Jul.28 (China Military News cited from The wall street journal) -- Hillary Clinton had the temerity to offer a few anodyne suggestions about the South China Sea at the Asean Regional Forum meeting in Hanoi last week. Soon after, China's Foreign Minister lashed out at the U.S. Secretary of State, and dyspeptic editorials from the state media are coming fast. Hear, hear: The U.S. is finally pushing back against China's bullying in Southeast Asia.
Mrs. Clinton urged the creation of a binding code of conduct for the six states claiming disputed islands in the South China Sea, including China, as well as an institutional process for resolving those claims. "The United States has a national interest in freedom of navigation, open access to Asia's maritime commons and respect for international law in the South China Sea," Mrs. Clinton said.
This seems reasonable enough, since one-third of the world's shipping transits through the South China Sea, its waters are rich fishing grounds, and the seabed is believed to hold huge oil and gas reserves. But Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi took this as an "attack" on China, saying that "nobody believes there's anything that is threatening the region's peace and stability."
That's not how Southeast Asians see it. Vietnam sought to put the South China Sea code of conduct on the agenda at the ARF meeting, over China's objections. China ejected Vietnam from one of the Spratly Islands in 1988 in a sea battle that claimed more than 70 Vietnamese lives, and there have been more recent skirmishes.
China has established a worrying M.O. in these waters, sometimes referred to as "talk and take." In 1992, Beijing signed the Asean Declaration on the South China Sea, designed to protect the status quo. But three years later, it seized Mischief Reef from the Philippines and eventually built a military outpost there.
Chinese PLA Soldiers in Yongshu Dao, one island in South China sea
The islands dispute is heating up again because Chinese officials and scholars have begun to classify the country's claims as part of its "core interests"—a category previously reserved for Tibet and taiwan. On China's maps, it draws a U-shaped line around almost the entire sea, encroaching on other nations' continental shelves. Beijing's historical claims to the islands are tenuous and probably wouldn't withstand scrutiny under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, to which China is a signatory.
Of greater concern to maritime powers without a direct claim to the islands is the principle of free navigation. Last year, Chinese boats sought to drive a U.S. Navy surveillance vessel, the USNS Impeccable, out of international waters south of Hainan Island. This month, Beijing intimidated the U.S. into not sending the aircraft carrier USS George Washington into the Yellow Sea for exercises. Essentially China would like to extend its territorial waters, which usually run to 12 miles, to include the entire exclusive economic zone, which extends 200 miles.
Only U.S. involvement can give Asean enough confidence to insist that Beijing submit to international law. After years of Washington placating Beijing, the danger of allowing China to bully its neighbors seems to be sinking in. Undoubtedly more friction is to come, but Asean and its friends have an opportunity to unite to show Beijing that its claims are unacceptable.
