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.