Powder keg in South China Sea
WHILE we in Sabah are so engrossed with the day-to-day political turmoil stirring around us, we often forget that there are pivotal events happening either overtly or covertly outside the country.
And we may know even less that these events and developments have the potential of reshaping our world and affecting our lives in ways that can be very traumatic, even devastating.
A military conflagration in the Southeast Asian region, for instance, would affect Malaysia directly, and may render all our political disputes irrelevant and pointless.
One such development is the military tensions happening between the People's Republic of China (China), the Philippines and the United States of America (US) in the Spratlys islands. As we know the collection of small reefs has been the subject of claims from the nations surrounding it, between Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.
The claims, many of which are overlapping, arise from economic and strategic military motives, which are no surprises when we realize that the Spratly Islands stores huge underground treasures – oil and gas. Oil was discovered in 1968 and reported to be in the amount of 17.7 billion tons. Possibly for tactical reasons the US has denied the minerals' volume, saying it is less than 100 billion cubic feet of natural gas. The area is also one of the world's busiest commercial shipping lanes through which US$5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. A military control of the area, therefore, would be significantly beneficial in terms of the ability to monitor maritime activities in the area.
China began reclaiming reefs in 1998, carrying earth from the mainland. But last year, China caused an international alarm when it started dredging activities within the Spratlys, with the speculation that it was developing a stronger military presence in the area. In response, the world policing nation, the US, began surveillance of the area which yielded clear and irrefutable proofs of China carrying out massive reclamations and building military bases.
China, which refers to the Spratlys as the Nasha islands, justifies its claim of the area for so-called historical reasons, which include the naval expeditions to the Spratly Islands by the Han Dynasty in 110 AD and the Ming Dynasty from 14031433 AD. Chinese fishermen and merchants have harvested fish in the region for centuries. Its claim started in 19th and early 20th century when it claimed the Paracel islands, which during World War II were then claimed by Japan. China renewed its claim over the region in 1992 and enforced this claim, which was supposed to be based on Chinese law, by forcefully seizing Paracel islands from Vietnam.
In the early 1990 Chinese Premier Deng Xiaoping proclaimed that in the South China Sea “sovereignty is ours, set aside disputes, pursue joint development.” But China's claim is subject to strong dispute because the Spratlys are more than 400 nautical miles from mainland China and right in the front yard of the other countries. The animosity that this claim has triggered has been moving towards a possible military conflict as the US get more concerned over China's strategic posturing.
The animosity, of course, is not new. Chinese ships for years have harassed U.S. ships and aircrafts in the region. A serious incident happened in 2001 when a Chinese fighter jet collided with a U.S. surveillance plane, causing the Chinese jet to crash while the American plane managed to make an emergency landing on Hainan Island. A report says that “China has had HUNDREDS of more serious run ins with other countries that claim the Spratlys as their own, especially Vietnam…. (A) Chinese deepwater drilling rig called the Haiyang Shiyou 981 began drilling in in… the Paracels, just 120 miles from the coast of Vietnam. In the ensuing naval standoff Chinese ships sank a Vietnamese trawler and anti-Chinese riots (happened) across Vietnam.”
America is not keeping quite. In April this year President Obama made it clear that he has no intention of bowing to China. “Where we get concerned with China is where it is not necessarily abiding by international norms and rules and is using its sheer size and muscle to force countries into subordinate positions,” he said at an event while traveling in Jamaica. “We think this can be solved diplomatically, but just because the Philippines or Vietnam are not as large as China doesn't mean that they can just be elbowed aside.”
The second most irate party in this crisis is the Philippines. Its defence ministry spokesman, Peter Paul Galvez, had urged China to refrain from what he called selfish acts, saying “We reiterate that their activities if not stopped only draws the world closer to further uncertainties and untoward incidents with irreparable consequences.”
In the 48th Foreign Ministers Meeting of Asean in Kuala Lumpur last Tuesday, Philippines Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario said his country sees China as an “external threats” because of China's incursions into Manila's 370-kilometer exclusive economic zone. He emphasized the need to deal with the “evolving regional security architecture,” saying “It has to be founded on the rule of law, especially the principles of international law as embodied in the UN charter and international conventions and regional agreements.”
Del Rosario may want international “cooperation to maintain a peaceful, stable and prosperous region” but China's military ambitions, in line with its economic rise and desire for global domination in tandem with the military arrogance of its ally, Russia, have emboldened it to be more aggressive. Calling it was “a crisis waiting to happen” Peter Paul Galvez claimed this week that China is making reclamations on the Spratlys at the rate of 50 hectares per day, completing a combined area of 550 hectares within April and May this year. CNN reported that, on what was the Fiery Cross reef alone, China reclaimed 2,000 acres in two years, which is equivalent to 1,500 football fields – all of which is an engineering marvel as it involved sea areas as deep as 300 feet! Military installations already built include an early-warning radar, military barracks, roads with trucks running on them and an airport tower, and the airstrip is “long enough for every aircraft in the Chinese military.”
The Chinese are literally creating artificial islands and turning them into military bases, or as some observers call them, “stationery aircraft carriers,” with little regards for the complaints and protests of its much smaller neighbours. Where will all these aggression by China lead to? Will war breakout in South China Sea and pulling the major world powers like the US and Russia into direct involvement? That's the big, ultimate question which would need a lot of digging for military, historical and economic factors to answer.