By Jane Perlez
MANILA — In tropical waters off the coast of the Philippines, a
standoff between half a dozen Chinese fishing boats, two Chinese law
enforcement vessels and an aging Philippine Navy ship recently attracted a lot
of attention in Washington, Beijing and other capitals across Asia.
Superficially, the squabble was over some rare corals, clams and poached
sharks that Philippine Navy seamen were trying to retrieve in early April from
the fishing boats operating in the Scarborough Shoal of the South
China Sea until two Chinese Marine Surveillance craft intervened.
After two tense days, the Philippine ship — a refitted Coast Guard cutter sent
by the United States
last year to beef up its ally’s weak defenses — withdrew.
But the stakes were much larger, as the insistent claims ever since of
sovereignty over the shoal by both the Philippine and Chinese governments made
clear. The incident intensified longstanding international questions over the
strategically critical, potentially energy-rich South China Sea that have become
more urgent this year as the long-dominant United States and fast-growing China both seek to increase
their naval power in the region.
“We’re just pawns,” said Roberto Romulo, a former foreign secretary of the
Philippines who argues that China is flexing its muscles in a bid to gain
unimpeded access to vast reserves of natural gas and oil believed to be buried under the South
China Sea. “China is testing
the United States,
that’s all it is. And China
is eating America’s lunch in
Southeast Asia.”
More recently, a senior Chinese military officer even dismissed any
legitimate role for the United States
in the South China Sea. “The South China issue
is not America’s business,”
Gen. Ma Xiaotian, the deputy chief of general staff of the People’s Liberation
Army, said in an interview broadcast Monday by Phoenix TV in Hong
Kong. “It’s between China and its neighbors.”
The general’s statement appeared to throw down a challenge to the Obama
administration, which has sought in the past six months to enhance United
States military strength around the western Pacific and East Asia, where the
South China Sea serves as an essential waterway for not only the United States
Navy but also for a large portion of the world’s trade.
From placing Marines in the northern Australian port city of Darwin to
increasing military relations with Vietnam, a country with an uneasy
relationship with China, Washington has signaled its intention of staying, not
leaving.
In the latest sign of its resolve to stand firm on Chinese assertiveness in
the South China Sea, the administration sent Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta to testify last week before the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the need for the United States to ratify
the United Nations treaty that is intended to govern the world’s oceans.
China
is one of 162 countries that has ratified the Law of the
Sea treaty. But the United
States has not done so, holding back from
formal approval ever since President Ronald Reagan refused to sign it when it
was completed in 1982.
A major goal of the joint appearance, administration officials said, was to
strengthen the legal hand of the United States so that its navy can
be assured the freedom of navigation that the treaty recognizes beyond any
nation’s territorial limit of 12 nautical miles.
In contrast, Western diplomats say, China argues that freedom of navigation
comes into force only 200 nautical miles from a nation’s coast, an argument
that contravenes the Law of the Sea and, if put into effect, would basically
render the South China Sea Beijing’s private preserve.
While China may have no interest in blocking shipping in the South China
Sea, there is also no doubt that it has begun to project its power in the area.
Vietnam,
for example, claims that Chinese boats twice sabotaged oil exploration efforts
last year by deliberately cutting ship cables in its waters. China said one
of the cable-cutting incidents was accidental.
Meanwhile, China
is expected to deploy its first aircraft carrier this year.
Two-thirds of the world’s natural gas trade passes through the waters of the
South China Sea, according to a report by Yang
Jiemian, president of the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies. The
sea is the main passageway for oil from the Middle East to China, Japan,
South Korea and the rest of Asia.
Now the sea itself is believed to hold a substantial reservoir of energy,
with some experts predicting that under the seabed lies as much as 130 billion
barrels of oil and 900 trillion cubic feet of gas.
Bree Feng contributed research from Beijing.
“Possibly and hopefully the South China Sea
will be a productive energy source,” Xu Xiaojie, a former director of overseas
investment for China National Petroleum Corporation, said in an interview. The
Chinese Ministry of Land and Resources has done studies on the energy resources
in the sea, Mr. Xu said, but detailed results have not been released.
In May, China National Offshore Oil Corporation, which until now has only
had the technical ability to drill in shallow water, began its first deep-sea
drilling project in an undisputed area of the South China Sea south of Hong Kong.
For China, the South China Sea is an integral part of its history. Days
after the incident at Scarborough Shoal, known as Huangyan
Island in China,
the Chinese Foreign Ministry outlined some of the basic facts as interpreted by
China.
In 1279, the Chinese astronomer Guo Shoujing was commissioned by Emperor Kublai
Khan to survey the seas around China.
Huangyan Island was chosen as the starting point
for the survey, the ministry said.
Mr. Romulo, the former foreign secretary, recalled that Zhou Enlai, the
longtime second-in-command to Mao Zedong, had once pulled out a map to show his
father, Carlos P. Romulo, who also served as a Philippine foreign secretary,
that the Philippines
rightfully belonged to China.
Aside from China and the Philippines, three other countries in Southeast
Asia — Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam — make claims to islands in
the sea. So does Taiwan.
Most perplexing to some claimants is China’s
insistence on what is referred to as a nine-dash map that Beijing says shows its territorial claims.
The nine dashes were originally drawn as 11 in 1947, before the Communist
victory, and then amended to nine in the early 1950s to bypass the Gulf of Tonkin
as a courtesy to the Communists in Vietnam.
By some estimates the nine dashes incorporate about 80 percent of the South China Sea. The line encompasses the Spratly Islands
and Paracel Islands,
which Vietnam
also claims. The two nations fought sporadically over their competing claims in
the 1970s and 1980s.
From each land feature within the nine-dash line — some of them little more
than small rocks — China claims a 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone
that it says gives it the rights to the resources there according to the terms
of the Law of the Sea.
According to officials here in Manila, China’s line runs inside the 80-nautical-mile
stretch of water between Palawan
Island and Reed Bank,
where a Philippine company says it has found significant deposits of natural
gas. The Philippine government of President Benigno S. Aquino III backs a plan
to begin drilling off Reed Bank in the next few months.
How China
will react is an open question. Nationalist sentiment within China is riding high on the South
China Sea, and the government itself seems divided, on tactics at
least.
Western diplomats say the Foreign Ministry, while remaining firm, would like
to find a solution to the quarrel with the Philippines, perhaps involving
joint ventures between companies from both countries. But People’s Liberation
Army Daily, the military newspaper, has published strident editorials, stating
that China will not stand
for the Philippines or any
other country claiming what is rightfully China’s.
“If China’s leaders
follow the Chinese people, the policy on South China Sea and Southeast Asia
will become very militant,” said Shi Yinhong, professor of international
relations at Renmin University in Beijing.
Reflecting Washington’s rising concern
about the South China Sea, Mr. Panetta, the defense secretary, plans to deliver
what is being billed as a major policy speech on Saturday at an annual
conference sponsored by the International Institute for Strategic Studies,
based in London, which is bringing together an
influential audience of Asian officials in Singapore this weekend.
Others will be paying close attention to what Mr. Panetta has to say as
well. After China warned India this year about exploration by an Indian
company in waters off Vietnam,
the company pulled out, citing technical reasons. But that was not the last
word from India.
“The South China Sea,” said S. M. Krishna, India’s foreign minister, “is the
property of the world.”
Bree Feng contributed research from Beijing.
Courtesy: New York Times
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