Tense standoff in South China Sea

S P SETH

The tense standoff between China and Vietnam continues in South China Sea. It started when China deployed a giant oil rig in the waters with contested sovereignty. Vietnam resisted it resulting in skirmishes between their naval vessels. So far there has been no exchange of firepower, with the incidents confined to ramming of ships and use of water cannons. According to Hanoi’s account, “On May 4, Chinese ships rammed two Vietnamese Sea Guard vessels. Chinese ships, with air support, sought to intimidate Vietnamese vessels. Water cannon was used.” The contested islands, Paracels and Spratlys, and the waters around them are said to be rich in oil and fishery. The recent anti-China riots in Vietnam added another dimension to an already difficult relationship.

China also claims much of the South China Sea as its territorial waters. Which makes it an issue that also concerns the United States. The US is involved for two reasons. First, it has a string of security alliances with some regional countries that are at dispute with China over the sovereignty question, like Japan in the East China Sea, and the Philippines in the South China Sea. Though the US doesn’t have any security treaty with Vietnam, both Hanoi and Washington are developing close ties, which might also come to encompass military relations.

Who would have thought that Vietnam and the US would start coming together, considering the history of the war that brought so much destruction to Vietnam? Indeed, the US waged war against Vietnam in the sixties and parts of the seventies to prevent the spread of communism in the region from, what was then called the domino theory. And in that long struggle, communist China was Vietnam’s political and strategic ally. But since the occupation by China of the Paracel islands in 1974 which Vietnam claimed, and their contested sovereignty over the Spratlys, their relations have never been the same. This new bout of tensions and skirmishes is bringing the US and Vietnam closer. The US state department spokeswoman, for instance, said that Washington was “strongly concerned about dangerous conduct and intimidation by vessels [of China] in the disputed area.” Beijing’s response has been dismissive, with its foreign ministry spokeswoman saying that the deployment of the oil rig had nothing to do with the US or Vietnam. In other words, China was in its own territorial waters.

The second reason for US concern over China’s control over much of the South China Sea is that Beijing might interfere with the freedom of navigation through its busy sea-lanes adversely affecting world trade and movement of its naval fleet. China and the US have almost collided in the South China Sea recently. Last December, for instance, when China’s new aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, was patrolling contested waters of the South China Sea, it came close to clashing with a US cruiser shadowing it at a distance. The US ship reportedly saved the situation by taking evasive action. Earlier, in 2009, there was another incident that might have got out of hand. The possibility of more such incidents and worse cannot be ruled out. While China would like to drive the US out of Asia-Pacific, Washington seems equally determined to maintain its naval supremacy.

One puzzling thing, though, about China’s assertion of power in the region is: why is Beijing virtually antagonizing almost all its regional neighbours (it has maritime boundary disputes with six of its Asia-Pacific neighbours), pushing them to strengthen and/or forge new defence links with the United States? It might be recalled that Deng Xiaoping, the leader who put China on the new path in the post-Mao period, had counseled that China should “hide our capabilities and bide our times”. At that time, Beijing was in the process of modernizing the country by growing its economy and military capabilities. In the last few years, Beijing has apparently come to the conclusion that it no longer needs to hide its capabilities. It is now the second largest economy in the world, and is emerging as a superpower with military capability to match it. It might not be itching for a fight but, at the same time, is not squeamish about proclaiming its writ over much of the region by way of asserting sovereignty over the surrounding seas, as the US did in the 19^th century in the Western Hemisphere by way of proclaiming the Monroe Doctrine. It sure is creating serious tensions with some of its neighbours like Vietnam, the Philippines and Japan.  There is risk in this of starting a conflagration, but Beijing would seem to think that these risks, if at all, are manageable.

There are reasons for this line of thinking. First and foremost, China would like to believe that it has time on its side, considering its long history. Though the US is still the top power, it might not remain in this league for long. By most accounts, China is likely to overtake the US as an economic power in about a decade. In the meantime, it is militarily powerful enough to create sufficient risk for the US to keep away from any major involvement in a regional conflict. In other words, the US might voice much support for its allies and provide them some weapons and logistical support, it would, most likely, stay away from any direct military confrontation with China.  Therefore, for China, the risk of pushing its regional sovereignty is manageable.

Second, even though China has maritime boundary disputes with a number of regional countries, it is unlikely that they will all form a united front against China. The recent ASEAN meeting in Myanmar failed to produce a joint statement critical of China. The most it did was to caution restraint and peaceful resolution. At the same time, they have growing trade ties with China. They would hate to lose China’s expanding market. Third, although the US is critical of China, it doesn’t seem keen to get involved militarily. There is a general feeling that the US has been weakened by its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and hit hard by the global financial crisis. Therefore, China might be right to think that time is on its side and if it were to persist with its sovereignty agenda, the chips will fall in place.

The only caveat, though, is that China has enough political, social and economic issues to resolve that might pose serious domestic problems for the Communist Party’s monopoly power. But the pursuit of national power, against the backdrop of China’s humiliation in the 19^th and right through to mid-20^th century appears a sufficiently powerful banner to rally people around the Party. However, things rarely work out smoothly and many things can go wrong. In that case, we might be in for dangerous times.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo. com. au

Turbulence forecast for Asia-Pacific

S P SETH

Asia-Pacific region has been and still is, largely, an American dominated part of the world. It is not surprising then that China’s rise, particularly its growing military power and naval reach, is creating tensions in the region. Even more so because China is not only claiming a number of islands and vast stretches of waters in the South China Sea and East China Sea, but is actively taking measures to assert its claims. It has an ongoing sovereignty dispute over a cluster of rocky islets with Japan, which has brought the two countries close to naval skirmishes with the potential to develop into a military conflict. And the tensions escalated recently when China declared “an air defence identification zone” over a vast swathe of the East China Sea over and around the disputed islands, including some in the South Korean claimed maritime zone. What it means in effect is that any foreign aircraft entering the zone will be required to notify their flight plans as well as maintain radio contact or else face unspecified “defensive emergency measures”. All this activity, with claims and counter-claims, is deepening the fault lines in the region raising serious concerns.   

Added to this were concerns recently when a Chinese naval flotilla conducted an unannounced naval exercise through the approaches into the Indian Ocean. An Australian journalist captured his country’s concern this way: “Three Chinese warships on an exercise that included combat simulations sailed through the Sunda Strait, turned east, passed by Christmas Island [Australian offshore territory] before skirting the southern edge of Java and turning north again.” He added, “Never before has a Chinese drill come so close to Australia.” Of course, China’s naval flotilla was operating in international waters and wasn’t obliged to inform/consult Australia or any other country.

But that is not the point for China’s critics. The real issue is that China is developing a navy that can now operate where it never treaded before. As Rory Medcalf, program director at the Lowy Institute, an independent think tank here, reportedly said, “they’re going to have to expect the Chinese to be able to operate in considerable force in the vicinity of our [Australian] territories.”

Even though the Australian government has been trying to be calm and understanding, it is not a welcome development for them. Australia’s US alliance has been, and is, the cornerstone of Australia’s security policy. And Canberra sees China rocking the boat, thus posing a threat not only to Australia but also to the region. But from Beijing’s viewpoint, it works both ways. Just as Australia sees China as a potential or real security threat, Beijing is not happy about Australia’s deepening security nexus with the United States. They regard it as part of a policy to contain China, with Japan included in the trilateral arrangement.

Apparently, China wants the region to become used to the projection and display of its military power as a back up to its sovereignty claims in the oceans around. And some Chinese commentators are not shy about saying this. According to Shen Dingli, professor of international relations at Fudan University in Shanghai: “Expect more of China’s naval exercises around [Australia], per international law.” He is further reported to say that as a “normal great power”, China has every right to build its navy in order to deter American “interference.” Amplifying it, he said, “ China’s legitimate national interests are still undermined by the US. America has interfered in mainland China’s unification with Taiwan, and its region-based alliances have served its purpose of military intervention.” And: “Australia is on the US strategic chessboard for such purposes… Australia shall not expect to be entitled to follow the US to threaten China without hurting itself.”

As of now, China is militarily still fairway behind the United States. Therefore, it would probably be not keen on a military conflict with the United States and its regional allies. But with its growing economy, it has the capacity to keep raising its defence expenditure every year to further modernize and expand its military power. In the last couple of decades, its defence expenditure has been rising at the rate of 10 per cent or more, with a 12.2 per cent rise this year, as announced by Premier Li Keqiang during his annual work report to the National People’s Congress (NPC). If such increased allocation is maintained and/or increased and compounded, China’s defense budget might come close to the US’ over a couple of decades. At the same time the US defense allocation is on a downward trajectory because of its twin debt and deficit problems.  At present, though, the US defence budget of about $700 billion is way ahead of China at about $130 billion; though China’s official figure is regarded by many as a gross under-estimate.

But China is not shying away from its determination to increase its military profile. As Premier Li told the NPC, “We will comprehensively enhance the revolutionary nature of the Chinese armed forces, further modernize them and upgrade their performance, and continue to raise their deterrence and combat capabilities in the information age.” What China is seeking at present is to build up enough deterrence to make it costly for the US to come in support of its regional allies. At a broader level, China might want to treat the Asia-Pacific as its own strategic backyard with its own Monroe Doctrine, like the US in an earlier era for the Western Hemisphere. But as long as the US is committed to regarding the region as its primary focus (“pivot”, as Obama has said), with China equally determined to assert its primacy, there will always be potential for military conflict by miscalculation rather than design.

Though China is now an emerging superpower and might soon be on par with the United States, both countries would like to avoid an open conflict. In the case of China, it needs a decade or more of relative peace to foster social stability and equity at home. The pace of change since the eighties has been so fast that the Chinese society needs to strike a new balance. Just to take one example, mass migration of working people from rural areas to urban industrial centres is not only depopulating villages but destroying traditional culture and networks. And these rural workers, because of residency restrictions, cannot settle permanently in urban centres where they work. Suffice it to say that the pace of change in China is creating serious social and economic problems.

Over and above, there is this scourge of widespread corruption at the highest levels, threatening the credibility of the Communist Party. One of the revolutionary veterans’ daughter, 72-year old Hu Muying, put the enormity of the task in some perspective. She reportedly told a recent gathering of princelings (sons and daughters of party leaders and veterans) that “ [The corrupt] have gained lots of power” through relationship networks and have formed many “self-interested groups.” As a result, “It is all intertwined in many ways, touching one affects the whole network…”

The enormity of challenges at home might constrain external push for regional dominance at any cost. The only danger is that perceived sovereign interests (on all sides) tend to generate their own momentum. And before you know, it is already too late. The First World War, started hundred years ago, illustrates this.

   

China and Mao Zedong’s legend

S P SETH

It was a little surprising that Mao Zedong’s 120^th birthday, which fell on December 26^th, didn’t receive much international media attention. Even more surprising that it wasn’t celebrated with as much gusto and on a grand scale all over China. Which might explain the subdued international attention.  But what might be the explanation for less than grandiose celebrations in China? There had been reports earlier that the event was going to be a grand and gala affair all over the country, but it ended up being a much smaller but dignified affair with the country’s leaders paying homage to Mao in Beijing. President Xi Jinping sought to put it in perspective in his speech on the occasion at the Great Hall of People in Beijing when talking of Mao, as well as other revolutionary leaders, who led China’s communist revolution. He reportedly said, “Revolutionary leaders [particularly Mao whose birthday it was] are not gods, but human beings. [We] cannot worship them like gods or refuse to allow people to point out and correct their errors just because they are great; neither can we totally repudiate them and erase their historical feats just because they made mistakes…”

Ever since Bo Xilai, who ruled Chongqing and invoked Mao and his legend to   destabilize the political transition from President Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping, the Communist Party of China (CPC) is wrestling with balancing Mao’s deified image with facts on the ground. Which is that while Mao was a great revolutionary leader, he was still a human being and prone to make mistakes like other human beings. But what those mistakes/frailties might have been remain a mystery because China’s post-Mao generations have no knowledge of it in the absence of any discussion or debate. Hence, Mao’s deification continues.

Bo Xilai sought to use Mao’s legend as the people’s man to promote his own political ambitions to make it to the top but lost, was purged and is now behind bars. President Xi Jinping has been watching his back from the likes of Bo who rallied around him, like China’s former security czar and Standing Committee member, Zhou Yongkang, who is being investigated for corruption which, in political terms, would mean anything and everything. But Xi Jinping himself was  toying with Mao’s image and legend after he became China’s top leader because it was a populist thing to do, judging by how Bo was seemingly doing a good job of it before he was undone by his former police chief and his wife, Gu Kailai, the latter now  serving a suspended death sentence for poisoning her British business associate, Neil Heywood.

However, now that Xi is feeling more secure and has decided to liberalize China’s economy, relatively speaking, by giving private sector a greater role, he feels the need to strike a certain balance between Mao’s popular image as a god-like figure who couldn’t and didn’t make mistakes, and a human being likely to err at times. But that is about as far as any Chinese leader will go in assessing Mao’s role. Even Deng Xiaoping, who like many other Chinese communist leaders suffered when Mao launched his Great Cultural Revolution (1966-76), and might be considered the father of modern China in terms of its economic transformation, went only as far as telling the Italian journalist, Oriana Fallaci, that Mao was 70 per cent good and his mistakes amounted to only 30 per cent.

 Since Mao died in 1976, his successors, starting with Deng Xiaoping, have made a complete about-turn from his theory and practice of ‘perpetual revolution’ to keep the revolution safe. Deng Xiaoping was for ‘learning from facts’ and not ideologically bound. And the facts dictated a more pragmatic model of making use of capitalist practices to make China economically strong. And that is what China has done since eighties with spectacular results, making it into the world’s second largest economy and an emerging superpower. And Deng was all in favor of people becoming rich, though he realized that it wouldn’t lead to an egalitarian society for a long time to come, if at all.

The consequent income gaps between rich and poor, urban and rural areas, among coastal regions and the interior as well as the periphery (border areas) have caused widespread social tensions, frustration and, even, unrest. Such unrest is further fueled with widespread corruption at all levels of the Party and the government by blurring the line between politics and economics. For instance, reporting by the New York Times and Bloomberg recently revealed that the families of the then prime minister Wen Jiabao, and the present President Xi Jinping, had made millions through political connections, though neither Wen nor Xi were said to be personally involved.

Coming back to Mao’s god-like image, there is a sense among many Chinese, with new generations having grown up with no knowledge or experience of convulsive events of that time, that when Mao was China’s ‘helmsman’ things were simple and everybody lived happily with guaranteed employment for life. But there were awful things happening. For instance, Mao’s Great Leap Forward, of the late-fifties and into early sixties, to leapfrog development process seriously contributed to China’s famine at the time that resulted in millions of deaths from starvation. And when Communist Party of China (CPC) sought to reverse Mao’s policies, he unleashed his Great Cultural Revolution (1966-76) against the party leadership to reassert his control. It was a lost decade with Red Guards, Mao’s storm troopers, turning on the party’s veteran political leaders who had fought for the revolution alongside Mao. Among those hounded to a miserable death was Liu Shaoqi, then president of China, among others. In other words, while Mao was a great leader who spearheaded the communist revolution and helped establish the People’s Republic of China, his record in the post-revolutionary period was, by and large, disappointing, to put it mildly.

And it was not until after Mao’s death in 1976 that China’s new leader, Deng Xiaoping, who had also been sent to purgatory during Cultural Revolution, was able to turn things around to build China into a successful and strong nation with emphasis on economic growth. And, as we can see, it has worked so far. But the new China also faced a new dilemma, which continues to dog it today. Which is:  how to reconcile the virtual abandonment of its communist ideology by following the capitalist mode of production while still insisting on maintaining the CPC’s monopoly power. This is where China’s post-Mao leadership finds itself in a difficult position, and where Mao’s legend (even with some caveat here and there) is useful. Because if Mao is delegitimized as erratic, his successors to the great CPC that brought about the revolution, might also stand delegitimized, especially in the midst of pervasive cynicism among many Chinese about the party leadership at all levels with reports of widespread corruption and so on.

Xi Jinping’s speech on Mao’s 120^th birthday, quoted earlier in the article, neatly encapsulates this contradiction and dilemma faced by the party.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au     

More trouble between China and Japan

S P SETH

Since I last wrote on this subject (Daily Times, November 20), the situation has further deteriorated requiring just a spark to ignite a bonfire. I am referring here to the sovereignty dispute between China and Japan over an outcrop of uninhabited rocks jutting out of the East China Sea, which Japan and China respectively call Senkaku and Diaoyu islands. Late last month, China declared an “air defence identification zone” covering a vast swathe of East China Sea over and around the disputed islands, including some in South Korea-claimed maritime zone. What it means in effect is that any foreign aircraft entering China’s zone will be required to notify Chinese authorities of their flight plans as well as maintain radio contact or else face unspecified “defensive emergency measures”.

With Japan adamant about its sovereignty over the disputed islands, China apparently decided to force the issue with its air defence zone. Whether or not this policy was clearly thought through with a follow up Plan B in the event that China’s directive was flouted, is not quite clear. Indeed, the US, Japan and South Korea all decided to ignore the Chinese identification zone by flying their military aircraft without communicating their flight plans, with one important difference though. Which is that the US authorities have advised their civilian airlines to comply with the Chinese directive but insisting that this does not mean the US acceptance of China’s position. Japan, though, has advised its airlines to ignore the Chinese directive. After appearing to fumble on its follow up response, Beijing is slowly refining its approach which is a combination of avoiding any military action while reinforcing their position with scrambling fighter jets and carrying out “routine patrols”. Beijing seems to be conveying the message that it has the capacity to enforce its security environment if it were threatened.

An important motive for China to declare its “air defence identification zone”, apart from putting Japan on notice, likely was to test the limits of the US resolve, in what Beijing considers essentially a bilateral territorial issue between China and Japan. The US has tried not to take a formal position on the sovereignty issue but has acknowledged Japan’s administrative control as well as stating unequivocally that the Senkaku islands are covered under the US-Japan security pact. In other words, the US will be bound militarily to protect Japan if these islands came under attack from China. During his recent Japan visit, later followed by trips to China and South Korea, the US Vice President, Joe Biden, was critical of China’s action as an effort to “unilaterally change the status quo”, saying that it had raised “the risk of accidents and miscalculation.” China, though, has reportedly called the new zone a fact of life that the world needed to accept.

 China’s action has also invited criticism from Australia as a close ally of both the US and Japan. And it invited a strong reaction from Beijing and a stern warning to Canberra to “correct” its mistake and avoid damaging their bilateral relationship. Australia appeared unfazed at the Chinese reaction, with its Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, arguing that Canberra has a stake in the region and therefore, opposes “action by any side [referring obviously to China] that we believe could add to the tensions or add to the risk of a miscalculation in disputed territorial zones in the region.” Indeed, Australia has taken a very strong stand despite some concern that it could seriously affect economic ties with its largest trading partner. But Prime Minister Tony Abbot pointed out “China trades with us because it is in China’s interest to trade with us.”

Abbot has been much more forthright in both emphasizing the centrality of Australia’s defence ties with the US and Japan as well as the dangers arising from China’s unilateral move to change the status quo. To quote Abbot, “We are a strong ally of the United States, we are a strong ally of Japan, we have a very strong view that international disputes should be settled peacefully and in accordance with the rule of law and where we think this is not happening, or it is not happening appropriately, we will speak our mind.” In China’s view, this trilateral US-Japan-Australia nexus amounts to containing China. There is a strong sense in China that a number of regional countries simply can’t stand its rise. As Zhu Feng, a professor of international relations at Peking University reportedly said, “Whatever China does, it always attracts critics. Let the critics go on, and we’ll do what we do.” He added, “China is going through its rise--- we just have too many jealous neighbours.” In other words, China is not going to worry too much about its neighbours and, for that matter, the United States.

There are two important factors guiding this national view. First is China’s strong sense of humiliation in the past by foreign powers, focusing most on Japan for its wartime crimes. What follows from this is that China must be strong and united and not show any weakness in pursuing its “core” interests, including in the East China Sea. China is, therefore, keen to prove to itself and to the world that it is not going to be trifled with any more, and must re-establish its pre-eminent ‘historical’ role in the region. The problem, though, is that China’s perception of its ‘historical’ role is coming into conflict with the concept and reality of today’s nationalism, which is at the core of international relations. Some of China’s neighbours, that might or might not have been tributaries at one time of China’s Middle Kingdom, as it was then known, are now independent and they contest China’s ‘historical facts’.

In the meantime, the US has been doing some tight rope walking. Its earlier call on China to “rescind” its decision on air flight zone doesn’t appear to have been repeated. On the question of civilian flights, as noted earlier, the US authorities have advised their airlines to notify their flight plans as required by the new Chinese directive, but without conceding China’s territorial position. During his recent visit to Japan, China and South Korea, Biden seemed keen to contain any escalation over over-lapping air defence zones of these three countries. While eschewing any counter-measures, military or otherwise, Biden was at pains to emphasize to its regional allies that the US’ Asia-Pacific “pivot” or rebalancing, as it is now called, remains solid.

In other words, the US nexus of security alliances with its Asian partners remains a corner store of its Asian policy. At the same time, Beijing has been told that US-China relationship is crucial for Asia-Pacific region. These signals might appear contradictory and they are, but the US believes that it can somehow pull through its policy of competing and contending with China while still creating sufficient common ground to maintain peace in the region. It is a herculean task, and if the experience of history is anything to go by, it is unlikely to work over a period of time. 

Note: This article first appeared in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au