US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter has alleged that ‘turning an underwater rock into an airfield simply does not afford the rights of sovereignty or permit restrictions on international air or maritime transit’. Claimants like the Philippines and Vietnam have said a lot worse, the former even likening China’s actions to those of Nazi Germany prior to World War II.
This article is not a defence of China’s actions. Given China’s assertive rhetoric and actions — and its refusal to clarify and explain them — it is understandable that the US and others think that China has committed, or is about to commit, a litany of sins.
China’s actions are perceived as not commensurate with its rhetoric and previous commitments, and this generates suspicion. A deep worry is that China will use its reclaimed features to bolster its military presence and control over the Spratly area and, in particular, declare and enforce an air defence identification zone (ADIZ) there. To the US, the concern is that such ‘control’ may be used to ‘inhibit freedom of navigation’.
China claims all the features in the South China Sea. So do Vietnam and Taiwan. The Philippines and Malaysia claim some. Under the modern international legal ‘sovereignty’ standard of continuous, effective occupation, administration and control, all these claims have weaknesses.
There are several ‘legal islands’ in the Spratlys, including Spratly and Taiwan-occupied Taiping. China does not occupy them, but it does claim them. These islands qualify for 12 nautical mile (nm) territorial seas, 200 nm exclusive economic zones (EEZ) and a continental shelf out to as far as 350 nm. China may be claiming some of the submerged features as being in its EEZ from these legal islands. This would not convey sovereignty, but it would convey a right to construct artificial structures.
Another possibility is that China is claiming that the submerged features it is building on are encompassed by the territorial sea of its claimed legal islands and come within baselines drawn around the islands, meaning they would be under its sovereignty. The problem is we do not know exactly what China claims and why.
China could have a plausible claim to some submerged features and a 12 nm territorial sea from the baselines. At the very least, ‘artificial structures’ in China’s claimed EEZ would be entitled to a safety zone of 500 metres. Presumably the zone extends to overflight. China’s warnings to foreign military aircraft that they were approaching a ‘military alert zone’ may have been reasonable.
China presumably claims a territorial sea and the right to ban overflights from the China-occupied islands of Cuarteron Reef, Fiery Cross Reef and Johnson South Reef. Thus, US overflight of the feature and its territorial sea could be seen as a challenge to China’s claim to sovereignty. Perhaps the US position is that sovereignty is unsettled so no sovereign is recognised. Or perhaps the US intends to challenge China’s regime of prior notification for foreign warships to enter its territorial sea. But Vietnam has a similar regime and should draw similar challenges. It may not be clear what the US is challenging and why, and this could easily be misinterpreted by China.
What about the charge that China is not adhering to regional norms? All claimants have reclaimed land around their occupied features, maintained them and allowed use by their militaries, though the scope and scale of China’s reclamation exceeds that of all the other claimants combined.
Can China declare an ADIZ over the area? There are no international legal bases for such zones and their ‘rules’ — except perhaps the general principles of ‘self-defence’ and ‘freedom of overflight’. The US established the precedent of an ADIZ and its rules after World War II, and apparently thinks that all other nations’ ADIZs should be based on its model. But being first does not justify dictating the rules for all, especially in the absence of an international agreement.
China could declare a zone out to, say, 200–250 nm off its coast but not including any disputed islands or maritime space except the Paracels and possibly Pratas Island. That should be grudgingly accepted by most of its critics. A legitimate worry is that China’s ADIZ would contain similar rules and regulations to the one it established in the East China Sea. This includes a controversial requirement of prior notification for foreign aircraft entering the ADIZ even if they are only transiting it and not destined for China’s territorial airspace. But China has so far not enforced this requirement. And Japan has a similar requirement for Taiwanese aircraft entering its ADIZ, as do Australia, Myanmar and Taiwan for foreign aircraft.
But a Chinese ADIZ that includes some disputed Spratly islands and their maritime space could be problematic. It would be a manifestation of the worst fears of the US, Japan and Southeast Asian nations that China wants to control the South China Sea, including its air corridors and sea lanes. This would, in their eyes, be tantamount to a threat to ‘freedom of navigation’ and may be a ‘red line’ for the US.
China’s actions are in principle commensurate with what others have done. So who or what is altering the status quo and ‘destabilising’ the region? Is it China’s reclamation activities or is it the US military rebalance and its perceived challenge to China’s political and military ambitions?
As an anonymous US official opined about China’s reclamation activities: ‘There is no military threat. It is about the symbolism’. This statement is perhaps the most accurate of all.
Mark J. Valencia is an adjunct senior scholar at the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, Haikou, China.
A version of this article was first published here in The Japan Times.
I must confess that I have little knowledge on international laws on seas and the legality of the various states in the South China Sea. It seems to me the author has reasonably argued the current state of affairs is China bashing as opposed to an unreasonable China. What China has done in terms of reclaimed feature is no different to what some other states has done. By singling out China to criticize the US position seems stranger than what it criticizes.
What is the purpose of such unbalanced critique?
Maybe because, as mentioned, the scope and scale of Chinese reclamation and building of military facilities exceeds that of all the other claimants put together? Your claim of China’s actions being “no different” from the other claimants is obviously incorrect.
When your actions are unbalanced, you also received “unbalanced” critique, although I understand that it may be difficult for you as a Chinese to understand that.
China has built islands where there were none before. That doesn’t fit the definition of land reclamation, which is defined as expanding land which already exists and is already inhabited. The definition was created that way so that countries don’t go around trying to build their own turf from scratch in the middle of the ocean (which is exactly what China is doing.) If China is allowed to do this, then what’s to stop anyone else from doing the same? It would lead to international chaos (something that China doesn’t care about.)
reclamation
[rek-luh-mey-shuh n]
noun
1.
the reclaiming of desert, marshy, or submerged areas or other wasteland for cultivation or other use.
It’s fascinating to watch Western commentators turn reality into pretzel shapes in order to justify Chinese expansion in the South China Sea.
“”””China claims all the features in the South China Sea. So do Vietnam and Taiwan. “”
Vietnam DOES NOT claim all the features in the South China Sea. It does not claim the Scarborough Shoals, for example.
“Taiwan” claims nothing in the South China Sea. The ROC government on Taiwan, as China, mirrors China’s expansionist line in the South China Sea.
“”””What about the charge that China is not adhering to regional norms?””
It’s truth. No other claimant claims the entire South China Sea. No other claimant has had officials stating that other nations will need permission to sail there. And most importantly, no other claimant has attacked and slaughtered rival claimants troops in areas where the rival has a much better claim.
China’s claim is a recent invention with no basis in history or international law. As Bill Hayton has amply demonstrated, and indeed, anyone familiar with the sources should be aware, Chinese were unaware of the islands until the 20th century and were forced to use English names for them since they had no names of their own.
Hayton writes (http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/chinas-false-memory-syndrome): “When a Chinese government committee first gave Chinese names to the islands in 1935 all it did was either translate or transliterate the existing British names. In the Paracels, for example, Antelope Reef became Líng yang (the Chinese word for antelope) and in the Spratlys, North Danger Reef became B?i xi?n (Chinese for “north danger”), Spratly Island became Si-ba-la-tuo (the Chinese transliteration of the English name). The Chinese committee simply copied the British maps, errors and all. The names were then revised, twice. Scarborough Shoal, named after a British ship in 1748, was originally transliterated as Si ge ba luo in 1935, renamed Min’zhu Jiao—Democracy Reef by the nationalist Republic of China in 1947 and then given the less politically-sensitive name of Huangyan (Yellow Rock) by the communist People’s Republic of China in 1983.”
When the Manchus — who were not Chinese — sent ships to the Paracels, they had to use German captains, since the local Chinese had no knowledge of how to reach them. One aspect of Chinese expansionism is the reconfiguration of Manchu holdings as “China” and their lands and inhabitants as “Chinese”. We are now living out the consequences of this fateful evolution. It is not a coincidence that China has territorial claims on all its neighbors. Or do writers like Valencia believe that the tensions over territory of the last sixty years everywhere along China’s border reflect some global conspiracy against China?
Writing that does not take cognizance of this expansionism is writing that functions as an apologetic for it. It’s sad that EAF editors continually permit writers on this topic to make false assertions that create a false balance between China, which has no claim to the SCS and its features, and other claimants, such as Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia, who reasonably do.
For those of us who live under Chinese missiles and threats to maim and murder locals and annex their land, as we do here in Taiwan, apologetics like Valencia’s are unconscionable. I hope EAF editors will consider soliciting a piece from someone like Francis-Xavier Bonnet or Hayton.
Just this last month Malaysia released the news that a Chinese vessel had taken up anchorage in Malaysian territory off Borneo, an obvious precursor to stealing it. I can hardly wait to read the next round of apologetics for Chinese expansionism here on EAF when that attempt finally occurs.
Michael Turton