Makhan Saikia
From August 2014 to February 2016, China has been working hard on turning several reefs in the contested Spratly and Paracel in the South China Sea (SCS) into islands. The ongoing construction activities in the Spratly islands have become a major point of contention between China and the United States prompting Washington to send Navy destroyers to patrol the area twice in recent months. The current controversy around the SCS made global headlines the day after US President Obama gathered 10 leaders in the middle of February 2016 from South East Asian countries for a historic summit in California when the Pentagon had collected evidence that China is parking surface-to-air missile batteries on one of the Paracel islands. In the meeting itself, Obama sent a strong warning to China saying that the US would “continue to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows” and that “we will support the right of all countries to do the same”. According to Missile Threat, a website run by the George C Marshall Institute in Arlington, these missiles have a range of about 200 kilometres and are capable of destroying aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles.
What is China exactly doing in the two strips of SCS islands Paracel and Spratly? Last year in June, China had announced that the process of building seven new artificial islands by transferring sediment from the seafloor to reefs was completed. Currently, China is focusing its efforts on constructing ports, three airstrips, radar set-ups and other military facilities on these islands. In the process, China is destroying several reefs to make the foundation for the new islands which in turn are causing extensive damage to the surrounding maritime ecosystem.
Mira Rapp-Hooper, former Director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (A Washington Research Group), said although there are significant fisheries and possible large oil and gas reserves in the SCS, China’s efforts serve more to fortify its territorial claims than to help it extract natural resources.
Though China’s surge in the construction activities in the SCS has attracted international attention, it must be brought to light that other claimants in the area like Taiwan, Malaysia, Philippines and Vietnam too operate airstrips and have expanded islands in the Spratly in the past.
In the meantime, on the sidelines of China’s annual “two sessions” or “lianghui” of 2016-plenary meetings of the country’s top legislative and consultative bodies, the National People’s Congress and the National People’s Consultative Conference, starting from early this month, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, while addressing the media stated, “China will not allow nor would most countries in the region anyone to muddle the South China Sea and cause chaos in Asia.” He also shrugged off accusation that Beijing was militarising the SCS. He further warned that as the biggest coastal country along the SCS, China wished to uphold freedom of navigation in the region but that did not mean the freedom to do anything any country wanted. It has also been repeatedly said that China is not the first country to build military facilities in the region, indirectly pointing at the US. This makes China’s official stance clear that the country is bound to go ahead in the recent construction work in the Spratly islands and vowed to defend its territorial claims across the SCS irrespective of international protests.
Why is the US so much concerned about the Chinese installation of missile batteries in the SCS far away from its borders? In fact experts say that the new fortifications pose no threat to US military as it could be destroyed easily in case there is a real war. The reason behind US’ constant worry is that the recent build-up and military facilities installed by China is directly challenging the military status quo in the Western Pacific which has been dominated solely by Washington since the end of the Second World War. With these facilities, China would be achieving the goal of establishing a “security buffer” for any future international conflagration, extending far from its coast, which was a big dream the strategists in Beijing wanted to fulfil since the Korean War. The current area under conflict, which is an expanse of sea the size of Mexico, would ensure a de facto control of the Chinese military over the sea and its neighbours who are making competing claims on the same. China, like the way the US preserves its stronghold in the Caribbean waters, wants a safe play zone wherein it can flex its muscles without anyone’s intervention. Marc Lanteigne, a senior research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, observes that “China wants waters that are theirs, that they can operate military and police vessels in, without having to worry about the presence of the US or the Philippines or Vietnamese or Indian naval forces”. Apart from the security interests, America is also highly concerned about $1.2 trillion bilateral trade that passes through the SCS route each year.
Even as Beijing reclaims reefs and islets in the SCS, the US is likely to move cautiously at least for preventing an immediate catastrophe from both military and economic point of view. Moreover, other claimants in the SCS are equally divided on their national and joint stands over the issue. Countries like Vietnam and the Philippines are pushing for outright action and urging the US to play a larger role to prevent China expanding more into their territorial waters. But other countries like Laos and Cambodia which have closer economic ties with China are not showing much willingness to annoy their neighbour. At the concluding session of the recent California Summit of the South East Asian leaders, when the joint statement was issued, it clearly reflected the rift among them on the SCS conflict. The statement asserted the need for freedom of navigation and peaceful resolution of disputes, but made no direct mention of China or the South China Sea.
China’s move to install missile batteries in the islets appeared to be a coincidence against the backdrop of the California Summit and also a plan to bolster its claims over others in the SCS.
The stationing of a surface-to-air missiles on the Woody Island in the Paracel chain in the SCS is to be viewed as a real game-changer in the geopolitics of Asia.
