In Asia, there is now a “whiff of 1914,” a reference by Australian University Professor Hugh White to the lead up to World War One. The South China Sea, as the International Crisis Group has noted, is “the cockpit of geopolitics in East Asia.” Scholar Robert Kaplan even called it “Asia’s Cauldron,” a location “on the way to becoming the most contested body of water in the world.”
Only on the way? “The South China Sea, located at the heart of Southeast Asia, not only brings about many important benefits to nations in the region but it is also a vital route to maritime and air transport of the world,” Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang told a gathering of diplomats and academics in Singapore at the end of last month, “And should we allow instability to take place, especially in the case of armed conflicts, there will be neither winners nor losers but rather all will lose.”
China, from India in the south to South Korea in the north, claims many territories and waters actually under the control of other states. Is there something special about the South China Sea? Is it, to borrow Beijing’s term, more “core” than others?
China’s leaders once were able to compromise territorial disputes. They signed, for instance, settlements with Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan. With the Tajiks, the Chinese agreed to take only 3.5 percent of what they had claimed. Then, Beijing was open to good-faith compromise.
Not so in the South China Sea. Islands, specks, shoals, reefs, and rocks are “sacred and inviolable,” as one of Beijing’s markers there notes. So are surrounding waters.
There are several factors for the change in Beijing’s posture, then and now. First, the attitudes of leaders have evolved as their nation has become more powerful. It’s no coincidence that Beijing was able to settle disputes last decade. Then, Chinese leaders thought it was important to pursue their “peaceful rise” narrative. The settlement with Tajikistan, for instance, was first reached in 2002.
The arrangement, therefore, was negotiated during the era of Jiang Zemin, who maintained a more constructive view of China’s role than his predecessors. Xi Jinping, the current Chinese ruler, on the other hand, speaks of the “Chinese dream” of national greatness and has, not surprisingly, promoted expansionism.
Second, during Xi’s tenure—he has been the Communist Party’s general secretary since November 2012—some of the most assertive elements in the Chinese political system have become powerful.
There have been several reasons for this, but the most important of them relates to Xi’s attempts to consolidate his position in Beijing. To do that, he has roiled the political system, breaking decades-old norms that have ensured stability.
As a result of Xi’s bold attempts to remake Chinese politics, civilian officials have squabbled. As they have squabbled, generals became powerbrokers. Now, belligerent flag officers appear to be running South China Sea and East China Sea policy with little civilian oversight.
Third, an insecure leadership has fallen back on nationalism to bolster legitimacy. Beijing’s relations with Tokyo were fine when Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, strongmen who were mostly secure in their rule, were in charge, but ties deteriorated when Jiang Zemin, a far weaker figure, took over. Jiang’s disastrous trip to Tokyo in 1998 marked the beginning of the erosion in Sino-Japanese relations.
Since then, the Communist Party has incessantly labeled the Japanese as devilish. As a result of the propaganda barrage, Beijing’s East China Sea claims on Japanese-administered territory have been hard to compromise.
And the South China Sea has also become a sure-fire way to fire up the Chinese people. The July 12 arbitral ruling in The Hague, which held Beijing’s expansive sovereignty claims to be baseless, has stirred nationalism in areas of the People’s Republic that have otherwise been unhappy with Beijing, like Hong Kong.
Even Taiwan, which does not consider itself part of the People’s Republic, rushed to China’s defense after the sweeping decision. Tsai Ing-wen, the newly installed president who is opposed to Chinese positions on almost everything, issued a statement criticizing the tribunal. Beijing’s and Taipei’s claims to the South China Sea are virtually identical, giving the two governments a common cause. For Chinese nationalists, Tsai’s post-ruling actions are a big win.
China pursues other territorial claims, especially against India in various spots in the Himalayas, but they do not carry the emotional impact that the sea claims have. And that is largely why Beijing, when it wants to build support, will provoke Japan in the East China Sea and the six states bordering the South China Sea, shifting its attentions from one target to another.
For instance, Beijing, to show its defiance of the July arbitral decision, deployed hundreds of trawlers, protected by its maritime surveillance craft, to surround Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, long thought to be part of the Philippines, right after the ruling. And at this moment, Beijing has deployed barges around the feature in what looks like the prelude to reclamation, turning a Philippine rock into a Chinese military outpost.
Last month, it smothered the Senkaku Islands with 324 fishing trawlers and 16 patrol boats. China claims these East China Sea features that Japan in fact administers, and its efforts to pry them away are a real crowd-pleaser in China.
Many view the Chinese state as powerful, but its continual provocations of maritime neighbors suggest a curious—and dangerous—combination of self-perceptions of both strength and insecurity.
