{"id":27692,"date":"2016-07-15T06:00:31","date_gmt":"2016-07-14T20:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=27692"},"modified":"2016-07-14T13:50:35","modified_gmt":"2016-07-14T03:50:35","slug":"chinas-challenge-law-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/chinas-challenge-law-sea\/","title":{"rendered":"China\u2019s challenge to the Law of the Sea"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Image<\/p>\n

China has been trying to bully its way to dominance in Asia for years. And it seems that not even an international tribunal in The Hague is going to stand in its way.<\/span><\/p>\n

China has<\/span> rebuffed<\/span><\/a> the landmark ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which knocked the bottom out of expansive Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea and held that some of the country\u2019s practices were in violation of international law. Recognizing that there is no mechanism to enforce the PCA\u2019s ruling, China does not intend to give even an inch on its claims to everything that falls within its unilaterally drawn ‘nine-dash line.’<\/span><\/p>\n

Clearly, China values the territorial gains\u2014which provide everything from major oil and gas reserves to fisheries (accounting for 12% of the global catch) to strategic depth\u2014more than its international reputation. Unfortunately, this could mean more trouble for the region than for China itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

China is not just aiming for uncontested control in the South China Sea; it is also working relentlessly to challenge the territorial <\/span>status quo <\/span><\/i>in the East China Sea and the Himalayas, and to reengineer the<\/span> cross-border flows of international rivers<\/span><\/a> that originate on the Tibetan Plateau. In its leaders\u2019 view, success means reducing Southeast Asian countries to tributary status\u2014and there seems to be little anyone can do to stop them from pursuing that outcome.<\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed, China\u2019s obvious disdain for international mediation, arbitration, or adjudication essentially takes peaceful dispute resolution off the table. And, because none of its regional neighbors wants to face off with the mighty China, all are vulnerable to Chinese hegemony.<\/span><\/p>\n

To be sure, China does not seek to dominate Asia overnight. Instead, it is pursuing an incremental approach to shaping the region according to its interests. Rather than launch an old-fashioned invasion\u2014an approach that could trigger a direct confrontation with the United States\u2014China is creating new facts on the ground by confounding, bullying, and bribing adversaries.<\/span><\/p>\n

To scuttle efforts to build an international consensus against its unilateralism, China initiates and maintains generous aid and investment arrangements with countries in need. In the run-up to the arbitration ruling, China used its clout to force the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to retract a joint statement<\/span> critical<\/span><\/a> of its role in the South China Sea.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, the potential of China\u2019s bribery and manipulation has its limits. The country has few friends in Asia, a point made by US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter\u2019s<\/span> warning<\/span><\/a> that China is erecting a ‘Great Wall of Self-Isolation.’ The Chinese foreign ministry responded by<\/span> citing support<\/span><\/a> for its positions from distant countries such as Sierra Leone and Kenya.<\/span><\/p>\n

But in a world where domination is often conflated with leadership and where money talks, China may not have all that much to worry about. Consider how rapidly normal diplomatic relations with China were restored in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.<\/span><\/p>\n

Already, criticism of China\u2019s territorial grabs focuses on dissuading its leaders from further expansionary activities, rather than on forcing it to vacate the seven reefs and outcroppings it has already turned into nascent military outposts in the South China Sea. The international community may not like what China has done, but it seems willing to accept it.<\/span><\/p>\n

That reality has not been lost on China, which was emboldened by the absence of any meaningful international pushback against two particularly audacious moves: its 2012 seizure of Scarborough Shoal, just 120 nautical miles from the Philippines, and its establishment in 2013 of an air-defense identification zone (ADIZ) over areas of the East China Sea that it does not control. Since then, China\u2019s leaders have ramped up their island-building spree in the South China Sea considerably.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though the Philippines did fight back, invoking the dispute-settlement provision of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), its efforts seem unlikely to yield much. On the contrary, China could now double down on its defiance, by establishing an ADIZ in the South China Sea\u2014a move that would effectively prohibit flights through the region without Chinese permission. Given that China has already militarized the area, including by<\/span> building<\/span><\/a> radar facilities on new islets and<\/span> deploying<\/span><\/a> the 100-kilometer-range HQ-9 surface-to-air missiles on Woody Island, it is well positioned to enforce such an ADIZ.<\/span><\/p>\n

China\u2019s defiance of the PCA\u2019s ruling will deal a crushing blow to international law. As French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian<\/span> said recently<\/span><\/a>, if UNCLOS is openly flouted in the South China Sea, ‘it will be in jeopardy in the Arctic, the Mediterranean, and elsewhere tomorrow.’ Given that international law is crucial to protect smaller states by keeping major powers in check, the immediate question is what happens when simmering tensions with China\u2019s Asian neighbors\u2013 and with the US\u2014finally boil over.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mao Zedong famously asserted that, ‘political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.’ We might like to think that we\u2019re better than that, or that the world has progressed beyond naked coercion by great powers. But, as China\u2019s actions suggest, the essence of geopolitics has not changed. The bullies still run the schoolyard.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

China has been trying to bully its way to dominance in Asia for years. And it seems that not even an international tribunal in The Hague is going to stand in its way. 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