Should China compromise on South China Sea?

Analysts outside China are now arguing that it would be in China's long-term strategic interests to dial down its aggressive approach and compromise with its rival claimants in the South China Sea. To paraphrase, they maintain that China would gain strategic advantage by managing the disputes without coercion (at least overt and direct coercion).

According to this theory, by doing so, China would prove that it is "a responsible power and not trying to revise the international order." Then, with its economic and cultural attraction it could "peel away US partners in the region." By moderating its "aggressive" behavior and striking "equitable resource sharing deals with other claimants," it would "lock in its gains to date while laying the foundations for improved relations … and a greater leadership role in the region."

In other words, all China has to do to achieve its strategic goals is to "play nice."

Oh, if only it were that simple and straightforward.

This argument

ignores

the strategic context and the core problem - US political and military meddling in the region. The US and China see each other as existential threats.

The US has publicly declared China a "strategic competitor" and a "revisionist" nation. It believes that the US and China are engaged in "a geopolitical competition between free and repressive visions of world order" in the IndoPacific region.

China believes that the US wants to contain and constrain its rightful rise and thereby continue its hegemony in the region. It argues that it is only responding in kind to the US threat in and from its vulnerable underbelly - the South China Sea.

For China, the South China Sea is a "natural shield for its national security." It hosts its vital sea lanes of communication that it believes the US could and would disrupt in a conflict Even more important, it provides relative "sanctuary" for its second-strike nuclear submarines that are its insurance against a first strike against it, something the US - unlike China - has not disavowed.

The disputes between China and other claimants in the South China Sea have become pawns in the larger US-China "great game" for hegemony in Asia.

The US accuses China of "militarizing" the South China Sea and bullying its rivals. While China might present a problem for the US Navy in encounters close to the Chinese mainland, the US still maintains a military advantage over China there. It is the US military - not China's - that currently dominates the South China Sea and is ramping up its presence.

According to US Defense Secretary Mark Esper, the US is aggressively building "the capabilities that we need to deter China from committing to a major confrontation." Moreover it is the US that is bullying others - including China - with its threats of use of force that it disingenuously labels Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs).

The US claims that its steppedup military presence is to prevent China from bullying its rival claimants. According to US Pacific Fleet commander Admiral John Aquilino, "The Chinese Communist Party must end its pattern of bullying Southeast Asians out of offshore oil, gas, and fisheries." American forces will "stand with regional friends and partners to resist coercion…."

But the US is not "backing" China's rivals out of adherence to some high universal principle. In a

Machiavellian move, the US is using these disputes as an excuse for increasing its military presence in the hope that it will encourage them to "stand up" to China and thus irrevocably draw some Southeast Asian states to its side.

Similarly the US has inserted itself into the China-ASEAN negotiations regarding a Code of Conduct (COC) for behavior in the South China Sea. It has done so in a manner that imposes its view of the "international order" and pits some members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations against one another.

The US would probably rather see no COC than one not in its interest. This, and now the pandemic, are hindering agreement on a COC.

The US justifies its FONOPs by implying that China is threatening commercial freedom of navigation upon which all nations depend for their economic survival. The US portrays itself as the defender of commercial freedom of navigation. But it knows that China has never threatened commercial navigation. It does object to US intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) probes along its coasts.