For many years, United States military airplanes and ships have conducted close-in surveillance operations on China. Recently, with a more ostentatious move, a U.S. Navy vessel sailed within 12 nautical miles of the Zhongjian Island in China’s Xisha Archipelago in violation of Chinese sovereignty. The U.S. claimed that they will continue the practice in the future.
The U.S. has created two excuses for its challenge against Chinese sovereignty. The first is “freedom of navigation”, which is a pseudo proposition. There has been no trouble regarding freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. Each year more than 100,000 vessels of various types from various countries sailed through the South China Sea without any trouble. Not a single accident has occurred there because of China. Freedom of navigation refers to the free passage of vessels of all countries through international waters not the freedom for a country’s military vessels to conduct close-contact surveillance; much less in the territorial waters of another country. The U.S. moves have nothing to do with freedom of navigation. These actions are in contempt of and a challenge against the sovereignty of another country. They are the replica of the gunboat policy of days past.
The other is China’s “excessive maritime claims.” A spokesperson of the U.S. Department of Defense employed such a pretext to justify its challenge against Chinese sovereignty, indicating China is expanding the scope of its own sovereignty in the South China Sea, taking islands and maritime rights and interests of other countries as its own. This pretext aims to deny China’s sovereignty, turning Chinese territorial waters into international waters, and finding “reasonable” ground for its military vessels’ is a willful disregard of Chinese sovereignty in Chinese waters. This reflects ignorance and distortion of history.
The islands and adjacent waters in the South China Sea have always been China’s. This is both historical truth and commonsense. Even U.S. President Barack Obama once acknowledged it. The essence of the South China Sea issue is most Chinese islands and reefs have been illegally occupied by a number of countries. China is the victim in the South China Sea issue. By portraying China the victim and constructive stakeholder as a “provocateur” and challenging China with such an excuse, the U.S. has disregarded facts and exposed its own obsession with power politics.
U.S. challenges against China are an integral part of its offensive strategy against China in the Asia-Pacific, which embodies the conspicuous escalation of its attempt to contain China. The background is China’s persistent, forceful rise, as well as the abrupt rise of its impacts on regional and global stages thanks to the implementation of its “one belt, one road” initiative. The U.S. has been bedeviled by the strategic anxiety that China will challenge or supplant its dominant position in the Asia-Pacific—and globally.
That is undoubtedly a groundless supposition. China has demonstrated that no matter how strong it becomes it won’t change its initial goal of peaceful development, it will always be faithful to its promise of never pursuing hegemony. China will never pursue its own gains at another country’s expense. It despises hegemony. China is the only major power in the world that truly treats countries of all sizes and strengths with true equality and sincerity, maintaining its stance to pursue mutually beneficial and win-win economic cooperation no matter the country’s internal politics. This has been consensus in the international community.
China has not and will not challenge the U.S. position, and has never acted to deny U.S. interests. Washington knows this very well. All the pretexts it has fabricated to consolidate its containment of China are groundless. It is finding faults with China mainly because it can’t tolerate China’s rise. In its eyes, a strong China is in itself a threat to the U.S.; only through preventing China from becoming strong can the U.S. maintain its position as the global “number one.” Such gangster logic will never work.
U.S. Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, claimed the other day he wanted China to suffer unaffordable loss, so that it can no longer defy other countries’ sovereignty. This shows the U.S. will continue confusing right and wrong, and won’t stop creating trouble in the South China Sea to challenge Chinese sovereignty. China-U.S. gaming in the South China Sea will be a long-term phenomenon. China doesn’t provoke, but is never afraid of provocation. If the U.S. continues its actions, China should escalate its protestations and expose U.S. violations to win international sympathy and support; in the mean time, it should adopt a principle of proactive defense, taking advantage of its naval forces to make provocateurs pay a necessary price. No country should be allowed to make trouble on our own doorstep.
It is a pathetic mistake for the U.S. to return to the gunboat policy of the past in the 21st century. China and the U.S., as the largest economies and countries with the strongest comprehensive national strength of the present-day world, have developed a very deep interdependence, and formed an inseparable community of shared interests, on both bilateral and global levels; cooperation benefits both, confrontation hurts both. Hopefully the U.S. will keep any eye on the big picture of cooperative bilateral ties and avoid going too far in the South China Sea and coming into confrontation with China. This will only create endless trouble.
