SOUTH CHINA SEA IMPERIALISM By Tony Lopez Manila Standard Today, 23 April 23, 2014 In his April 14 Forbes Magazine column, former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew seems to justify China’s territorial expansionism in the South China Sea. “Much more is at stake than rocks and resources. China sees the South China Sea as one of its key interests. A rising China is asserting its position by claiming historical rights to these waters. And the disputes, which arise from claims based on different principles, are unlikely to be resolved,” the Singapore senior leader asserts. LKY traces China’s claims back to the 15th century, “way before Christopher Columbus landed in the Americas and Vasco da Gama arrived in India. More than six centuries ago Emperor Zhu Di of the Ming Dynasty sent out a large fleet of trading ships to explore and trade with the rest of the world. His choice to command the expedition was Grand Eunuch Zheng He (1371–1433). Zheng He was born and raised a Muslim in what is now Kunming City in Yunnan Province. He was captured by Ming Dynasty forces around 1381 and taken to Nanjing, where he was castrated and subsequently sent to serve in the palace of Zhu Di, who was then the Prince of Yan and would later become Yongle Emperor.” (In) “nearly three decades (1405–33), Zheng He led seven westward expeditions, which were unprecedented in size and range. They spanned the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, and reached as far as the east coast of Africa. The ships used for these expeditions–more than 400 feet in length, based on archaeological evidence–were many times the size of those Columbus used to sail across the Atlantic.” “If historical claims can define jurisdiction over waters and oceans, the Chinese can point to the fact that 600 years ago they sailed these waters unchallenged,” Lee concludes. This is an imperialist and colonialist argument, pure and simple. The best way to refute it is by reducing it to the ridiculous. Will LKY agree that tiny Singapore is still a British territory because it used to be occupied by the British? Obviously, the answer is no. Singapore today is a proud democracy and an independent state. China claims 71 percent or 1.94 million square kilometers of the 2.74-m sq-km area of the disputed South China Sea. It made the claim official when it submitted a map to the United Nations in May 2009, with a U-shaped nine-dotted line. China claims almost the entirety of the South China Sea, and all of the maritime features, as its own. The map included the Spratlys, the Kalayaan island (which China says is part of the Nansha island group it claims it owns), west of Palawan; the Scarborough Shoal west of Luzon island, as well as rocks, reefs and what seem like islands also claimed by Brunei, Malaysia, and Vietnam. To the north are the southern coast of mainland China, and China’s Hainan Island. To the northeast lies Taiwan. To the east and southeast is the Philippines. The southern limits of the sea are bounded by Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia. And to the west is Vietnam. The many small insular features in the South China Sea are largely concentrated in three geographically distinct groups: the Paracel islands in the northwest; Scarborough Shoal in the east; and the Spratly islands in the southeast. The Paracel Islands are not relevant to this arbitration. Scarborough Shoal, located approximately 120 miles west of the Philippines’ coast and more than 350 miles from China, is a submerged coral reef with six small protrusions of rock above sea level at high tide. The Spratly Islands are about 150 small “features”, many of which are submerged reefs, banks and low tide elevations. They lie between 50 and 350 miles from the Philippine Island of Palawan, and more than 550 miles from the Chinese island of Hainan. None of the Spratly features occupied by China is capable of sustaining human habitation or an economic life of its own. In its complaint or notification filed January 22, 2013 before the International Arbitral Tribunal, the Philippines reports “within the maritime area encompassed by the ‘nine dash line’, China has laid claim to, occupied and built structures on certain submerged banks, reefs and low-tide elevations that do not qualify as islands under the Convention, but are parts of the Philippines’ continental shelf, or the international seabed; and China has interfered with the exercise by the Philippines of its rights in regard to these features, and in the waters surrounding them encompassed by China’s designated security zones.” In addition, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs notification, “China has occupied certain small, uninhabitable coral projections that are barely above water at high tide, and which are ‘rocks’ under Article 121 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). China has claimed maritime zones surrounding these features greater than 12 miles, from which it has sought to exclude the Philippines, notwithstanding the encroachment of these zones on the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, or on international waters.” The DFA says that in June 2012, China formally created a new administrative unit, under the authority of the Province of Hainan that included all of the maritime features and waters within the “nine dash line”. In November 2012, the provincial government of Hainan Province promulgated a law calling for the inspection, expulsion or detention of vessels “illegally” entering the waters claimed by China within this area. The new law went into effect on Jan. 1, 2013. Manila says the Chinese claims under the nine-dash line map are invalid. Beijing, of course, disputes the Philippine claim for arbitration which it does not recognize, a right given it by the same UNCLOS invoked by DFA. To be fair, the Philippines says it does not seek in the arbitration a determination of which country enjoys sovereignty over the islands claimed by it and China. Nor does Manila request a delimitation of any maritime boundaries. The Philippines only wants to exercise and enjoy its rights within and beyond its exclusive economic zone and continental shelf. This means it wants economic use of the resources in the area. According to the Pentagon’s report to the US Congress last year, “the East China Sea contains approximately seven trillion cubic feet of natural gas and up to 100 billion barrels of oil.” Seven trillion cubic feet of gas could mean $33 billion and 100 billion barrels of oil could be worth $10 trillion. The South China Sea dispute thus is reduced to two things—money (of about $10 trillion, two and a half times the current foreign reserves of China) and power projection.
Posted on: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 16:21:59 +0000
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