The Chinese navy is expanding, both in the number of its ships and in their technical sophistication. China’s civil engineers have created artificial islands in and around the South China Sea. These islands are now home to missile bases and artillery units.
The islands and even the subsurface coral reefs are the objects of competing and conflicting territorial claims. The nations surrounding this body of water include Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and China.
The Spratly Islands and the Paracel Islands are the major, and almost the only, islands in the South China Sea. Various shoals and reefs, which are either submerged a few feet below the surface, or which project themselves only a few feet above the surface, can serve as a foundation for man-made islands which help to make up for the scarcity of naturally occurring islands.
In 2014, Robert Kaplan wrote:
It is not only location and energy reserves that promise to give the South China Sea critical geostrategic importance, it is the territorial disputes surrounding these waters, home to more than two hundred small islands, rocks, and coral reefs, only about three dozen of which are permanently above water. Yet these specks of land, buffeted by typhoons, are valuable mainly because of the oil and natural gas that might lie nearby in the intricate, folded layers of rock beneath the sea. Brunei claims a southern reef of the Spratly Islands. Malaysia claims three islands in the Spratlys. The Philippines claims eight islands in the Spratlys and significant portions of the South China Sea. Vietnam, Taiwan, and China each claims much of the South China Sea, as well as all of the Spratly and Paracel island groups. In the middle of 2010 there was quite a stir when China was said to have called the South China Sea a “core interest.” It turns out that Chinese officials never quite said that: no matter. Chinese maps have been consistent. Beijing claims to own what it calls its “historic line”: that is, the heart of the entire South China Sea in a grand loop — the “cow’s tongue” as the loop is called — surrounding these island groups from China’s Hainan Island south 1,200 miles to near Singapore and Malaysia. The result is that all of these littoral states are more or less arrayed against China, and dependent upon the United States for diplomatic and military backing. For example, Vietnam and Malaysia are seeking to divide all of the seabed and subsoil resources of the southern part of the South China Sea between mainland Southeast Asia and the Malaysian part of the island of Borneo: this has elicited a furious diplomatic response from China. These conflicting claims are likely to become more acute as energy consumption in developing Asian countries is expected to double by 2030, with China accounting for half of that growth.
China’s presence in the South China Sea is both expansionist and xenophobic. China’s nativist tendencies express themselves by using this body of water as a barrier to prevent foreign influence.
While eager to develop international economic opportunities, China’s diplomacy retains much of its traditional isolationism.
The South China Sea connects in many different ways to a variety of China’s national ambitions. For this reason, the Chinese government is incorrigibly committed to dominating, militarily and economically, this body of water.
Among the keys to China’s foreign policy, the South China Sea ranks high. The question of Taiwan ranks high, as well. The Taiwan question and the South China Sea are closely linked. These are so important to the Chinese government that war cannot be ruled out. David Goldman writes:
Along with ensuring internal stability at all costs, China’s leaders are determined to make China impregnable from the outside. We hardly hear the term South China Sea these days, because that sea has become a Chinese lake. It has become a Chinese lake because the Chinese have made it clear they will go to war over it. There’s a Chinese proverb: “Kill the chicken for the instruction of the monkey.” China has an even greater concern over Taiwan.
Economic ambition is also a key to Chinese foreign policy. The immense amount of cargo going through the South China Sea - both raw materials and finished consumer goods - means that this waterway is not only a military desiderata but also an economic one.
Economic globalization does not reduce, and in some cases increases, the risk of war. Over the years, the risk of open military conflict in this region has increased, as Robert Kaplan noted:
“Paradoxically, if the postmodern age is dominated by globalization,” writes the British naval expert Geoffrey Till, then “everything that supports” globalization, such as trade routes and energy deposits, becomes fraught with competition. And when it comes to trade routes, 90 percent of all commercial goods that travel from one continent to another do so by sea. This heightened maritime awareness that is a product of globalization comes at a time when a host of relatively new and independent states in Southeast Asia, which only recently have had the wherewithal to flex their muscles at sea, are making territorial claims against each other that in the days of the British Empire were never an issue, because of the supremacy of the Crown globally and its emphasis on free trade and freedom of navigation. This muscle flexing takes the form of “routinized” close encounters between warships of different nations at sea, creating an embryonic risk of armed conflict.
The Chinese navy acquired decommissioned aircraft carriers from the Australian and Russian navies. After studying them, the Chinese have begun building their own aircraft carriers, and intend to strengthen their fleets.
Missiles of various types are also being developed by the Chinese military. The intent to control the South China Sea is clear from tactical and strategic documents; the Chinese make no effort to hide this.
In the twenty-first century, the world’s diplomatic, economic, and military history will be shaped in large part by what happens in the South China Sea.
