Rivalries rise in the waters
IN the early years of China’s rise to economic and military prowess, the guiding principle for its government was Deng Xiaoping’s maxim: “Hide Your Strength, Bide Your Time.”
Now, more than three decades after paramount leader Deng launched his reforms, that policy has seemingly lapsed or simply become unworkable as China’s military muscle becomes too expansive to conceal and its ambitions too pressing to postpone.
The current row with Southeast Asian nations over territorial claims in the energy-rich South China Sea is a prime manifestation of this change, especially the standoff with the Philippines over Scarborough Shoal.
“This is not what we saw 20 years ago,” said Ross Babbage, a defence analyst and founder of the Canberrabased Kokoda Foundation, a security policy unit.
“China is a completely different actor now. Security planners are wondering if it is like this now, what is it going to be like in 20 years time?”
As China also continues to modernise its navy at breakneck speed, a growing sense of unease over Beijing’s longterm ambitions has galvanized the exact response Deng was anxious to avoid, regional security experts say.
In what is widely interpreted as a counter to China’s growing in uence, the United States is pushing ahead with a muscular realignment of its forces towards the Asia-Paci c region, despite Washington’s fatigue with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Pentagon’s steep budget cuts.
And regional nations, including those with a history of adversarial or distant relations with the US, are embracing Washington’s so-called strategic pivot to Asia.
“In recent years, because of the tensions and disputes in the South China Sea, most regional states in Southeast Asia seem to welcome and support US strategic rebalancing in the region,” said Li Mingjiang, an assistant professor and China security policy expert at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.
“Very likely, this trend will continue in coming years.”
Last week, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta laid out the details of the repower the Obama administration plans to swing to the AsiaPaci c region.
As part of the strategic pivot unveiled in January, the United States will deploy 60 per cent of its warships in the Asia-Paci c, up from 50 per cent now. They will include six aircraft carriers and a majority of the US navy’s cruisers, destroyers, littoral combat ships and submarines.
“Make no mistake, in a steady, deliberate and sustainable way, the United States military is rebalancing and bringing an enhanced capability development to this vital region,” Panetta told the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual security conference in Singapore attended by civilian and military leaders from Asia-Paci c and Western nations.
For some of China’s smaller neighbours like the Philippines, there is a pressing urgency to build warmer security ties with Washington.
A two-month standoff between the Philippines and China over Scarborough Shoal shows no sign of resolution, with both sides deploying paramilitary ships and shing boats to the disputed chain of rocks, reefs and small islands about 220 km from the Philippines.
Philippine President Benigno Aquino met President Barack Obama last Friday at the White House, where the two discussed expanding military and economic ties.
Obama later told reporters that clear, international rules were needed to resolve maritime disputes in the South China Sea.