, China "is able to expel any "encroachment" within its claimed territory unilaterally, without compromise...China regards safeguarding its territorial sovereignty and meeting domestic need for energy as more important than creating a benevolent image internationally (Raditio, K., 2015)."

As much as the SCS is about economic stability, it is also about status and China's projection to the globe of its superpower status (Alenezi, D. A., 2020). By securing control of the South China Sea, China cements its place among the international community and establishes its Sino-hegemony claim across Southern Asia.

"China's position vis-a-vis the South China Sea is akin to America's position vis-a-vis the Caribbean Sea in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The United States recognized the presence and claims of European powers in the Caribbean but sought to dominate the region, nevertheless...Moreover, it was domination of the Greater Caribbean Basin that gave the United States effective control of the Western Hemisphere, which, in turn, allowed it to affect the balance of power in the Eastern Hemisphere. Perhaps likewise with China in the twenty-first century (Kaplan, R. D., 2014)."

In order to impose this "Chinese Monroe," China will need to eject rivals and command the SCS through military prowess, enabling China to impose its terms on regional disputes in a similar style to the United States. Albeit from a Chinese approach (Alenezi, D. A., 2020). 

"The offensive realists, Mearsheimer included, maintain that China's assertive behavior in the SCS is the main indicator that China is a revisionist power that seeks to be a regional hegemony in Asia. In this vein, SCS plays a vital role in China's goal to achieve regional hegemony. China's regional hegemony heavily depends on its economic power. In this vein, SCS with its huge reserves of oil and natural resources. In addition, most of China's trade passes the SCS, including oil shipments, plays an essential role in China's regional power. On the other hand, China's strong foothold in the SCS secures an expansion of the Chinese maritime maneuver in the Asian seas. This expansion will enable China to dominate the Asian economy and the trade routes in Asia, as well as resolve its sovereignty disputes, including in the South and East China Seas based on its own terms. Most importantly, it will enable China to extend its influence beyond Asia to achieve global hegemony. In addition, China's naval powerful presence in the SCS will greatly shift the total military balance of power in China's favor. For these reasons, SCS is very vital for China to achieve full regional hegemony (Alenezi, D. A., 2020)."

More profound than just international relations and projections of power is that the South Chinese Sea represents an "image of self" or a conceptual declaration that China is once again mighty, surviving its Century of Humiliation at the hands of "outsiders," European and Japanese powers and once again, reclaiming its place as the Middle Kingdom and a global power.

"In the nineteenth century, as the Qing dynasty became the sick man of East Asia, China lost much of its territory-the southern tributaries of Nepal and Burma to Great Britain; Indochina to France; Taiwan and the tributaries of Korea and Sakhalin to Japan; and Mongolia, Amuria, and Ussuria to Russia. In the twentieth century came the bloody Japanese takeovers of the Shandong Peninsula and Manchutis in the heart of China. This was all in addition to the humiliations forced on the Chinese by the extraterritoriality agreements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whereby Western nations wrested control of parts of Chinese cities-the so-called Treaty Ports...There was a latent fear that "China was about to be dismembered, that it would cease to exist as a nation, and that the four thousand years of its recorded history would come to a jolting end."...China, having survived that nightmare, and having reached a zenith of land power and territorial stability not seen since the Ming dynasty of the sixteenth century and the Qing dynasty of the late eighteenth century, is now about to press outward at sea, in order to guard its sea lines of communications to the Middle East and thus secure the economic well-being of its vast population. China's very urge for an expanded strategic space is a declaration that it never again intends to let foreigners take advantage of it, as they did in the previous two centuries (Kaplan, R. D., 2014)."

Whether European or Asian, rule by foreign powers is a historical trope throughout Chinese history that the CCP is acutely aware of. The Century of Humiliation, as the most recent, remains a heavy burden that still holds a profoundly entrenched shame motivating decisions, in the same manner, the attacks on Pearl Harbor or September 11 do for the United States.

As the U.S. government feels an obligation or duty never to be "surprised" again, the Chinese Communist leadership and government feel the same sense of duty never to repeat the mistakes of previous Chinese dynasties or for the Chinese state to be bullied by outside powers.

"The narrative of Chinese history that Xi's propaganda machine drills into the minds of his modern subjects is a tale of national renewal that could easily have been scrawled in a Hongwu edict. "Since the Opium War of the 1840s the Chinese people have long cherished a dream of realizing a great national rejuvenation," Xi told professors and students at Peking University in 2014. "China used to be a world economic power. However, it missed its chance in the wake of the Industrial Revolution and the consequent dramatic changes, and thus was left behind and suffered humiliation under foreign invasion...We must not let this tragic history repeat itself...China has stood up. It will never again tolerate being bullied by any nation (SCHUMAN, M. I. C. H. A. E. L., 2021)."

For a state to never feel the pressure of other nation's "bullying," that would mean they must have the ability to oppose any pressure they feel is unjust, whether real or imagined.

From this perspective, a state would logically take any necessary strategy to ensure its economic stability and national security. "First, consider how the South China Sea is uniquely crucial to China. As the analyst Mingjiang Li writes, it is a "natural shield" for China's security in the south, China's most densely populated and developed region. A "strong foothold" in the South China Sea gives China a strategic "hinterland" of over a thousand miles stretching to Indonesia, and would thus act as a "restraining factor" for the U.S. Navy's Seventh Fleet (Kaplan, R. D., 2014)."

An approach, which according to a senior fellow at Fudan University, "is consistent with the cultural roots of the Middle Kingdom mentality, that is, keeping out barbarians (Rosyidin, M. (2017)."

Subsequently, to create this "natural shield," or as some Chinese authorities have made comparisons, to the "US Monroe Doctrine in viewing the sea as a security barrier and natural area of influence (Blazevic, J. J., 2012)." Therefore, a logical progression would require "indisputable sovereignty" over the South China Sea, which China claims. Because if the South China Sea creates a natural shield for the Chinese mainline, it would also generate a liability if it is not.

"How would you feel if I cut off your arms and legs?" asked Chinese navy commander Wu Shengli at a forum in Singapore. "That's how China feels about the South China Sea (Kaplan, R. D., 2014)." 

From the SCS, China can stand in naval opposition to the United States and its allies, South Korea, Japan, or Australia.

"In accordance with the Middle Kingdom mentality, China will conduct various ways in order to avoid any party blocking its plan to dominate the South China Sea. As a consequence, China would rather adopt a hardline policy than a diplomatic one. One of the real evidence of this policy is land reclamation and construction of civil and military infrastructure in the disputed Spratly Islands (Rosyidin, M. (2017)."

Alternatively, the SCS aids in dealing with regional threats from China's antagonists to the south through naval stratagems towards India, or Vietnam where Chinese "authorities perceive threats to the status quo emanating largely from the "invasive activities" of Vietnam (Blazevic, J. J., 2012)", who maintain "military forces on over twenty features in the sea with their strongest garrison, equipped with artillery and anti-aircraft guns, at Sin Crowe Island (Blazevic, J. J., 2012)."

Furthermore, the most crucial component of the South China Sea is that it creates a staging point for the PRC's reacquisition of an existential enemy in Taiwan, officially the Republic of China and where Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Kuomintang, and the Chinese nationals escaped after losing the Chinese Civil War to Mao Tse-tung and his Communist forces.

"As former PLAN Commander Admiral Liu Huaqing observed, "whoever controls the Spratlys will reap huge economic and military benefits...Militarily, the South China Sea forms a maritime buffer for the provinces of southern China and would be a key theatre of operations in a conflict over Taiwan with the United States. Any effort to blockade China in wartime would also occur in these waters (FRAVEL, M., 2011)."

When the PRC decides to attempt and reacquire Taiwan, the SCS will be a major naval component of its strategy in completing what it feels is its historic sovereign borders and regaining its original national territory. At this point, China will be "wholly completed" as a state, regaining what it feels was lost to foreign powers and, once again, what it should be.

"As with the closing of the American frontier, China's effective capture of Taiwan in the years to come will allow Chinese naval planners the ability to finally concentrate energies on the wider South China Sea, an antechamber to the Indian Ocean in which China also desires a naval presence, in order to protect its Middle Eastern energy supplies. Were China to ever replace the U.S. Navy as the dominant power in the South China Sea-or even replace parity with it-this would open up geostrategic possibilities for China comparable to what America achieved upon its dominance of the Caribbean. To be sure, the South China Sea is no Caribbean. In fact, it is more important. The Caribbean was from the main sealines of communication, while the South China Sea is at the heart of them (Kaplan, R. D., 2014)."