The statement was made on Wednesday, discussing a recent standoff between Indonesia and China in the South China Sea. Indonesian warships fired warning shots on Friday at Chinese fishing vessels that were operating within Indonesia’s 200-nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), off the Natuna Islands, northwest of Borneo.
Eleven of the twelve Chinese boats fled to safety but the Indonesian navy captured one of the vessels and detained its seven member crew. Beijing also claimed that one fisherman, not one of the detained crew, suffered injuries from the warning shots and was evacuated to Hainan Island, China’s southernmost point, not counting China’s disputed South China Sea possessions. After the incident both Jakarta and Beijing traded barbs over sovereignty issues and South China Sea claims.
While discussing its South China Sea policy and offering a rebuttal on Indonesian actions, the article states that “it is no easy task for today’s China to safeguard its sovereignty in the South China Sea and defend the nine-dash line. As the US strategically squeezes China, many Southeast Asian countries have shown delicate initiative in dealing with their China relations.”
China’s South China Sea take
It’s worth taking a look at both the U.S. and China’s thinking on the matter. From the U.S. perspective, China’s assertiveness in the Sea is in violation of international law, particularly the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) that Beijing signed off on in 1982.
The U.S., as the guarantor of freedom of navigation in the Pacific Ocean since World War II, must and will continue to press for free access to the South China Sea for both civilian and military vessels of all nationalities. Washington has no choice. More than $5 trillion in trade pass through the body of water yearly, including vital oil and natural gas shipments to Japan, Taiwan and South Korea.
Loss of freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most heavily traveled and geopolitically important water ways would be a death knell for peace in the region, not to mention the economic cost inflicted if China chose to shut off, even temporarily, the South China Sea, for nationalist, militarist or geopolitical reasons.
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