And that same week, a Chinese Coast Guard vessel forcefully freed a Chinese fishing vessel from Indonesian authorities that had detained the vessel.
This is the new normal in the South China Sea.
While this strategic patch of ocean has long seen international maritime incidents – even deadly ones – the pace has climbed rapidly in recent years.
Tensions have risen as China has taken more frequent and provocative steps to assert its authority over claimed waters, and its regional neighbors have begun to push back. In 2014, China deployed a massive oil rig in disputed waters with Vietnam, leading to clashes between vessels. Between 2013 and 2015, China dredged enough sand from the bottom of the South China Sea to build more than 2,900 acres of new land, on which it appears to be constructing bases. And ships from China and the Philippines have squared off near Scarborough Reef, Second Thomas Shoal, and elsewhere.
The incidents between claimant countries are occurring alongside an emerging U.S.-China confrontation in the South China Sea, with vessels from both countries increasingly challenging one another, as illustrated by journalist Helene Cooper on her recent voyage.
As the pace of incidents climbs, so too does the possibility of unintended escalation. With long-term solutions to sovereignty claims and resource disputes nowhere on the horizon, the countries of the region need to find a way to lower tensions now.
To do so, the United States must push China and the other claimant countries—Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam—to create an incident prevention system in the South China Sea.
First, the countries should build a communal maritime domain awareness system to provide transparency of ship movements. Information sharing among various countries and non-governmental entities could provide the necessary data, and the system could be monitored at a physical center attended by representatives from all claimant countries. The new information hub might even be built on an existing mechanism such as Singapore’s Information Fusion Centre or the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance.
Second, countries must take the very difficult step of living up to their commitments not to respond to incursions into perceived sovereign waters with force, but instead only with diplomacy. While the parties have already signed up to this in principle in the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, the new hub would help make this work by providing an opportunity for the relevant countries to monitor and respond to each incident in real time and to immediately negotiate de-escalation.
Third, the countries must agree to apply the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea to all vessels. The CUES, a 2014 agreement whose 21 signatories include all the relevant South China Sea parties, establishes guidelines for preventing incidents between navies and avoiding escalation when incidents occur. It’s a step forward that would go much further if applied to the more incident-prone Coast Guard and fishing vessels.
Fourth, the countries must construct a mechanism for adjudicating these incidents, for deciding how to proceed once an incident has occurred. Most effective would be a new mechanism comprised of and administered by representatives from the five claimant countries. The mechanism might be based at the maritime domain awareness hub, where real-time information could allow much quicker decisions to determine a way forward.
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