There is one aspect of contemporary
Chinese policy in the South China Sea that India has known well for some
time. This is the process of creating new facts on the ground to assert
a boundary claim.
This is what happened, most notably, in the Aksai Chin area
where there lines have shifted steadily. Initially, China, with the goal
of building its strategic highway linking Xinjiang with Tibet, fobbed
off all Indian queries about the border. They broadly claimed the
McCartney-McDonald Line of 1899 which ran along the Karakoram watershed,
but which was still within the Indian claim. When questioned on this,
they said that these were old maps.
Subsequently, they occupied the Lingzi-Tang Plains to the
west of this line. But till 1960, they left the Chip Chap and Galwan
River Valley to India. Thereafter they began to press westward. In
September 1962, before the war, the LAC ran from Karakoram Pass, skirted
Chip Chap and Galwan valleys, thence to Kongka La, Damba Guru and
Khurnak Fort.
Chinese occupancy
However, after the war, the Chinese occupied the two
valleys, and pushed westward beyond Samzungling and Khurnak Fort by
anywhere between ten-100kms. Even now, as the Depsang Plains incident of
2013 revealed, the Chinese are maintaining a westward pressure on the
LAC with India.
As for the Eastern sector, after indicating in 1960-80, that
they were willing to trade it for an Indian acceptance of their western
claims, the Chinese now say that this is actually "southern Tibet", and
that the dispute in relations lies there.
Something similar is now happening in the South China Sea
where the Chinese have insisted that the Nine Dash line, of completely
spurious provenance, is their maritime boundary. Given the pushback from
the states of the region - Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, the Chinese
have resorted to a new tactic of building islands on what were submerged
reefs and rocks.
Through the process, they claim territorial waters 12
nautical miles around these newly created artificial outcrops, and an
exclusive economic zone of 200 nautical miles. A Chinese admiral pointed
out in the recent Shangrila Dialogue in Singapore, that the Chinese
position was both "legitimate and reasonable", it was not restricting
freedom of navigation and that China wanted to use these new islands for
public service and was actually building lighthouses to aid navigation.
The US has strongly rejected the process of reclamation, and
as it alleges, emplacement of military equipment on the islands. US
secretary of defence called on China to halt the reclamation in his
remarks at the Shangrila Dialogue, but there was no response. Even
direct questions on the issue were evaded by the Chinese leader of the
delegation, Admiral Sun Jianguo.
No answers
But discerning observers are pointing out that the US has
no real answers on ways of dealing with this Chinese salami tactic. In
his response to a direct question on the issue, all Carter could say was
that China would pay a price for alienating its neighbours, but did not
give any hint of a US plan to deal with the issue. "One of the
consequences of that," he noted, "will be the continued coalescing of
concerned nations around the world," presumably of the affected nations
with the US.
There is an irony here. Even as China appears to look at
the issue in the South China Sea as a zero-sum game, one which it must
win, with a view of shoring up its defensive perimeter, in the oceans
beyond, it is seeking to collaborate with other countries to expand its
influence.
Global power
Beijing knows that it cannot become a global power without
friends. As the US has known, there is a limit to what you can do alone.
The US with its network of friends, allies and partners is a case in
point. The new China military strategy document makes no bones about
China's desire to play a more proactive role in international security
affairs. The document therefore outlines China's search for enhanced
security partnerships, an expanded role in peacekeeping operations,
alongside the creation of new power projection capabilities.
The problem for China is that it has relentlessly put
national interest ahead of everything that the sum total of its foreign
"friends" is two - Pakistan and North Korea. Countries like Russia and
Iran that are coming close to Beijing, are doing so because of their
antipathy to the US.
The military strategy document is a categorical assertion
of China's coming out as a world power and its interests in virtually
every corner of the world. What it is doing here is also what it has
being doing on its borders - creating facts on the ground - and getting
the world to adjust to them.
Mail Today June 8, 2015
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