Would anybody help place the South China Sea scenario, please?
THE May 20, 2018 headline reads: “Beijing deploys bombers to reef.”
May 21, 2018, the Manila Bulletin headline reads: “Duterte opens Alegria oilfields.”
The story raises alarm, no matter the scale, on an increasing sense of Chinese attack on the Philippines. In fact, it points out, “This means that nearly the entire Philippines ‘ falls within the radius’ of the Chinese bombers that took off Woody Island.’”
But the story highlights a successful oil exploration in Alegria, Cebu, undertaken by who else but a Chinese!
On the one hand, China is pictured as the attacker. But on the other, who does China attack but itself? Anyway, as personified by the China International Mining Petroleum ( CIMP), the outfit that is undertaking the oil dig project over a total land area of, says the
report, “197,000 hectares, with 42,749 hectares devoted to the production area.”
Why will China embark on such a gigantic development project when at the same time, as the story would imply, it is setting the Philippines on a war footing? Would not this massive oil undertaking be laid to waste if those Chinese bombers went on a blasting spree all over the country?
The two phenomena just don’t jibe. One or the other must be false. And since the Alegria oil dig is set to go full throttle, it is the one that is true and the war scare in the South China Sea must be the one that is false.
US-instigated war alarm
In fact, the story is an alarm actually raised by, according to the report, “the Asia Maritime Transparency Institute ( AMTI) of the Washington- based Center for Strategic and International Studies ( CSIS) in the wake of a video post by
showing the powerful “top- of- the- line” H- 6 aircraft landing in one of the Chinesecontrolled islands in the South China Sea.
Evidently, the war sirens are US- instigated. It is the US which has been goading the Philippine government to push the ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration ( PCA) favoring the country’s claims to areas in the South China Sea under the United Nations Convention on the Laws of the Sea ( UNCLOS).
The CSIS claims that those bombers, with combat range of 1,900 nautical miles, are aimed at China’s co- claimants to the South China Sea island features, which include the Philippines. Chinese aggression on Asean neighbors has been the marked US bogey promoted by Barack Obama with his touted pivot to the Asia Pacific beginning in 2008. China has not engaged in any land conquests, but on the contrary embarked on a two- pronged approach to world economic integration. The progress undergone by the revival of the ancient maritime silk route which linked trade between China, together with the East Asia, and the West, on the one hand, and the surging tide of similar advance by the Belt and Road Initiative should dispel all fears that those H- 6 aircraft, powerful though they may be, are being deployed to the Spratlys for the purpose of attacking the Philippines but, quite the contrary, protecting the country in fact.
And mind you. This is not some underrated columnist’s own say so. It is Rand Corp. saying it.
China’s pursuit of overseas security
The subhead is the title of a report by Timothy R. Heath published in its website by
Rand Corp. The report is a well- documented study on the how China has been addressing its security concerns for all its people and its investments in terms of goodwill, economic development assistance and business investments in other countries.
Protection of China’s population on its own land is not at issue in the Rand report. It is the security of Chinese overseas— whether nationalities, permanent residents, tourists, and transients in the host countries— that the report deals with.
The study cites: “According to a study by Texas A& M University, there were 40 million ethnic Chinese living abroad in 148 countries in 2010,” with the top three Chinese- hosting countries cited being Indonesia (8 mil- and Malaysia ( 6.5 million).
In this regard, it is significant to note that the report on the deployment of Chinese bombers in the Spratlys puts the aircraft within striking distance of the three countries cited.
Rather than be construed as preparation for a Chinese attack on those lands, the deployment of Chinese bombers in the Spratlys puts China in perfect readiness to hit back in the event any of those countries come under attack by any foreign power, east, west, south, north of the universe.
Why would China take on that job? Why, because China must love its people. Simple as that. Chinese get attacked anywhere in the world, China retaliates.
So, those Chinese bombers can be there largely for the protection of Chinese living in the countries cited. How many are they? According to the Rand
- nese overseas. Just how many is immaterial. For several reasons, it is difficult to quantify. In the Philippines, for example, offspring of Chinese couples, most particularly in cases of intermarriages between Filipinos and ethnic Chinese, are no longer registered as Chinese but Filipinos.
The point is, just because China is deploying bombers in the South China Sea, it is poised to attack countries in the region.
The Rand Report sees the matter in light of the observance of the 2013 Defense White Paper that “overseas interests have become an integral component of China’s national interests.”
The report asserts: “Chinese leaders can be expected to seek an approach to protecting overseas interests that avoids perceptions of imperialism, limits the PLA’s role, and minimizes the need for military facilities in other countries. China is also likely to favor operating military forces under UN authority where possible and to adopt non- military means of advancing security abroad is feasible.”
That is Rand stating the Chinese case – actually a polite reprise of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s belligerent statement to President Barack Obama’s face at the East Asia Summit in 2012: “We are not a war- hungry nation. But neither are we to back away from a fight when pushed against the wall. The Philippines will learn this lesson to its cost.”