The Malacañang Palace in Manila—some say its name means “place of the fisherman”—is a rambling white concrete structure on the north bank of the Pasig River in the old district of San Miguel. The former residence of Spanish colonial governors and American generals, it now houses the office of the Philippine president, who lives out back in a smaller building on the palace grounds known as the “House of Dreams.”
In June 2005 China’s president, Hu Jintao, visited Malacañang to celebrate 39 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, a former economics professor and the last Philippine president to actually live in the Palace, presented Hu with a framed sheet of postage stamps to commemorate China’s efforts to bring peace, stability, and prosperity to the region. Hu proclaimed that bilateral relations were entering into a “golden age of partnership.”
So much has changed in nine years. Today, Arroyo is gone from office, detained in hospital on corruption charges, and Sino-Philippine relations have undergone a sea change. Speaking with The New York Times in an interview from the Palace’s music room in February, the new Philippine president, Benigno S. Aquino III, once Arroyo’s student and a World War II history buff, launched a war of words on China by comparing Beijing’s territorial ambitions in the South China Sea to Hitler’s demands for the Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia in 1938. The Munich Agreement, signed by Britain, France, and Italy to appease Hitler, turned out to be a disastrous concession.
“At what point do you say, ‘Enough is enough’?” Aquino asked. “Well, the world has to say it—remember that the Sudetenland was given in an attempt to appease Hitler to prevent World War II.”
The dispute over who controls a group of uninhabited rock formations in the South China Sea, which China believes could be sitting overtop 30 billion metric tons of oil and 16 trillion cubic meters of gas, may not be so easily characterized. Japan, locked in its own standoff with China over resource-rich islands in the East China Sea, has a different take. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe likens China to the Kaiser’s Germany in 1914.
Whatever the difference, one issue is already settled. China has effectively seized an important reef claimed by the Philippines, the Scarborough Shoal off Zambales, named after an ill-fated eighteenth-century British trading ship contracted to the East India Company that was wrecked on one of its rocks. China swept into control of the Scarborough Shoal in 2012 by doing virtually nothing. Its ships simply stayed put after the Philippine navy withdrew to await the outcome of U.S.-brokered negotiations through the UN.
Manila alleges that China’s “nine-dash line,” representing Beijing’s claim to historical ownership of more than 90 percent of the South China Sea, is invalid under the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The Chinese Foreign Ministry begs to differ. It says China has “indisputable sovereignty over South China Sea islands and their adjacent waters.” This includes the Scarborough Shoal, even though it is more than 550 miles away from the nearest Chinese landmass, Hainan Island, while only 124 miles from Zambales. Under UNCLOS, this would put it within the Philippines’ 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone.
Beijing has ratified UNCLOS—something the United States has shunned—but says it has centuries-old maps to support its claims to the Shoal and much of the South China Sea almost to Borneo. UNCLOS generally rejects historically based claims, and international legal and historical experts say the evidence is problematic at best. In any case, China argues that a nation is not deemed to have given up previous territorial claims by adopting the accord; moreover, the international community has tacitly acknowledged China’s nine-dash line since the end of World War II. Beijing feels that direct negotiation, rather than international arbitration, is a more appropriate avenue to settle territorial disputes between sovereign nations.
The bigger question, of course, is how far Beijing is willing to go to back its claims using force. Already it has sent coastguard and surveillance ships to patrol the area, but so far they have only fired water cannons to drive away Filipino fisherman. The immediate fear is that Beijing will attempt to put up another air defense zone in the area like the one it establish in the East China Sea in November, demanding civil and military aircraft to register flight plans before entering the space.
General Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle, who commands U.S. air forces in the Pacific, says that any move by China to replicate an air zone in the South China Sea would be a “very provocative act” and create the potential for miscalculation. But Beijing contends that its air defense zone in the East China Sea is no different from the zones the U.S. has maintained in its own regional waters—and beyond if you include Guam—for more than 60 years.
China’s ability to police two million square kilometers of ocean is another question entirely. It would require Beijing to shift the nation’s air and naval forces from their current concentration on the east coast. China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, is still far from combat-ready, but China’s ability to project naval power is growing by leaps and bounds, and construction of a second carrier is scheduled for completion in 2018. It is also rapidly upgrading its air forces, fielding new fighter aircraft, long-range bombers, and precision-guided cruise missiles.
Beijing increased national military spending by 10.7 percent, to 740.6 billion yuan ($122 billion), in 2013. This year, it says, it intends to step up spending by 12.2 percent, to 808.2 billion yuan ($131.6 billion), its biggest increase in three years, even as the country’s economic growth rate has declined. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency estimates that actual spending, which includes hidden programs, could be almost twice the official figure.
A poll conducted in December showed that a majority of Filipinos support their government’s challenge to China’s rampant behaviour in the South China Sea and want to see this case settled by an international tribunal. Manila has called upon other countries in the region to join its legal challenge, including Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Vietnam, which also have overlapping claims.
Aquino’s fresh antagonisms, together with his refusal to withdraw the case from international arbitration, appear to signal a further breakdown in bilateral relations. Manila seems to be fishing for stronger Western support in the dispute, appearing to align itself with U.S. attempts to contain China through its strategic pivot of forces to the Pacific theater. Aquino’s allusion to the Munich Agreement has been used—and misused—in U.S. foreign policy debates for decades to justify an uncompromising stance against aggressive powers—from Korea and Vietnam to Iraq, Iran and Syria. But there are mounting fears that it may close new avenues for diplomacy or spark a dangerous backlash.
This article was originally published in the Diplomatic Courier's May/June 2014 print edition. Subscribe here.
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Fishing for Support in the South China Sea Dispute
June 9, 2014
The Malacañang Palace in Manila—some say its name means “place of the fisherman”—is a rambling white concrete structure on the north bank of the Pasig River in the old district of San Miguel. The former residence of Spanish colonial governors and American generals, it now houses the office of the Philippine president, who lives out back in a smaller building on the palace grounds known as the “House of Dreams.”
In June 2005 China’s president, Hu Jintao, visited Malacañang to celebrate 39 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, a former economics professor and the last Philippine president to actually live in the Palace, presented Hu with a framed sheet of postage stamps to commemorate China’s efforts to bring peace, stability, and prosperity to the region. Hu proclaimed that bilateral relations were entering into a “golden age of partnership.”
So much has changed in nine years. Today, Arroyo is gone from office, detained in hospital on corruption charges, and Sino-Philippine relations have undergone a sea change. Speaking with The New York Times in an interview from the Palace’s music room in February, the new Philippine president, Benigno S. Aquino III, once Arroyo’s student and a World War II history buff, launched a war of words on China by comparing Beijing’s territorial ambitions in the South China Sea to Hitler’s demands for the Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia in 1938. The Munich Agreement, signed by Britain, France, and Italy to appease Hitler, turned out to be a disastrous concession.
“At what point do you say, ‘Enough is enough’?” Aquino asked. “Well, the world has to say it—remember that the Sudetenland was given in an attempt to appease Hitler to prevent World War II.”
The dispute over who controls a group of uninhabited rock formations in the South China Sea, which China believes could be sitting overtop 30 billion metric tons of oil and 16 trillion cubic meters of gas, may not be so easily characterized. Japan, locked in its own standoff with China over resource-rich islands in the East China Sea, has a different take. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe likens China to the Kaiser’s Germany in 1914.
Whatever the difference, one issue is already settled. China has effectively seized an important reef claimed by the Philippines, the Scarborough Shoal off Zambales, named after an ill-fated eighteenth-century British trading ship contracted to the East India Company that was wrecked on one of its rocks. China swept into control of the Scarborough Shoal in 2012 by doing virtually nothing. Its ships simply stayed put after the Philippine navy withdrew to await the outcome of U.S.-brokered negotiations through the UN.
Manila alleges that China’s “nine-dash line,” representing Beijing’s claim to historical ownership of more than 90 percent of the South China Sea, is invalid under the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The Chinese Foreign Ministry begs to differ. It says China has “indisputable sovereignty over South China Sea islands and their adjacent waters.” This includes the Scarborough Shoal, even though it is more than 550 miles away from the nearest Chinese landmass, Hainan Island, while only 124 miles from Zambales. Under UNCLOS, this would put it within the Philippines’ 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone.
Beijing has ratified UNCLOS—something the United States has shunned—but says it has centuries-old maps to support its claims to the Shoal and much of the South China Sea almost to Borneo. UNCLOS generally rejects historically based claims, and international legal and historical experts say the evidence is problematic at best. In any case, China argues that a nation is not deemed to have given up previous territorial claims by adopting the accord; moreover, the international community has tacitly acknowledged China’s nine-dash line since the end of World War II. Beijing feels that direct negotiation, rather than international arbitration, is a more appropriate avenue to settle territorial disputes between sovereign nations.
The bigger question, of course, is how far Beijing is willing to go to back its claims using force. Already it has sent coastguard and surveillance ships to patrol the area, but so far they have only fired water cannons to drive away Filipino fisherman. The immediate fear is that Beijing will attempt to put up another air defense zone in the area like the one it establish in the East China Sea in November, demanding civil and military aircraft to register flight plans before entering the space.
General Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle, who commands U.S. air forces in the Pacific, says that any move by China to replicate an air zone in the South China Sea would be a “very provocative act” and create the potential for miscalculation. But Beijing contends that its air defense zone in the East China Sea is no different from the zones the U.S. has maintained in its own regional waters—and beyond if you include Guam—for more than 60 years.
China’s ability to police two million square kilometers of ocean is another question entirely. It would require Beijing to shift the nation’s air and naval forces from their current concentration on the east coast. China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, is still far from combat-ready, but China’s ability to project naval power is growing by leaps and bounds, and construction of a second carrier is scheduled for completion in 2018. It is also rapidly upgrading its air forces, fielding new fighter aircraft, long-range bombers, and precision-guided cruise missiles.
Beijing increased national military spending by 10.7 percent, to 740.6 billion yuan ($122 billion), in 2013. This year, it says, it intends to step up spending by 12.2 percent, to 808.2 billion yuan ($131.6 billion), its biggest increase in three years, even as the country’s economic growth rate has declined. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency estimates that actual spending, which includes hidden programs, could be almost twice the official figure.
A poll conducted in December showed that a majority of Filipinos support their government’s challenge to China’s rampant behaviour in the South China Sea and want to see this case settled by an international tribunal. Manila has called upon other countries in the region to join its legal challenge, including Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Vietnam, which also have overlapping claims.
Aquino’s fresh antagonisms, together with his refusal to withdraw the case from international arbitration, appear to signal a further breakdown in bilateral relations. Manila seems to be fishing for stronger Western support in the dispute, appearing to align itself with U.S. attempts to contain China through its strategic pivot of forces to the Pacific theater. Aquino’s allusion to the Munich Agreement has been used—and misused—in U.S. foreign policy debates for decades to justify an uncompromising stance against aggressive powers—from Korea and Vietnam to Iraq, Iran and Syria. But there are mounting fears that it may close new avenues for diplomacy or spark a dangerous backlash.
This article was originally published in the Diplomatic Courier's May/June 2014 print edition. Subscribe here.
