Read China's Territorial Disputes Online
Authors: Chien-Peng Chung
China’s sustained push through the South China Sea indicates that the PLAN has been fairly successful in its efforts at lobbying for political influence and budget allocation. After becoming PLAN commander in 1982, Admiral Liu Huaqing became a forceful spokesman for the push to the Spratlys, arguing to journalists that one of PLAN’s main goals was to assert sovereignty over its rich and far-flung maritime resources.
36
In 1994, PLAN’s deputy commander Zhang Xusan used the same argument to pitch for more defense expenditure during the NPC budget debate.
37
Liu’s elevation to the Politburo Standing Committee at the fourteenth CCP Congress in October 1992 further increased the navy’s influence in policy-making. Since 1983, the PLAN has been escorting research vessels dispatched by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the State Oceanic Bureau to monitor weather and water conditions in the furthest reaches of the Spratlys.
38
In the early 1990s, numerous articles in PLA journals used the Spratlys dispute to argue for faster naval upgrading.
39
Their authors invariably pointed out the great distance between the Spratlys and the Chinese mainland to justify the acquisition of larger surface battleships, long-range SU-72 type fighters, aerial refueling capability, and forward naval bases in the South China Sea. Of course, a conflict scenario in the Taiwan Straits figured prominently in China’s recent efforts to acquire SU-27s, Sovremenny-class destroyers, and kilo-class submarines from Russia. Still, the primary role of PLAN in organizing and conducting South China Sea operations fits well into the navy’s augmenting organizational interests. This makes the PLAN a powerful domestic interest group in any negotiations over the sovereignty disposition of the islands. It was most likely to elements in PLAN’s South China Sea command that President Ramos of the Philippines was referring when he said he believed the occupation of Mischief Reef to be carried out by low-level functionaries acting without the knowledge or consent of the Chinese authorities.
40
Mischief Reef and after: strategic interaction between China and ASEAN and within ASEAN
The so-called Mischief Reef incident began when the Philippines armed forces discovered Chinese-built concrete structures on that tiny reef in early February 1995, inside the 200-mile EEZ claim by the Philippines. Three days of bilateral talks in Beijing ended in stalemate, with China protesting that Mischief Reef is part of Chinese Spratly territory, and that the structures were merely shelters for Chinese fishermen and not military bunkers.
41
The Philippines government then ordered its navy and air force to destroy the structures. Beijing was surprised by the Philippines’ move, but it was even more so when ASEAN as a group issued a statement condemning the Chinese action for contravening the “ASEAN Declaration on the South China Sea.” Previously, ASEAN members have believed that China would be more amenable to compromise in a context of quiet diplomacy and private dialogue designed to save face, rather than to engage in a public shouting match. Even then, China did not seem persuaded, for when the Philippines government arranged for local and foreign journalists to visit other islands claimed by Manila, they found their boat blocked by Chinese ships.
42
The Philippines navy retaliated by arresting sixty-two Chinese fishermen in nearby waters for trespassing.
43
After the incident, China’s top unofficial spokesman on South China Sea affairs, Pan Shiying, told American officials that if China’s offer for talks on joint development were rebuffed, “it will have no choice but to take over the islands forcibly.”
44
This could only have meant that, if countries were to negotiate with China, they would be recognizing its claims to parts or all of the Spratlys. If they did not negotiate with China, then China would continue its “salami-slicing” tactics of acquiring one by one the disputed islands, reefs and atolls, thus creating a
fait accompli
for the Southeast Asian countries to deal with.
Ramos had already decided to allow a Filipino affiliate of the American energy firm Vaalco to explore for oil in the Reed Bank area of the Spratlys.
45
To forestall further Chinese moves, the president threatened to invoke the Mutual Defense Treaty between the Philippines and the United States, and the Philippines Congress passed a 50 billion peso (US$2 billion) program to upgrade the country’s armed forces.
46
In an attempt to bring more countries into the discussion, ASEAN countries highlighted the Spratly issue when the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) on security, a product of the annual ASEAN post-ministerial conferences, met in Brunei in July 1995. To diffuse regional tension, Beijing told Manila privately that the Chinese would not build any new structures in the disputed area with the Philippines,
47
and subsequently offered to discuss the South China Sea dispute with ASEAN as a group at its 1995 summit in Bangkok.
48
This offer constituted a major concession on China’s part, given that it had previously insisted on conducting only bilateral talks. However, it appeared with hindsight to have been no more than a tactical ploy to calm the concerns of ASEAN countries, for by March 1996, the Chinese had rebuilt the structures on Mischief Reef which had been destroyed by the Filipinos.
49
Coinciding with a series of artillery barrages across the Taiwan Straits, Beijing’s assertive stance on the Spratlys was explained by ASEAN officials and scholars as an attempt by the PLA and its navy to capitalize on CCP secretary general Jiang Zemin’s political vulnerability to promote its own importance and interest. Be that as it may, there is still a prevailing sense within ASEAN that China is stalling for time until it is powerful enough to assert sole ownership of the disputed South China Sea islands. How else can one explain why, while accepting the principles of negotiated settlements and joint exploration, China has proceeded to occupy more islands and grant additional oil exploration contracts? Possession of the Spratlys will not only confer upon the Chinese tremendous pride in the symbolic restoration of China’s great power status in Asia, it would make China a key participant in Southeast Asian affairs.
Underlying China’s military interventions at both Johnson and Mischief Reefs in 1988 and 1995 was probably China’s concern that its claims risked being marginalized if it did not actively assert its presence in the Spratlys. China became very suspicious of what looked to it like attempts by ASEAN claimants, with the support of the other members of the group, to divide the Spratly claims among themselves, especially after Vietnam joined ASEAN in July 1995. Already in January 1992, Vietnam and Malaysia had reached an agreement to jointly explore for resources in disputed areas.
50
In April 1996, Vietnam and the Philippines sent a team of research scientists from both countries on board a Philippines government ship for a fifteen-day mission to take an “inventory of marine organisms” in the Spratlys.
51
As to the tussle between China and Vietnam over offshore petroleum concessions, ASEAN, prudent not to add fat to the fire, has been remarkably silent.
In fact, China would be putting itself in the most advantageous position in any future discussion on the sovereignty of the Spratlys if it were to demonstrate flexibility on the continental shelf and EEZ claims of Malaysia and Brunei respectively. These countries are contesting the least number of islets and reefs compared to the other claimants, and so doing would not only allow China to delimit its southernmost baseline and legitimize its presence in the archipelago, it might even turn other ASEAN members against them. It would then be interesting to study the dynamics of China’s interaction with two groups of countries within the same “regime” under the framework of “three-level game” interaction, to see if China succeeds in splitting them up, or if ASEAN succeeds in holding together as a cohesive regional grouping. So far, the latter has seemed to be the case. However, any concession on China’s territorial sovereignty claims over the Spratlys would compromise China’s contested claims everywhere else, so this scenario would not likely come true.
Although Taiwan maintains its own separate claim to the South China Sea islands, its role in this on-going South China Sea imbroglio has been very contradictory, which perhaps mirrors its own identity crisis. After the 14 March 1988 clash between China and Vietnam, the Taiwanese defense minister said that, if China had requested help from Taiwan’s garrison at Taiping Island, which it had maintained since 1956, the Taiwanese would have given it.
52
For nationalistic reasons, people such as political figures in the pro-unification New Party would prefer to see the Spratlys occupied by the PRC rather than by ASEAN countries.
53
Since Taiwan was admitted to the Indonesian workshops in 1992, its participating officials and academics have been very vocal in reiterating the PRC’s stance that the disputed islands have historically belonged to the Chinese people and outstanding issues can be settled only if “Chinese” sovereignty is not affected.
54
In that spirit, the vice-president of China’s CNOOC could announce that, as of August 1995, China and Taiwan would collaborate on oil and gas exploration and exploitation in the South China Sea, as both sides are “like a family, where no problems such as ‘sovereignty’ issues will bother either side.”
55
Although Taiwan’s executive Yuan in April 1993 came up with a policy guideline claiming that “the South China Sea within the historical water limit is the maritime area under the jurisdiction of the Republic of China,”
56
the problem with identifying too closely with the PRC’s position on “Chinese” sovereignty for Taiwan is that it may find its own claim marginalized by both China and the other claimant states.
Scarborough Shoal: subnational actors at play
Lying in the vicinity of the Macclesfield Bank, 200 kilometers west of the main Philippines island of Luzon, is a shoal called Scarborough, or Huangyan in Chinese. On 1 May 1997, two Chinese Ocean Bureau ships carrying members of an international ham operators’ club from Japan, the US and China were nearing the shoal. It was then that Filipino military jets and vessels appeared and the captains of the Ocean Bureau ships were warned that they were within the 200-mile EEZ of the Philippines.
57
Public opinion in the Philippines saw the ham radio operators as pawns in a claim game conducted by China, in yet another effort to use non-military means such as research ships, oil companies, and even foreign and Chinese civilians to advance its territorial claims. The Chinese government was thus seen to be doing in the South China Sea exactly what it accused the Japanese government of doing in the Diaoyu/Senkaku dispute. Such suspicions appeared to be borne out by the words of a Chinese organizer of the trip, who said that the Chinese government paid thousands of dollars to charter the ships, and that the expedition itself was led by a former PLA operator.
58
In the aftermath of the episode, Filipino senator Gregory Honasan suggested that his government should train and arm Filipino residents of the Spratly islands to combat future foreign intrusions.
59
Then a Filipino congressman led a group of his colleagues and journalists to Scarborough Shoal and hoisted their national flag. Although the Philippines government quickly dissociated itself from the action of the activists by calling the adventure a private initiative, it almost immediately announced that it would continue constructing lighthouses on the disputed islands it already occupied.
60
The matter seemed to have been settled after three days of talks in Beijing between the Chinese vice-foreign minister and his Filipino counterpart, with both sides agreeing to establish a committee to review their respective territorial claims.
61
Yet in March 1998, the Philippines foreign secretary had to warn the Chinese against installing a ground satellite on a Paracel island and telephone booths on Chinese-occupied islands in the Spratly group.
62
Fishing in troubled waters
Interestingly, the first attempt on the part of the PRC government to create and maintain a physical presence in the South China Sea was far back in November 1955, when a team of ninety personal was dispatched by the “Hainan Bird Fertilizer Company” to collect guano and construct shelters on Yongxing (Wood Island) in the Paracel group. Taiwan, of course, has occupied Taiping Island in the Spratlys since 1956, and sees no issue with its own fishermen plying their livelihood around those disputed isles. Even so, up till the middle of 2001, Taiwanese authorities have reported over 200 instances annually of what they describe as “harassment” by the Chinese navy against Taiwanese fishing boats, mostly in the South China Sea, whereby armed Chinese sailors supposedly boarded, detained or chased away Taiwanese fishermen operating within what
China regards as its maritime territorial claims.
63
In addition, in 1999 there were at least seven incidents involving Chinese fishermen and the Philippines navy that have resulted in the loss of lives or property or both, and the Chinese fishing boats involved in these incidents were all registered in Hainan Province.
64
Intelligence sources have claimed that Chinese authorities have been doling out cash to encourage fishermen based in harbors close to Vietnam to extend their operations into the Spratlys, as a strategy to assist China in its sovereignty claims over what it considers to be its territorial waters and maritime rights.
65
Apparently, by sending fishing boats but not warships, China can strengthen its case that Chinese fishermen past and present have cast their nets in the Spratlys, and at the same time, not appear to be provocative.
Over 5 million tons of fish are pulled from the South China Sea each year, which is 10 percent of the global fisheries catch, providing 25 percent of the protein needs for 500 million people and a livelihood for some 270 million.
66
Unfortunately, the sovereignty dispute has made preservation of fisheries resources in the South China Sea all but impossible. A case in point is the Philippines response to China’s imposition of a fishing moratorium in the South China Sea north of the 12 degree parallel from 1 June to 31 August 1999.
67
The 1999 moratorium announcement by the central government was the first to cover the entire South China Sea. The Philippines made a point of asserting its sovereignty claims and deterring “poaching” by Chinese fishermen when its navy sank one of three Chinese wooden-hull fishing vessels operating in the vicinity of Scarborough Shoal on 18 July 1999, right in the middle
oi
the moratorium period.
68
While the Philippines denied the right of the Chinese to impose a fishing moratorium on what it considered to be its own maritime claims and resources, it seemed that even China’s own fishermen were prepared, or allowed, to ignore it. Hence, protecting the species could be a rallying point, and shifting the focus to fishery and conservation issues could alert both the domestic and world public, which could be used to pressure governments to take collective action to arrest the declining fish stocks in the South China Sea, thus effectively “de-linking” this pressing issue from the sovereignty argument, a solution to which may be years or even decades away.