’IN EFFECT, BUT UNDECLARED’
China signals its bid to revive an aborted 2013 plan to impose an air defense identification zone over the South China Sea, but in truth, it may have been imposing its own kind of ADIZ there for the last 7 years.
CHINA has been imposing air, and even maritime, travel restrictions against other countries, especially the weaker ones that include the Philippines, in the South China Sea (SCS) for years, but has not officially declared its enforcement of its air defense identification zone (ADIZ), perhaps for the sake of diplomacy and security.
But Beijing, now under intense international scrutiny over the Covid-19 pandemic and its origins, faces the prospects of global isolation and further backlash if it so decides to admit to the enforcement of the ADIZ, although it has been in effect and was already being practiced against states—with no less than Manila experiencing it for the last seven years.
Still, if and when it is officially declared, the ADIZ would allow China to clamp security around the military bases it has built on reclaimed islands in the regional waters by restricting even commercial overflights, while already constricting maritime access to the waters through which nearly half of the world’s trade passes annually.
While the communist state can unilaterally declare and undertake an illegal air security zone in a manner akin to its building of man-made islands in Southeast Asian waters by dismissing international concerns and even warnings, accession or even acquiescence to it by other countries would be another question.
Against international norms
BEIJING’S plans to declare an ADIZ in the SCS, especially above and within the surrounding airspace of its military fortresses, has spawned fear and concern among officials in the Asia Pacific. No less than Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., commander of the US Air Force in the Pacific, admitted recently such will have a bearing on the region.
“If the PRC [People’s Republic of China] were to claim an ADIZ in the South China Sea, it impacts all of the nations that are—and it actually goes against—as I said earlier, a free and open Indo-pacific to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows,” he said.
“This kind of impinges upon some of the international airspace, and it impacts not just the PACAF [Pacific Air Forces], but all of the nations in the region,” the incoming chief of staff of the US Air Force added during a recent telephonic news briefing with Asia-pacific journalists.
Brown, who will be succeeded by Gen. Ken Wilsbach as PACAF commander, declared that the ADIZ would violate the “rules-based inter
national order,” which will not only concern the US but many countries in the region as well.
Revived in May
BEIJING’S plans to impose an ADIZ around its bases in the SCS, which the international community recognizes as an international airspace, was resurrected in May this year. The Chinese communist rulers, however, simply confirmed something that observers see as already in practice through the Chinese forces’ behavior in the maritime waters.
Talk about the declaration of the air security zone in the Chinese-reclaimed portion of the international waters comes as the world grapples with the effects of the raging Covid-19, the contagion that may have perhaps failed to make a big dent on the communist country.
Riding high
SOME states have even pushed the theory that China was riding high on the effects of the pandemic, especially in countries for which it has competing territorial claims in order to make security advances, or carry out harassment, and these included India, Taiwan, Japan and its Southeast Asian neighbors.
“I’m concerned by increasing opportunistic activity by the PRC to coerce its neighbors and press its unlawful maritime claims, while the region and the world is focused on addressing the Covid pandemic,” Brown declared.
Lorenzana weighs in
DEFENSE Secretary Delfin Lorenzana has urged Beijing to exercise restraint in declaring an air security zone in the SCS, which, he said, would only create, or even exacerbate, the tension in the area, apart from going against the internationally accepted norms of conduct.
“I agree. First, an ADIZ by China over the entire South China Sea would arrogate unto itself a vast sea considered to be a global commons that has been opened for millennia to all for navigation and fishing,” the defense chief said in reaction to Brown’s concern.
“Second, it violates the exclusive economic rights of littoral states over their EEZS [exclusive economic zone] under the Unclos [United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea], of which China was a signatory,” Lorenzana said
He added: “A lot of countries will treat the ADIZ as illegal and violative of international laws,” as such “they would continue to use these waters and airspace, and thus would further raise an already heightening tension and could result in mishaps or miscalculations at sea and in the air.”
Easing the tension
IN early 2013, China had attempted to formally declare an ADIZ in the SCS, which, security analysts in the region said, should have followed suit its declaration of such air security zone over the Japanese-claimed island of Senkakus, which Beijing also disputes.
Along with the Philippines, the international community averted such an insidious plot by raising a howl that tempered China’s move, and which also prodded Tokyo and Manila to hammer out a stronger defense and security cooperation, given the similarity of their security concerns.
In May, also in 2013, then Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera visited the Philippines, and he and his Filipino counterpart issued a joint statement that “any unilateral establishment of ADIZ in any area would bring tension over,” and as such should be a cause of concern.
“Both of us have affirmed that China’s unilateral action to change [the situation] by force or coercive action will bring that tension in this region,” Onodera said in a subsequent news conference.
He said that if other countries have their own ADIZ, these identification zones have subscribed to existing international laws and practices, unlike China, which demands pre-flight plans even from commercial airlines.
Harassments
WHILE Beijing did not push through with its plan, what followed later were cases of challenges and harassment committed by Chinese forces against the Philippine military in the WPS, which is the subject of China’s contest.
“These cases are cause of concern, because it was giving [the impression]” that China already has an ADIZ “in place, although there is still no formal declaration,” former Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin was quoted as saying then.
In one of the challenges, Chinese forces even told a patrolling Philippine military plane that it was entering a Chinese territory and that it should turn away, or change course, but the warning was ignored.
That same month of Onodera’s visit, Chinese forces challenged a sophisticated surveillance plane of the US on patrol in the SCS, lending credence to the belief of an undeclared—but being observed— Chinese ADIZ in the area.
The P-8 Poseidon spy plane, the US’S most advanced surveillance and anti-submarine aircraft, was challenged eight times by China near the Fiery Cross Reef and was documented by a journalist from CNN who was aboard the aircraft.
“It is regrettable that they are imposing their self-serving rules even in clearly established international airspace,“the Department of National Defense said at that time, noting that a Delta Airlines flight was also challenged in the same area.
The challenges and harassments of the air and maritime patrols of the military continue to this day.
On Thursday, Lorenzana disclosed that “recently, there has been slight increase in the occurrence of incursions and harassments perpetrated by Chinese vessels, both military and civilian against the Philippine Navy, Philippine Air Force, Philippine Coast Guard and Filipino fishermen.”
He told the National Defense College of the Philippines during a virtual forum: “From August 2019 to early 2020 alone, almost 20 counts of harassment took place, which involved the People’s Liberation Army, China Coast Guard, commercial fishing vessels and Chinese maritime militia.”
Of these, Lorenzana continued, “we recall the sinking of the Filipino fishing vessel F/B Gem Ver by a Chinese fishing vessel in June of last year and the aiming of the weapons control radar of a Chinese navy ship on a Philippine Navy ship recently, and just a couple of days back, the sinking of another Filipino fishing vessel off Mindoro.”
Lorenzana, however, noted that the “Chinese aggression” has not only been directed at the Philippines, but also against Vietnam and Malaysia, two of its nine co-members in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.