China dismissed calls for arbitration
to resolve disputes in Asian waters vital to world trade after
the U.S. and Japan vowed to resist attempts to seize contested
territory by force.
Qi Jianguo, deputy chief of the General Staff of the
People’s Liberation Army, told a forum in Singapore yesterday
that Chinese patrols in disputed waters off its coasts were
“totally legitimate.” He spoke a day after Defense Secretary
Chuck Hagel said the U.S. “stands firmly against any coercive
attempts to alter the status quo” in the seas.
The world’s biggest economies have been unable to agree on
rules for operating in the waters and resolving territorial
disputes as China’s neighbors grow more concerned over its
military might. The tension adds to disagreements over
cyber-espionage, Iran’s weapons program and Syria’s civil war
that may be discussed when President Barack Obama meets Chinese
leader Xi Jinping in California on June 7.
“China does seem to be in certain instances changing the
status quo in its favor,” said Bonnie Glaser, a China
specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
in Washington. “If it’s doing so through economic pressure and
coercion and the use of government paramilitary vessels, the
U.S. just doesn’t have a good toolbox to use and try to respond
to it.”
Over the past year, China has taken effective control of a
land feature near the Philippines and increased incursions into
Japanese waters. The U.S. allies have relied on the Navy’s
Seventh Fleet to deter aggression in Asia-Pacific waters since
World War II.
’Totally Legitimate’
Qi said yesterday that a maritime dispute with the
Philippines could be solved through “open-minded channels”
instead of arbitration. A United Nation-backed panel set up
after the Philippines brought the case to the UN in January may
rule next month whether it has jurisdiction, Foreign Affairs
Secretary Albert del Rosario said on April 26.
“We don’t see any necessity to resort to an international
tribunal,” Qi told the Shangri-La Dialogue security forum
yesterday. Patrols by Chinese warships and surveillance vessels
“within our own territory” are “totally legitimate and
uncontroversial,” he said.
Philippine Defense Minister Voltaire Gazmin, who sat on the
same panel as Qi, said he hoped the UN arbitration panel would
not hurt trade ties with China and would encourage Xi’s
government to “desist from undertaking unlawful acts that
violate our territorial rights.”
Exclusive Zones
The lack of trust between China and the U.S. stemmed in
part from different interpretations of the UN Convention on the
Law of the Sea, known as Unclos, Chinese Senior Colonel Zhou Bo
said at a June 1 session with Admiral Samuel Locklear, head of
the U.S. Pacific Command.
While China opposes U.S. military patrols within its
exclusive economic zone, an area stretching 200 nautical miles
from land, Zhou said China had begun sending ships into the U.S.
exclusive economic zone.
“We have sort of reciprocated America’s reconnaissance in
our EEZ by sending our ships to America’s EEZ for
reconnaissance,” Zhou said. This had happened a few times,
“compared to almost daily reconnaissance by the U.S. along with
their ally Japan in our EEZ.”
Disputed Territory
China has placed ships at the Scarborough Shoal — located
about three times closer to the Philippines — since a standoff
between vessels from both countries last year. Two Chinese
vessels last week were monitoring a separate shoal in the nearby
Spratly islands that is occupied by the Philippines.
Japan’s purchase last year of East China Sea islands known
as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China led to anti-Japan
demonstrations that reduced China sales at Toyota Motor Corp. (7203),
Nissan Motor (7201) Co. and Honda Motor Co.
Japan, a U.S. ally, boosted defense spending for the first
time in 11 years to defend its territory in an “increasingly
severe security environment,” Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera
told the forum on June 1. He said Japan, while committed to
pacifism, may create a National Security Council and wants to
establish a regional body at the “earliest possible timing” to
prevent crises over incidents at sea.
Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung warned in a May 31
speech opening the three-day Singapore forum that
miscalculations may disrupt the estimated two-thirds of global
trade that moves through the South China Sea as countries
compete for fish, oil and gas.
Irresponsible Action
“A single irresponsible action or instigation of conflict
could well lead to the interruption of such huge trade flow,
thus causing unforeseeable consequences not only to regional
economies, but also to the entire world,” he said.
The Philippines and Vietnam reject China’s map of the sea,
first published in the 1940s, as a basis for joint exploration
of oil and gas. China National Offshore Oil Corp. estimates the
South China Sea may hold about five times more undiscovered
natural gas than the country’s current proved reserves,
according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
“It will be difficult for large reservoirs of much-needed
gas and oil to be found and extracted given the current tensions
within the seas in Asia,” Singapore Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen
told the forum yesterday.
U.S.-China Ties
Hagel sought to reassure Asian allies that budget
reductions won’t derail U.S. commitment to their security. A
year after the Pentagon said it would “rebalance” its strategy
to focus more on the region after a decade of wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, the Defense Department faces as much as $500
billion in cuts over the next nine years as part of a deficit-reduction law.
While Hagel again accused China of waging cyber attacks, he
also called for more dialogue and sought to reassure Xi’s
government that U.S. moves to shift 60 percent of naval assets
to Asia by 2020 weren’t aimed at China.
“We don’t want miscalculations and misunderstandings and
misinterpretations, and the only way you do that is you talk to
each other,” Hagel said on June 1 in response to a question
from a Chinese delegate at the event hosted by the International
Institute for Strategic Studies.
That message was reiterated by Admiral Locklear, who said
the U.S. wants more exchanges with China to overcome a lack of
trust between the forces. In the past year, China joined a
counter-piracy exercise in the Gulf of Aden and received an
invitation to take part in the Pacific’s largest multicountry
naval deployment.
“The U.S. doesn’t want the Philippines to set the agenda
for it,” said Carlyle Thayer, an emeritus professor at the
Australian Defense Force Academy in Canberra, who attended the
Singapore talks. “The larger game is improved U.S.-China
relations.”
To contact the reporter on this story:
Daniel Ten Kate in Singapore at
dtenkate@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Rosalind Mathieson at
rmathieson3@bloomberg.net
China Spurns Arbitration as U.S. Joins Japan on Sea Stance
Ted Aljibe/AFP/GettyImages
Residents relax next to the shore of Masinloc bay, Zambales province, north of Manila, facing the South China Sea.
Residents relax next to the shore of Masinloc bay, Zambales province, north of Manila, facing the South China Sea. Photographer: Ted Aljibe/AFP/GettyImages
China Spurns Arbitration as US Joins Japan on Sea Stance
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