– The Increasing Tensions in the South China Sea –

Over the past few months, the South China Sea has witnessed multiple instances of aggressiveness by practically all claimant states. While Beijing has certainly not backed down in these instances, other states – Vietnam and Malaysia notably – have been just as fierce and aggressive in pursuing their narrower interests, as per the Chinese sides’ viewpoint. This is manifested most prominently in the voluminous amount of illegal fishing conducted by Vietnamese fishermen in China’s undisputed and disputed waters, with Beijing being relatively restrained in its response. Malaysia has been pushing the envelope too with its unilateral oil and gas exploration and exploitation, including on the extended continental shelf. Unfortunately, the issue of maritime engagement of China in the South China Sea needs to be framed not so much in terms of the means of engagement of China as much as in terms of the means to minimize disengagement with China.

China sees the U.S.’ overt and tacit support as the inescapable drivers of this brazenness displayed by China’s rival claimant states. This is, in turn, a product of the U.S. reversion to great power competition (as articulated in Washington’s national security and defense strategies), and the Western Pacific maritime theater becoming the specific locus of that competition. The U.S.’ maritime posture and deployments in the Western Pacific has very little to do with underwriting a rule-based order in the Asia-Pacific or providing a regional security anchor. Rather, the true purpose of the U.S. is to take advantage of the complex inter-state frictions in the South China Sea and, as it pivots away from other theaters (notably the Middle East), entrench Washington’s position and posture in China’s near and far seas. This has emboldened the South China Sea claimant states to challenge China’s authority. Furthermore, this constant, forward-deployed U.S. presence and pressure has aroused anxieties and insecurities at China’s end – in turn, prompting its own sovereignty-protecting operational measures. The need of the hour right now is a robust U.S.-China maritime crisis management framework (CUES is not enough), backed by deeper mil-mil acquaintance building between the two sides at all levels. Multilateral Confidence-Building Measures (CBMs) and management systems, such as those in the Arctic and the Atlantic, could also be contemplated at the China-US-ASEAN level.

The U.S. does not agree and takes exception to China’s characterization of anxiety and insecurity as a result of the U.S.’ Western Pacific naval deployments. China enjoys clear naval and military superiority in the South China Sea region; this is well known to U.S. Seventh Fleet commanders; and hyping China’s anxieties has not been helpful. This having been said, there is indeed a need for a better crisis management as well as a multilateral governance mechanism – although here too, i.e. in past mil-mil exchanges, the U.S. side has been somewhat disappointed by the repetitiveness of China’s talking points. At a broader level, the U.S. view is that insofar as the political dimension of the South China Sea issue is concerned, China has become its own worst enemy. This is because of the unfortunate extremeness of its legal position regarding these waters – as best exemplified by its extravagant and non-compliant ‘historic rights’ claim. ASEAN states have numerous sovereign rights and jurisdiction disputes amongst themselves. But none makes a claim to a SCS water area based on ‘historic rights’. And this ensures that they end up coalescing around each other and resisting China’s expansive interpretation of its rights in the SCS. U.S. has hardly therefore needed to take an active diplomatic role. The lesson for China at the end of the day is that until it grapples with this Nine-Dash Line/historic rights conundrum, and ideally finds some way to restore the pre-2009 ambiguity that existed in this regard, it will continue to become ever-more isolated in the politics of the SCS.