The challenge mounted this week by the US navy to China’s maritime expansion in the South China Sea highlights the confrontation in East Asia between the world’s two major powers in one of the more important, but least noticed, global flashpoints. Neither side wants an outright conflict. But neither will give way. With an ongoing tussle between China and Japan to the north and the conundrum of North Korea, this points to continuing tension in a region which is vital for global economic growth.
When they met for a summit in California in 2013, President Xi Jinping told Barack Obama that the Pacific was big enough to accommodate both China and the United States. True enough, but what the Chinese leader meant was that the US should move to a sphere of influence on the other side of the ocean from the eastern shores of the People’s Republic. Instead, an American fleet much more powerful than any armed force China can deploy is based in Okinawa in Japan while an “island chain” linked to Washington runs from there down through Taiwan to the Philippines, which is a US treaty ally.
Off to the north-west, South Korea is another ally, with 28,000 American troops stationed on its territory. Forty years after the end of their war, relations between Vietnam and the US have warmed and Hanoi has been alarmed by China’s claims in waters it regards as its own. Other countries in south-east Asia welcome the strategic umbrella of American military power even as they seek to boost economic relations with China.
In those circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the People’s Republic feels hemmed in and is putting the development of its navy at the core of its military build-up. Strategic planners in Beijing talk of cold-war-style containment. Building on reefs that it says are sovereign territory on the basis of a map drawn up in 1947, China has steadily pushed its claims to most of the South China Sea, which is a vital trade route as well as a rich fishing ground and, perhaps, home to important energy reserves. The Chinese say these new “sandcastles” are there to provide safe landings for fishing vessels that get into trouble, but they have obvious military potential.
That poses a challenge to other states with claims to the same area, notably Vietnam and the Philippines. But it also impinges on freedom of navigation, since China insists that its writ runs round the islands it has created.
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