Spratlys spat unfolds naivety
Spratlys spat unfolds naivety
This is the second of two articles by our correspondent Harvey
Stockwin on the mounting tension in the South China Sea.
HONG KONG (JP): The Chinese annexation, on paper, in 1992, of
the South China Sea should have been taken much more seriously
right from the start. China had ended its period of creeping
assertiveness on maps. It was entirely to be expected that
China's physical aggression -- furtively taking on land what had
already been taken on paper -- would now be added to the
cartographic aggression. Otherwise, why would the Chinese have
bothered to pass the law? Too few Southeast Asians asked
themselves this basic question.
It is only now that the phrase "creeping assertiveness" is
entering into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' (ASEAN)
vocabulary, when the Chinese have already moved on from a
passive, to a more active stance.
There were -- and are -- other reasons for concern. First,
there are the rumors -- disputed by some experts -- that huge oil
and gas deposits lie under the Spratlys. So far the only huge
finds have been found under Indonesia's Natunas -- but that only
encourages the hopes of the Spratly claimants. China has not had
any significant finds as a result of offshore exploration near
its southern coast. As it moves towards becoming a heavy
importer of oil and gas, it is understandable that it looks
further afield.
Second, four years before the 1992 law, in 1988, the Chinese
had already shown their seriousness by fighting with Vietnam to
establish their own foothold in the Spratly archipelago.
Third, Beijing's maps had included the Nansha islands (the
Chinese name for the Spratlys) ever since the People's Republic
of China was formed. At one stage, over 20 years ago, China's
South China Sea "border" even bent eastwards to also include the
Philippines' Sulu Islands, largely, it is said, because the
Sultan of Sulu, in the dim and distant past, had paid tribute to
the Chinese Emperor.
Fourth, and perhaps most important, the Chinese have never
disguised the fact that they claim sovereignty over the whole of
the South China Sea, not just the Spratlys, not just the
Paracels. Overemphasis on the Spratly dispute misses this crucial
point. The Middle Kingdom is claiming a whole ocean. The 1992 law
annexing the South China Sea was passed without any reference to
the littoral states - and without any sign of Chinese concern for
Southeast Asian sensitivities. It was also passed, legal experts
say, without any reference to the Law of the Sea.
So, while the 1992 law may have been born out of political
expediency arising from communist weakness in the wake of the
Beijing Massacre, it nonetheless expressed an aim with which most
Chinese would naturally agree -- the "restoration" of China's
dominance in the region, after two centuries of weakness.
Faced with the law, and the Chinese assertiveness which lay
behind it, the ASEAN countries fell back on words and naive hope.
The ASEAN "Declaration on the South China Sea", issued by the
ASEAN Foreign Ministers on July 22, 1992 in Manila, stressed "the
necessity to resolve all sovereignty and jurisdictional issues
pertaining to the South China sea by peaceful means, without
resort to force".
The Declaration stressed principles, and urged tolerance and
restraint - the very qualities which China had ignored in passing
its law.
Crucially, the ASEAN Declaration had no teeth. The ASEAN
countries have continued to act over the intervening three years
more out of a concern not to offend Beijing, rather than with a
determination to defend their interests - which the Chinese
communists are quite willing to attack, verbally and physically.
ASEAN has behaved according to the tenets of international
diplomacy. China, as usual, has conducted itself according to the
canons of power politics.
ASEAN has argued for a collective negotiation and agreement on
how borders should be drawn in the South China Sea. China is not
yet willing to give nations which it still regards as tributary
states the collective right to stand on an equal footing with the
Middle Kingdom.
So Beijing insists that the South China Sea is a purely
bilateral matter. Translation: each ASEAN nation must discuss the
issue of Chinese sovereignty separately with Beijing.
Similarly, when Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen recently
tried to pour oil on the troubled waters, he talked airily of
joint management of the South China Sea. He did not explain that
this, almost certainly, means joint management under Chinese
sovereignty.
Perhaps the Mischief Reef Incident will have helped remove the
blinkers from ASEAN eyes. The fairly forceful exchange between
ASEAN officials and the Chinese in Hangzhou recently gives
grounds for hoping that this is so. There it was firmly
reasserted that the South China Sea dispute must be settled
collectively not bilaterally, as China still insists. Precisely
how far ASEAN went in defining its opposition to creeping
aggression is not yet clear.
ASEAN must persist with this more assertive line - and not be
afraid to cool ASEAN-China relations if Beijing still remains
intransigent.
True to the calculations of power politics the Chinese sought
to probe the Philippines, where ASEAN looked to be at its
weakest, only to discover that the relatively weak also have
their pride.
President Fidel Ramos has drawn a line in the shallow South
China Sea waters while leaving Beijing, for now, still in
possession of its buildings on Mischief Reef.
China has also probed to see if the world's only superpower
cares any longer about its longtime Philippine ally. President
Bill Clinton has not drawn any lines in the sea but U.S. concern
is manifest, as is that of New Delhi and Tokyo.
An agreed border demarcation throughout the South China Sea
between all claimants of sovereignty, is the only possible
solution. Since it is not in sight, the South China Sea remains a
sea of contention.
At the heart of the threatening conflict lies an even more
crucial and arduous task: how to get China, the looming giant
with so many mythical memories, to fit into the real modern world
of equal sovereign states.