One constant is China’s goal of dominating, and eventually owning outright, the South China Sea. At the dawn of the century, China’s approach was two-pronged: a strong military presence combined with an economic hegemony in the region, as Robert Kaplan wrote:
One high-ranking official of a South China Sea littoral state was particularly blunt during an off-the-record conversation I had in 2011, saying, “The Chinese never give justifications for their claims. They have a real Middle Kingdom mentality, and are dead set against taking these disputes to court. China,” this official went on, “denies us our right on our own continental shelf. But we will not be treated like Tibet or Xinjiang.” This official said that China is as tough with a country like the Philippines as it is with Vietnam, because while the latter is historically and geographically in a state of intense competition with China, the former is just a weak state that can be intimidated. “There are just too many claimants to the waters in the South China Sea. The complexity of the issues mitigates against an overall solution, so China simply waits until it becomes stronger. Economically, all these countries will come to be dominated by China,” the official continued, unless of course the Chinese economy itself unravels. Once China’s underground submarine base is completed on Hainan Island, “China will be more able to do what it wants.” Meanwhile, more American naval vessels are visiting the area, “so the disputes are being internationalized.” Because there is no practical political or judicial solution, “we support the status quo.”
The quest to dominate the South China Sea was and is of a piece with the “Belt and Road” strategy, sometimes also called the “Road and Belt” strategy. This is a plan to develop massive railway and maritime infrastructures to support China’s export economy. This strategy would allow the already-huge export business to grow even larger, and allow China to dominate world markets.
The financing of the “Belt and Road” plan is done by offering to build shipping terminals, ports, and railway lines for near-bankrupt third-world nations. These countries pay for these gigantic construction projects by borrowing the money from China. Later, when the countries are unable to service the debt, China will exact in-kind payments, by stationing Chinese military in those countries, by forcing local populations to work in Chinese-owned factories for microscopic wages, by forcing those countries to trade exclusively with China, and by many other similar measures.
In this way, China hopes to build an empire for itself.
In this context, the Chinese military intimidation of the nations in the South China Sea region is key to the “Belt and Road” plan, because that region sees a large percentage of world trade move through its shipping lanes.
The small and vulnerable nations in that region look to a U.S. naval presence to keep some manner of check on the Chinese. But will the Chinese always feel constrained by an American presence to behave diplomatically?
“If that fails, what is Plan B for dealing with China?” I asked.
The specter of direct military confrontation between the U.S. and China is one possible outcome of China’s persistent bullying in the South China Sea, as Kaplan reports:
“Plan B is the U.S. Navy—Pacific Command. But we will publicly remain neutral in any U.S.-China dispute.” To make certain that I got the message, this official said: “An American military presence is needed to countervail China, but we won’t vocalize that.” The withdrawal of even one U.S. aircraft carrier strike group from the Western Pacific is a “game changer.”
So it was that by 2014, a tense situation had solidified in the region of the South China Sea:
In the interim, the South China Sea has become an armed camp, even as the scramble for reefs is mostly over. China has confiscated twelve geographical features, Taiwan one, the Vietnamese twenty-one, the Malaysians five, and the Philippines nine. In other words, facts have already been created on the ground. Perhaps there can still be sharing arrangements for the oil and natural gas fields. But here it is unclear what, for instance, countries with contentious claims coupled with especially tense diplomatic relations like Vietnam and China will agree upon.
In 2014, however, there was a change in one variable in this equation. The relationship between China and Russia needed to find a new equilibrium in light of Russia’s armed occupation of Crimea. Observers wanted to know how China would perceive this armed annexation, and how it might change its relationship to Russia in this context.
China offered a pro forma statement supporting Ukrainian sovereignty, but blocked a resolution in the U.N. Security Council which would have reaffirmed Ukrainian sovereignty. Some news sources referred to China as a “passive” ally in this context.
When Russia began an outright military assault on Ukraine, observers were watching to see if China would support Russia’s invasion. Leading up to the attack, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping had projected the appearance of a growingly strong alliance. Would that appearance prove to be an illusion? Or would China stand by Russia, when nearly every other nation in the world condemned the unprovoked attack?
As in 2014, so also during the 2022 Russian attack on Ukraine, China made statements which seemed to honor Ukrainian national sovereignty. There was no obvious embrace of the Russian invasion by China, and no direct military aid by the Chinese military to help the invaders.
Yet again, China failed to support a resolution in the U.N. Security Council condemning the invasion. Only three weeks prior to the invasion, Putin and Xi Jinping issued a joint statement affirming their alliance. Russia seems to have waited until the Olympic games, hosted by China, were past: a possible favor to Xi? The Chinese government-owned and government-operated businesses have worked to find ways to prop up the Russian energy industry and the Russian banks in the face of sanctions by many governments around the world.
It appears that China is not losing any sleep over Russia’s naked and unprovoked aggression against Ukraine.
In return, Russia has made statements encouraging China’s claims on Taiwan.
More than Russian statements about Taiwan, China might appreciate that Russia has diverted the world’s attention. While the war in Ukraine has occupied mental and diplomatic energy, “China appears to be engaged in a “sprint to parity” to match U.S. land-based ICBM numbers,” in the words of Arizona’s Peter Wolf.
Economic sanctions against Russia are manageable for the U.S. economy, but U.S. purchases from Russia total merely 6% of what the U.S. purchases from China, as reported by a Wall Street Journal article in March 2022.
If China can consolidate its military and economic power while the world is watching Russia, the world might be surprised at what it finds when it resumes watching other parts of the globe. What will the U.S. do if China has an upgraded nuclear attack force and the economic power to seriously cripple the U.S. economy? Would the U.S. defend the nations of the South China Sea against a Chinese attack? Put differently, would the U.S. protect a major international shipping lane?
If the U.S. defends shipping routes in the area of the South China Sea, it could receive serious economic and military damage from China. If it doesn’t defend those global shipping lanes, the economic hegemony of the Chinese could be equally dangerous.