The power imbalance around the South China Sea
English original of column published in Japanese by Mainichi Shimbun on June 23rd, concerning the Philippines, China, the US and keeping the peace
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Back to “Jidai no Kaze” (winds of the times) for Mainichi:
There were many notable moments at the Shangri-La Dialogue, the annual regional defense summit organised by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore in the opening days of June. They included some aggressive words about Taiwan from the new Chinese defense minister, Admiral Dong Jun; clear protests about civilian deaths in Gaza both from President-elect Prabowo Subianto of Indonesia and from the Malaysian defense minister; and a surprise appearance by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, there to rally support among South-East Asian and other middle-income powers for his peace summit in Switzerland on June 15-16.
But top prize undoubtedly went to President Bongbong Marcos of the Philippines, when he said that if a Filipino serviceman were to be killed by a Chinese water cannon during a confrontation in the South China Sea, it would almost certainly be considered an act of war. America's Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, was rather more circumspect on this issue, given that an "act of war" would invoke the 1951 mutual defense treaty between the United States and the Philippines, the provisions of which Austin himself reaffirmed when signing new Bilateral Defense Guidelines in May 2023. But the message had nonetheless been sent, loud and clear.
President Marcos's remark, made in answer to a question from a Financial Times journalist, sent both a thrill and a chill around the room. For many people, it was a thrill to hear a South-East Asian leader pushing back hard against Chinese bullying. But there was also a chill because of the implications: that a war involving the world's two most powerful military forces could break out not just over the predictable issue of Taiwan, where preparations and negotiations offer hope of averting conflict, but also over the many disputed reefs and submerged shoals of the South China Sea where the potential for miscalculations and accidents at sea is abundant.
Then on June 15, a new Chinese decree came into effect that authorizes the China Coast Guard to detain any foreign national who flouts marine demarcations in the South China Sea that have been set unilaterally by China. The decree led immediately to a collision between a Chinese and a Philippine ship on June 17 in which a Filipino sailor was badly injured. This also raises the possibility that while it may be hoped that no Filipino servicemen die because of Chinese pressure on their missions, China may instead choose to seize fishermen, coastguards or others under its new decree and in effect hold them hostage, daring its opponents to act in response or else forcing them to negotiate.
It is a troubling prospect. But there is no doubt that there will continue to be ugly encounters at sea and harsh words between the governments involved, probably for decades to come. China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have been talking about the need for a "code of conduct" for maritime operations in the South China Sea ever since the mid-1990s, but no progress has been made, beyond talks about the need to talk. This reflects two underlying realities.
The first is that China considers the whole of the South China Sea, and probably the East China Sea too, as a key strategic space which it wishes to control. In modern times this desire was first expressed by General Chiang Kai-shek in 1947 when the-then Chinese leader produced a map with an "eleven-dash line," curling like a huge tongue through the South China Sea to depict the area China claimed to control. That map was then adopted and adapted by the Chinese Communists who defeated him in 1949.
The number of dashes on the map have changed slightly over the years -- there were 10 in China's official 2023 map, up from nine for the previous 70 years -- but the claim remains in place. This is despite a 2016 case at the International Court of Arbitration in The Hague, brought by the Philippines, which ruled that the dashed line has no status under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
China has never made explicit whether this claim is one of territorial sovereignty or just strategic control, perhaps wishing to keep its options open and its opponents guessing. Its June 15 decree suggests it may now wish to firm up those definitions, at least in some parts of the South China Sea.
The other underlying reality, which has really emerged only in the past 20 years or so with the massive Chinese military build-up, is that there is a huge imbalance of power between China on one side and the South-East Asian nations on the other. While China now possesses the world's largest naval force, none of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines or Vietnam has been able to build up their own forces in response, either because of economic weakness or competing political priorities.
Of those ASEAN countries situated in or around the South China Sea, only the city-state of Singapore and tiny Brunei spend more than 2% of their annual GDP on defense. Singapore's 2023 defense budget of US$13.4 billion was more than double the US$6.1 billion spent by the Philippines. Indonesia, the largest ASEAN country by population (275 million) spent US$8.8 billion, but that was a mere 0.62% of GDP. China's official defense budget in 2023 was US$219 billion.
That huge imbalance reflects China's great-power aspirations but also its spectacular record of economic growth. There is a good chance that this imbalance could narrow over the coming decades, for economic growth in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam is now faster than that in China. If, for example, those countries were to succeed in growing at an average of 7% per year between now and 2050, and if China's average annual growth rate were to slow to 3%, then the combined economic heft of those four countries would reach 45% of China's annual GDP by mid-century, compared with just 15% now, or even more if exchange rates moved in South-East Asia's favor.
Such growth would enable the Philippines and others to build much stronger military forces, discouraging China from pushing them around in the South China Sea. The trouble is that redressing that huge economic imbalance will take time, whereas the potential crises, clashes and miscalculations are happening now.
The right long-term strategy is to seek sustained economic growth, benefiting from the diversification away from China that many companies are pursuing. The right short-term strategy nevertheless must remain one of staying close to the two best non-ASEAN friends these South China Sea littoral countries have: the United States and Japan. The role in the region of the U.S. and Japan is only going to grow, unless and until that huge power imbalance can be reduced.
It’s hard to know how positive one should feel about this planet’s, (Homo sapiens) inhabitants. Is “hardware” deterrence the only way to protect a Filipino fisherman?
I think that the claim to the South China Sea first made its appearance at the Chongqing dialogues between the USA and the ROC in the late 1930s which were concerned with the revocation of the Unequal Treaties.
Frankly it is astonishing that none of the legion of journalists writing on the South China Sea /East Philippine Sea issue seem to have dug into the basis of the Chinese claim.
The claim is extraordinary and unique.
There is a theory that it may have begun as a legal fiction promulgated by merchants in south China to evade the numerous bans on travel by sea.
Why is nobody looking into this?