The United States has shifted the focus of its China-targeted strategy to the South China Sea.
It has recently intensified provocation against China in the region by sending an aircraft carrier fleet to cruise waters near China’s islands and reef islets. It was the largest military assembly of the US naval force in China’s offshore waters since disputes over territorial waters heated up in the South China Sea. Also joining in to exert pressure on China was the US Air Force, with its Pacific commander announcing more “flights over” the region. Meanwhile, Washington backed Manila to lodge litigation against China at the Hague Tribunal over sovereignty of a few South China Sea islands and reef. They requested China to accept the verdict, arguing that denial of the verdict would constitute a violation of the international law and that the US and its allies would be legally justified to take actions in the South China Sea.
To justify its military actions in the region, the US invented a number of pretexts to support its so-called navigation freedom and aviation freedom.
The first pretext was China’s alleged attempt to “militarize” the South China Sea.
China’s act to build defensive facilities on islands and islets was well within its sovereign right and in line with international practice. It had nothing to do with militarization. What if somebody accused the US of militarizing Pearl Harbor and Guam, which are way distant from the American mainland? China never made any remarks on that, because they were American territories. In fact, it has been the US rather than China that militarized the South China Sea. The US has a permanent military presence in the region and regularly has held large-scale exercises there, in which its naval fleets barge about in the South China Sea as if the sea were its internal waters. The US warships frequently break into China’s coastal waters in a threatening and provoking way. In fact, the US is the initiator of the South China Sea militarization — while China has never stationed any of its military forces beyond its territorial waters. Given these facts, the US was like a thief calling “Stop thief!” when it accused China of “militarizing” the South China Sea.
The second pretext the US employed to defend its actions in the South China Sea was the remoteness of those islands and islets from the Chinese mainland. It says those territories are so distant from the Chinese mainland and so close to other claiming countries that they belong to those countries rather than China. Washington implies that the American warships in the South China Sea are acting in defiance of China’s threat on behalf of those countries. This is a fallacious argument against common sense and legal principles. China was the first to find, name and exercise administration over the South China Sea islands and islets and they have been under China’s sovereignty for hundreds and even thousands of years, which no country had ever disputed until the mid-1970s, when oil and gas reserves were discovered in the sea and some countries illegally occupied a fairly large number of the islands and islets. It is China who has fallen victim to other countries’ actions. These are the facts of the South China Sea issue.
It is absurd to determine an island’s ownership by judging how distant it is from the mainland. Certain Western countries also have overseas islands lying far away from their mainland but close to other countries, but they never gave up their sovereignty over the territories. For instance, Hawaii is much closer to Mexico than to the American mainland but the US never ceded the islands to Mexico. This “distance theory” is a typical double-standard and an example of power politics.
The third pretext is that China refuses to acknowledge arbitration on the South China Sea issue, which therefore, Washington alleges, proves China’s violation of the international law. This is sheer fallacy. It is the Philippines who proved to be illegal, unreasonable and untrue to its words by referring the dispute to the International Tribunal in violation of the agreement it had signed with China. China’s refusal to recognize the case is above reproach, for the act is consistent with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The US is an irrelevant party in the case but it went so far in its support of the Philippines as to try to intimidate China into accepting the arbitration. This only serves to expose the truth behind the case – it was nothing but a political farce orchestrated by certain people.
Several considerations prompted the US to put the South China Sea issue at the core of its Asia-Pacific strategy to contain China.
First, the South China Sea is the lifeline to the US and its allies’ maritime transportation and the rise of China would constitute a challenge to US hegemony in the region.
Second, Washington has sensed that Beijing is surpassing it in political, and especially economic, influence on ASEAN countries. To reverse the trend, it made Southeast Asia the focus of its “pivot to Asia” strategy and made every effort to play up the so-called China threat in the region in an attempt to drive a wedge between ASEAN and China. Meanwhile, the US made provocative moves against China so as to regain leverage in the region.
Third, the US has always tried to form an “East NATO” alliance in the Asia-Pacific despite tepid responses from the region. In recent years, the US has chosen the South China Sea dispute as a point of penetration to break the lukewarm situation. By siding with certain ASEAN countries in their disputes with China, the US has been strengthening its alliance or strategic partnership with those countries, trying to form a semi-circle blockading China, which includes countries from Northeast Asia to South China Sea to Oceania with the US-Japan Alliance as the mainstay.
Fourth, the US’ actions against China in the South China Sea obviously seek to bolster the morale of the secessionist movement in Taiwan, which has recently gathered considerable momentum on the island, so as to block China’s peaceful reunification.
As a country thousands of miles away and totally irrelevant in the South China Sea dispute, the US, however, forced its way into the matter to complicate it further and cause escalation of regional tension. Such an egocentric move is against the trend of the times and the fundamental interests of the countries in the region and is bound to end in failure. The US should bear in mind that the power balance, international relations and interests distribution in the Asia-Pacific have all undergone profound changes. Most Asia-Pacific countries, including ASEAN members, want to keep a good relationship with China; they won’t bind themselves on Washington’s war chariot against China.
