Troubled Waters
At the heart of complex regional rivalries, the South China Sea becomes site for a diplomatic wrangle to be sorted at the East Asia Summit
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi travels to Vietnam, China and then the East Asia Summit in Laos in the first week of September, he will be flying over what is emerging as the world’s most contested waterway— and also India’s newest diplomatic challenge. The South China Sea will be the elephant in the room as the PM visits the three countries. In Vietnam, which is involved in a bitter maritime dispute with China, India is moving forward with both military and commercial ties, including exploration of the South China Sea’s vast oil and gas resources.
China, meanwhile, is working overtime to ensure that its controversial new moves to fortify some of the contested islands and reefs in the region will not overshadow the G20 summit (September 4-5) it is hosting in Hangzhou with typical fanfare. In fact, foreign minister Wang Yi was dispatched to New Delhi to ask India “to stand with China” on “all issues” at the G20, even if he did not specifically mention the South China Sea.
At the East Asia Summit in Laos, where Modi will travel from Delhi barely a day after returning from China, topmost on the agenda is dealing with what many of the six claimants, as well as other regional powers, fear is a looming crisis in the South China Sea that could easily spiral out of control. These fears have become all the more pronounced after a permanent court of arbitration at The Hague, on July 12, issued a ruling based on an arbitration initiated by the Philippines in 2013. The ruling came down hard on China’s
new reclamation projects as well as its expansive territorial claims—noted by a ‘nine-dash line’ on its maps that covers over 90 per cent of the entire sea.
It declared these claims to be inconsistent with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), to which China is a party. While Beijing rejected the findings, the Philippines and Vietnam are now pushing for the East Asia Summit to take a firm stand on the ruling, although other ASEAN members like Brunei, Cambodia and Indonesia are reluctant to upset Beijing. What is at stake is the world’s second busiest choke point (after the Strait of Hormuz), which accounts for, on a single day, the passage of 15 million barrels of oil, or a sixth of the global trade. It’s also one of the world’s most strategically important shipping lanes, connecting the Indian and Pacific oceans.
The South China Sea is also thought to hold, after Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil reserves. The Chinese are even now spending billions in surveying the sea. Besides resources, there is also national pride at stake. The dispute is emerging as a site for the many complex regional rivalries to play themselves out. Of the over 40 land features in the sea, around two dozen are held by Vietnam, seven or eight each by the Philippines and China, four by Malaysia and one by Taiwan.
IMPLICATIONS FOR INDIA
It is, however, the claims of one country that appear to be of most concern to India and the region. China, which lays claim to almost the entire sea, is now engaged in a massive effort to bolster its presence by building new facilities on artificially reclaimed islands. While other claimants say Beijing is militarising the islands, China insists it is merely playing catch-up (other claimants have carried out similar projects in the past) and stresses that it hasn’t restricted the freedom of navigation that underpins the region’s booming commerce.
At the same time, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is today present across vast swathes of the sea. By dredging thousands of tonnes of sand, it is building over the Subi and Mischief reefs in the Spratly Islands runways and newly enforced hangars that could potentially house up to a dozen military aircraft, according to new satellite images released on August 8 by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative.
For India, the biggest concern is the likelihood of conflict, which could choke the movement of commercial and naval vessels in a crucial waterway that sustains over half of India’s trade and is worth more than half a trillion dollars to the Indian economy. While India wants to stand with the rest of the region and bat for freedom of navigation, it also does not want to upset its already sensitive ties with China. Attempting this delicate balancing act has led to some ambiguity in India’s stand on the dispute, which officials insist is intentional.
After the arbitration ruling, New Delhi issued a carefully worded statement indicating support for the tribunal’s findings, calling for UNCLOS to be respected. Yet at the same time Delhi succeeded in not angering Beijing whose officials noted—and appreciated—the fact that India’s stand was more equivocal than Moscow’s. The
Chinese were taken aback by the Russian statement which stressed the universality of UNCLOS.
Experts say Delhi is, at the same time, becoming less cautious about upsetting China, and is more forcefully expressing its view on issues such as freedom of navigation. India started doing so from the Shangri-La security dialogue in Singapore in 2012, during the second term of the UPA government. Under the Modi government, this has gone a step further, says China expert Srinath Raghavan, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in Delhi, with India “working more closely with the US to balance China”. It is no coincidence that Narendra Modi will in September be the first Indian prime minister to visit Vietnam in 15 years. By deepening ties with China’s rival claimants, Delhi appears to be looking to build some leverage to counter Beijing’s ever-deepening relations with ‘all-weather’ ally Pakistan.
RISKS FOR DELHI
As China goes ahead with projects in disputed Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Delhi is looking to deliver a clear message that Beijing will be in no position to object to any Indian economic engagement including joint gas exploration projects in the South China Sea, which will be on the agenda when Modi is in Hanoi. In a big shift, India is also in talks with Vietnam over the sale of BrahMos missiles, and in discussions with the Philippines over the sale of frigates that will be used to patrol the South China Sea.
India has also sought to draw a contrast between its maritime ambitions and China’s, telling the region that it offers a different kind of leadership. Unlike China, India accepted the findings of an arbitration tribunal on its maritime dispute with Bangladesh. “India preaches what it practises and the agreement with Bangladesh on our maritime boundary should stand out as an example to others,” foreign secretary S. Jaishankar said pointedly in March at the Raisina Dialogue in Delhi. India has also stressed the need for “resolving maritime disputes without threat or use of force”.
“There are a lot of people in India
By deepening ties with China’s rival claimants like Vietnam, Delhi appears to be looking to build some leverage to counter Beijing’s ever-deepening relations with Pakistan
who think we should ratchet things up in the South China Sea, but there is no great benefit to it,” says Commodore (retd) C. Uday Bhaskar, Director of the Society for Policy Studies in Delhi. A smarter approach, he feels, would be to use the PM’s upcoming visits to Vietnam and Laos to carefully gauge the approach of regional countries.
New Delhi also needs to carefully think through the consequences of its increasing closeness to the American position, adds Raghavan. For instance, on the issue of freedom of navigation in territorial waters, India’s stand is more aligned with China’s. While the United States insists on the right of “innocent passage” for its ships, both India and China insist on prior notification for foreign warships. In fact, the US last year undertook “freedom of navigation operations” (FONOPs) to contest the “excessive maritime claims” of 13 countries including India, by sailing in their territorial waters without prior notification (Pentagon annual report).
The longer term concern for India and other countries is that by building military infrastructure, Beijing could be in a position to eventually decide who can navigate the waterways of the South China Sea. Beijing’s definitions of freedom of navigation increasingly appear to be limited to commercial vessels—interfering with maritime trade would be disastrous for China’s economy as well—leaving unclear whether the navies of India and other countries will always continue to have access to a crucial waterway.
When asked why China was uncomfortable with the presence of Indian warships in the South China Sea even while its presence in the Indian Ocean was growing, one PLAN official retorted, “The Indian Ocean is international waters, but the islands and waters of the South China Sea belong to China.” In other words, in Beijing’s view, the right to navigate will ultimately be at its pleasure.
PLA spokesperson, Senior Colonel Yang Yujun, though, discounts the likelihood of China doing so. “You said when Indian ships enter the South China Sea, China thinks it is wrong. But where did you hear that? If it is done in accordance with international law and as freedom of navigation, that should be lawful. Such movement should be helpful for country-to-country relations and for peace and stability in the region. All those moves should be welcomed,” he said. But as Beijing moves forward with strengthening its grip on the South China Sea, the fear is that this will not always be the case.
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