Rhetoric over China’s land reclamation work, placed at more than 2,000 acres, on submerged reefs and inlets in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea (SCS) has entered its fourth week. The latest installment of this high-stakes drama reignited in early May when US satellite images showed that China had been building artificial islands on reefs also claimed by the Philippines, a longtime US ally and mutual defense treaty partner, at an alarming pace. China claims about 90 percent of the SCS, in what is often referred to as a nine-dash line, resembling a U on the map. The Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei are rival claimants to various parts of the SCS. The Spratly Islands are about 800-nautical miles from China’s southernmost coast, but within the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
Since the new satellite images were made public, the US has firmly maintained its stance that all Chinese reclamation work must stop, while China has been just as adamant that it will continue its work in what it calls sovereign territory. A week after the release of the satellite images, a US Navy P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft, with CNN reporters onboard, flew near China’s reclamation work. After terse and much publicized radio exchanges between the US plane and Chinese military on the land formations, the plane finally withdrew.
China’s response to the US flight was swift and forceful, accusing Washington of acting irresponsibly, while digging in its heals over its right to the reefs. The US said it had publicized the incident using the media to raise awareness of China’s massive land reclamation work. Then in an obviously calculated move, China’s defense ministry released a white paper signaling a strategic shift to a more assertive military that will transform its naval power from pursuing offshore deterrence to one that will commit to over-seas protection.
At the annual Shangri-La Dialogue on security in Singapore over the weekend, the rhetoric continued, with both sides refusing to back down. US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that Beijing was behaving “out of step” with international norms. “We’ve been flying over the SCS for years and years and years, and will continue to do that: Fly, navigate, operate. So, that’s not a new fact,” he said. He called on China to immediately stop all land reclamation work. China, for its part, on Sunday rejected the US demand, claiming it was exercising its sovereignty and using the outposts to fulfill international obligations.
While both sides square off at what can arguably be called the greatest geopolitical threat in a generation, two issues undergird the standoff: freedom of navigation and hydrocarbon reserves. China sees its reclamation work as an extension of its growing geopolitical and economic power, albeit a way to project that power on the world stage and position itself as a super power within its own right along side and equal to the US.
The US as well as its allies in the region see the reclamation work as a threat to freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most important shipping routes, more than $5 trillion worth of shipping each year passes through the SCS, including natural gas and crude oil shipments to both Japan and South Korea. While an argument can be made that China is justified in exercising its new economic, political and military muscle, it is doing so in the SCS against all international norms and laws by first seizing the disputed reefs and islets and now constructing artificial islands there.
A fisherman at work in The South China Sea under the shadow of oil exploration facilities at Seria, September 7, 2004 in Brunei. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
Moreover, China has refused to acknowledge the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which it signed in 1982 and ratified in 1996, saying it is not applicable in the SCS. Now, however, Beijing is demanding that the US and other countries adhere to a 12-nautical mile zone around the reclamation area and accuses those who breach this of breaking international law – a blatant double standard.
A recent report by Grenatec, a research organization that studies the viability of a Pan-Asian Energy Infrastructure, proposed a possible route that the US Navy could sail to demonstrate freedom of navigation in the SCS. The route would encompass a broad arc passing near Reed Bank and Subi and Mischief reefs, which both China and the Philippines claim. Grenatec says this would “set a precedent” and “demonstrate China’s diplomatic isolation as the only nation likely to protest.”
The report also states that Reed Bank contains the SCS’s most promising as yet undeveloped oil and gas fields. However, oil and gas estimates in the SCS vary widely. One Chinese estimate places potential oil resources as high as 213 billion barrels. On the other side of the spectrum, a 1993/1994 US Geological Survey (USGS) report estimates the sum total of discovered and undiscovered resources at 28 billion barrels of oil equivalent. While this estimate is dated and likely falls on the low side of the equation, the Chinese estimate is also old and most likely overly ambitious.
How this most recent geopolitical standoff will pan out is hard to predict. It pits the world’s rising super power against an old guard super power that is struggling to maintain its grip both economically and politically in a world of competing claims, rivalries and shifting political alliances. However, it’s not hard to recognize the playbook China, currently quarterbacked by Chinese President Xi Jinping, is using. Beijing is using a move formulated in the founding days of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and also used during the onset of the Korean War against UN troops. It’s a strategy also adopted and still used today by a belligerent North Korea: Make bold moves while raising the stakes so high that your opponent will dare not follow. In China’s current case, however, it’s an audacious, calculated but decidedly dangerous move that could backfire with disastrous consequences.
Cover Photo credit: Shutterstock
