The South China Sea Spats: An Alternative View

For its policies and actions in the South China Sea, China has been accused of being aggressive, bullying other claimants, violating previous agreements and international law, militarizing the features, undermining the status quo, generating instability, being out of step with international rules and norms, and threatening freedom of navigation. Some of these allegations may be accurate—especially from the perspective of rival claimants and their supporters.  But other claimants and countries like the United States, Japan and Australia as well as international media and analysts have been very one-sided in delineating and emphasizing China’s ‘transgressions’. Indeed, it is rare to find in the international media an article or opinion piece on the subject that is not biased against China. To contribute to balance in public information, the following is a one-sided litany of the sins of other claimants and actors from what I presume to be China’s perspective.

While China demonstrated restraint, and others—including the United States, Japan and Australia maintained a studied silence– other claimants unilaterally and illegally occupied features that China considers its sovereign territory.  They then altered the features by adding to them, built structures, ports and airstrips, and allowed access for their militaries. Adding insult to injury they appropriated the largest and most desirable features for themselves leaving only the dregs and submerged features for the ‘rightful sovereign’. Now that China is trying to ’catch up’ by occupying and modifying some features itself, others with tacit U.S. support have had the gall to accuse it of not exercising “self-restraint” and thus violating the 2002 ASEAN-China Declaration on Conduct of the Parties in the South China Sea (DOC).

China believes that the other claimants have also violated the self restraint provision by continuing or maintaining their reclamation and construction activities since 2002. More significant, China feels that the other claimants have violated what it considers the most important DOC provision of all: “ to resolve their territorial and jurisdictional disputes through friendly consultations and negotiations by sovereign states directly concerned”. To China the Philippines complaint to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea was an unfriendly violation of this basic principle. China thinks the other claimants are also violating international law by undertaking unilateral activities in disputed areas that change the nature of the area. Thus China has responded in like manner. But in doing so China has been perceived as a ‘bully’ by the smaller countries. Unfortunately this perceptual difference is normal regarding interactions between large and small countries.Indeed, this term is often used by smaller countries to describe the actions of the U.S.

As for the greater scale and scope of China’s construction activities, it believes that they are commensurate with its responsibilities and capabilities as the world’s most populous country with the world’s second largest GDP and third largest area. For China the issue is violation of principle– not scale and scope. It would probably argue that the comparison should be of land area created per country size, population or GDP.

To China, the former Western colonies have been stealing its fish and petroleum in collaboration with outside Western entities. More specifically, the Philippines involved a naval vessel in the standoff at Scarborough Shoal—a clear threat of use of force. Regarding its drilling on what it considers its continental shelf in the Gulf of Tonkin, Vietnamese fishing boats violated its declared safety zones and harassed and rammed Chinese civilian boats in disputed areas. Moreover, the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam have arrested Chinese fishermen for fishing in disputed waters.

Most galling to China is the fact that the other claimants have welcomed the U.S. –which China believes is trying to contain and constrain it—and even its former arch enemy Japan to ‘intervene’ in the issues and to participate in joint military exercises in the area. The claimants have also echoed the U.S.’s false accusations that China is threatening commercial freedom of navigation. Moreover the U.S., the Philippines and Vietnam have hyped as a bogeyman the possibility of China declaring an Air Defense Identification Zone in the South China Sea—a device the U.S. and its Asian allies introduced to the region and that it views as perhaps necessary for it to fend off provocative intelligence probes by the U.S. To top it off, the U.S. is threatening to fly and sail military assets in Freedom of Navigation exercises over and through China- claimed areas- in blatant violation of China’s laws.

Yes, this reads like a diatribe against the other claimants and actors. It is supposed to. This is how much of the rhetoric from rival claimants and Western media and analysts sounds to China. The point is that a one sided perspective is unhelpful and only stimulates resentment and backlash by the target. This is the case with the current one-sided criticisms of China.

Yes, in the eyes of other countries China has behaved badly. So have other claimants–and the U.S. –in China’s view. All need to tone down their rhetoric, incorporate balance in their analyses and public statements and be realistic in diagnoses, prognoses, proposals and prescriptions. Above all is a need to promote principles–not propaganda and prejudice.